Heritage Decisions and the Connected Communities Festival: Four events

The Heritage Decisions team were engaged in four events as part of the Connected Communities Festival. On 20th June Rachael Turner at MadLab hosted a Heritage Hit Squad event which explored some of the issues facing Manchester's building and streetscapes at the moment and has generated follow up activity related to London Road Fire Station. Write up by University of Leeds MA in Art Gallery and Museum Studies student Naomi Roberts.

On the same day in York, an event was held to draw together the networks developed through the York: Living with History strand of the Heritage Decision project. The event was titled ‘What has heritage ever done for us?’ and raised some crucial issues about how both decisions about heritage can be democratized but also how the city’s heritage can become a resource for democratic engagement in the city’s future more generally. One outcome from this has been planning an event with York Explore ‘History behind the Headlines’ – to link with Parliament Week and Explore Your Archives week. Here we will take ‘housing’ – with York being one of the most unaffordable places to live in the north of England and with decisions about housing development on the horizon – and use the archives, local knowledge and memories to enrich and extend public debate.

The following weekend – 27th June – Danny Callaghan and a volunteer team created a pop up event, 'DIY Heritage Day' at The Minton Free Library, Stoke-on-Trent and two follow up events due to public demand: ‘Night on the Tiles’ (11th July) and 'Take the Tiles' (25th July). ‘Local families, enthusiasts and heritage professionals have helped to remove wallpaper and wash down nearly 500 tiles’. Showing the potential of meanwhile spaces to generate new networks and energy. Report by Simon Bramley, like Naomi, also student on the MA in Art Gallery and Museum Studies.

Finally, Alex Hale worked with a team of canoeists to launch of the Discovering the Clyde programme, which has been a focus on research as part of the Heritage Decisions project.