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Research in UCL Information Studies on participatory and community-based approaches to archival and heritage activity has improved understanding of the motivations, impacts and challenges of these endeavours. This has led to the following impacts: (1) a higher public and professional profile for participatory and community-based archiving and heritage activities, including a better understanding of the motivations for such activities and of the significance of the engagement with such materials and activities, notably for the diversity and democratisation of cultural and knowledge production and for individual and collective senses of identity, and (2) the challenges and hurdles such approaches face, and some of the tools and collaborative approaches that can be used to overcome challenges.
Dr Watson's research is concerned with the understanding of heritage as a cultural phenomenon and the ways in which this is represented in tourism and in public engagement. The research has focussed on a re-theorisation of issues such as visuality and representation in the public sphere of cultural and heritage tourism and the ways in which this is implicated in modalities of marketing, destination development and the community management of cultural heritage resources. He has sought opportunities to apply this thinking in the real experience of tourism management and marketing in the City of York, one of the world's foremost heritage tourism destinations.
This research has had transformational impacts: systematically providing evidence of the state of cultural heritage policies concerning nine countries in South East Europe; identifying the need for management tools to integrate inventories, environmental and spatial planning, heritage protection and funding mechanisms for projects to enable sustainable use of heritage resources; helping shape a Council of Europe regional programme; creating the framework for legal/administration reform requests by the states concerned; and has led to technical assistance actions, jointly funded by the Council of Europe and the European Commission, including monitoring to ensure the institutionalisation of methodologies in national policies and strategies.
Kyriakidis's research has had impact on policy-makers within both national and local government. This has involved a scaling up of his impact activities that were based in Gonies (Crete) to include both national policy-makers and international organisations. As a result, he has become an influential international authority on the development of greater public engagement with heritage sites (including Pompeii), and on public policy in Greece. His research has resulted in a shift in policy at the Athens University of Economics and Business, which now engages with the provision of training in Heritage Management and is branching out from exclusively finance-based education. His CPD (Continuing Professional Development) courses have reached out to the commercial sector (particularly Leica).
Successive Scottish Governments, local authorities, statutory bodies and sector agencies have sought to address issues of community (re)engagement with their historic environment within community-building and place-making social agendas. Through History Tomorrow, our commercial history unit, we have been central to initiatives designed to restore property of the past to communities. Our major impact is with Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) projects like Prestongrange, Kilmun, and the Ochils Landscape Partnership (OLP), where community volunteers were trained and empowered to undertake their own research, thereafter becoming trainers themselves. Imparting such training skills to community volunteers restores a sense of possession of their `own' histories and effectively inculcates post-funding sustainability amongst them.
The IRPP/SAAH (also known as the Ljubljana Process) is part of the Council of Europe's Regional Programme in S.E. Europe. It was designed to establish methodologies for heritage-led rehabilitation in countries undergoing political, social and economic transition: improving heritage management practices; increasing ministerial acceptance of responsibility for the built heritage which had been lost in the new world, post-communist order; establishing a transferrable model; and fund-raising for the rehabilitation of a wide range of sites, encouraging new sustainable uses and jobs. The project has had significant financial impact, raising over 76m euros by the end of 2010, by which time over 80% of the 186 identified sites had undergone or were undergoing rehabilitation. Its methodology has been endorsed by the European Commission which as a consequence has increased its funding for heritage sites as part of its pre-accession programme. Within the participating countries the programme has been fully endorsed by ministers of culture, and has received significant further endorsement from the ministers of culture within the countries of the Caucasus which are participating in the Kyiv Initiative Regional Programme. John Bold was project leader 2003-10: this role included leading full project meetings in Strasbourg, Thessaloniki, Sarajevo (BiH), Ohrid (FYROM) and Zadar (Croatia); and numerous country-specific meetings, with ministerial, institutional and stakeholder involvement in Tirana, Sarajevo, Sofia, Zagreb, Skopje, Podgorica, Bucharest, Belgrade and Pristina. The role further required the writing of reports and guidance documents, many of which were then published on the Council of Europe website. All of these were informed by research into the individual sites (historical and architectural) and situations (proposals for rehabilitation, management and business planning).
Professor Paul Heritage joined QMUL in 1996. His research over the last two decades has opened up new understandings of Brazil's transformative arts practices within the UK cultural sector. Through practice-based projects, his research continues to deepen and extend the understanding of innovative Brazilian arts practices in Britain. Heritage has forged new opportunities for UK arts practitioners to develop their work in Brazil and shaped new policy exchanges between ministerial/governmental and non-governmental organisations. His research engages with a diverse range of artists and cultural institutions, reaching over 50,000 people in the period since 2008 via performances/screenings/seminars/exhibitions/events. Through disseminating research into Brazilian culture policy and practices that have responded to extreme social crises, he has strengthened the British cultural sector's confidence in using art in the advancement of social development.
The social significance of the historic environment is an increasingly important aspect of heritage conservation and management. Sustained primary research led by Professor Siân Jones has significantly advanced knowledge and understanding of the social significance of the historic environment in the UK. Evidence is provided of significant impact on the conservation policy, guidance and practice of state heritage bodies, including Historic Scotland and English Heritage. We give examples of wide-ranging impacts on practitioner debate and practice in the areas of designation, management and preservation of historic sites in the UK and beyond.
2The European funded ISAAC Project aimed to enhance the relationship between heritage and tourism in urban destinations through a novel Information Communication Technology (ICT) environment. The platform provided integrated and user-friendly tourism e-services facilitating an advanced access to European cultural heritage assets. Within this project the Sunderland team worked with a wide community of stakeholders to identify intangible aspects and stories worthwhile to be told within a destination. These stories were integrated in an interpretative strategy independent of, but aligned with destinations' current marketing and positioning strategies. The specific impact focuses on three destinations, Leipzig, Amsterdam and Genoa.
Simon Goldhill's research on the history and archaeology of Jerusalem led to his being asked to join the EU-funded programme Promoting Understanding of Shared Heritage (PUSH). The aim of the project is to develop a new policy on sites of shared cultural heritage, in which capacity Goldhill has met regularly with — and been able to influence — Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian policy-makers. This influence is manifested in a rapprochement between groups who had previously been unable to meet; new signage at significant sites across Israel/Palestine and Jordan; and continuing interaction particularly on the crucial area of the management of natural resources.