IHBC Yearbook 2021

! FOREWORD I’m grateful for the opportunity to contribute the foreword to this edition of the IHBC’s yearbook. Before I look ahead to the challenges of a pivotal year for our built heritage, I’d like to reflect on what has been quite an extraordinary year of challenge but also achievement. From my position as Chief Executive of Historic England, I am fortunate to have a view across the whole historic environment sector and into government. What I witnessed over the past "# months was encouraging and inspiring in equal measure. The pandemic brought huge challenges to all of those who work in the historic environment: income streams dried up, workforces were depleted, research programmes were cancelled, and essential cyclical repair and maintenance work was disrupted. A collapse of the entire heritage ecosystem looked very possible until, that is, the historic environment sector did what it hitherto had not done often enough; it came together, set aside organisational self-interest and worked at incredible pace to come up with a rescue plan. The government responded with an unprecedented programme of financial support, the Culture Recovery Fund (CRF), a remarkable investment of nearly £".$ billion to protect vital heritage and cultural organisations from insolvency, saving thousands of highly skilled jobs and maintaining the condition of hundreds of nationally significant historic buildings and places. This unprecedented injection of public money is ensuring heritage can play a full part in helping the country recover from the pandemic. Much of the design and delivery of the heritage aspects of the CRF was undertaken by Historic England and the National Lottery Heritage Fund, and I have to take a moment here to highlight the extraordinary e%orts of sta% in both organisations who worked tirelessly night and day under intense pressure and often di&cult circumstances to get the vital funding to where it was needed most. We all stepped up. However, it was the collaboration between Historic England and the Heritage Fund and the whole of the historic environment sector that also stands out for me. Each of us has a di%erent part to play, reflecting our particular expertise. We have found new ways to work together, to pool resources, to share information and creative ideas, and to reach out to all parts of the sector. The IHBC played a full part in this, giving its members information about the help that was available and feeding back vital information on how its members were faring and what kind of support you required. Collaboration, indeed partnership, is the vital ingredient. We can only overcome the challenges ahead if we face them together and arrive at solutions collectively. This is particularly the case with climate change, where the commonly held perception is that historic buildings are part of the problem rather than the solution. We need to work hard to change this narrative, to get people to appreciate that recycling buildings can be one of the most impactful things we can achieve to cut carbon emissions and to reduce waste. We need to show how buildings can be sensitively adapted to make them more energy e&cient and to make them more resilient to a changing climate. The desired outcome is clear but the pathway towards achieving it is complex and di&cult, involving changes to policy and taxation incentives, plugging evidence gaps, vastly increasing knowledge and skills, producing authoritative and accessible guidance, and gaining public (and political) support. The challenge is huge, even greater than that posed by the pandemic. Yet, I believe we can meet it, so long as we continue to work together, are generous with our time and knowledge and are willing to consider new approaches. We all have a part to play. Duncan Wilson, Chief Executive, Historic England (Photo: Dean Atkins)

R E V I E W A N D A N A L Y S I S "! WELCOME MIKE BROWN, IHBC PRESIDENT Welcome to the IHBC Yearbook, now in its #"st wonderful year. Within its pages you will find a comprehensive guide to the world of heritage conservation, including a directory of members, a&liates and associates, articles on topical conservation issues, useful national and local addresses and details of many valuable conservation products and services. The last year has seen yet more of the ‘interesting times’ I referred to in last year’s Yearbook and I trust you have weathered the Covid-"$ storm as well as can be expected. Many of us have lost loved-ones, friends and colleagues in the last year, and among them was David Lovie, past IHBC President, who served the IHBC so magnificently and with great humour in our fledgling years. A great loss. As you will know, the lockdown has restricted many IHBC activities and we have become used to operating in a digital world. Who knew in #'"$ how well we would adapt? As I write we are still awaiting the delayed final stage of the lifting of the lockdown restrictions. Let us hope for as near as possible a return to normal times – tempered, hopefully, with many lessons learnt. But for now we still cannot meet in numbers and our annual school has had to be conducted online once again. Given the enormous amount of work the branch put into this (twice) I feel branch members’ deep disappointment but note the splendid array of speakers that they, nevertheless, lined up, and its huge success in terms of digital delegate numbers. If restrictions allow, there will also be a range of physical tours in September so please sign up and treat yourself to a weekend in lovely Brighton. I’m sure you deserve it after the year we have all endured, and the CPD hours will be useful, too! Despite the restrictions we have made excellent progress with two particular projects. The first is the establishment and now smooth running of the IHBC-supported UK-wide All Party Parliamentary Group on ‘Conservation, Places and People’. Under the chairmanship of Layla Moran MP, this has attracted great support from MPs and peers. It has already undertaken its first study and I am grateful to those IHBC members who took the opportunity to contribute. This promises to be an invaluable communications channel with Parliament. The second project, our ongoing governance review, is vital to the future of the IHBC. The new articles of association were adopted at our AGM and we are now working on the substance of the supporting new byelaws and regulations. The articles have enabled the restructuring of the IHBC’s governance to separate the roles of council members from those of trustees. We now have a small governing board of elected trustees and an advisory council with representatives from across our UK and overseas branches, our committees and panels, and including all member categories, all sectors of employment and the principal disciplines, as shown on page six. With the articles in place we have now convened the new governing board and I had the privilege of chairing the inaugural IHBC Council which was open to all members and debated its future constitution. This will feed into the forthcoming byelaws and regulations. It is my intention as your president to keep the future membership of Council as open as is practical so that it is ‘the voice of the membership’. Do join in. One idea discussed at our inaugural council meeting was that the IHBC applies to become a chartered body. This was greeted with considerable enthusiasm by those in attendance. However, we are conscious that this is the view of the more ‘active’ sections of the membership and that other members may not be of that mind. I wish to assure all members that the proposal is not a foregone conclusion; these are early days, much work has yet to be done and all members will be presented with the pros and cons in due course. There will be many more discussions at branch level and elsewhere before any proposition is put to members for a vote. In the meantime, the institute will continue to ensure that all new constitutional documents are prepared such that they are ‘charter compliant’ to avoid the need for any expensive rewrites should the membership wish to proceed to charterdom. A year ago in discussing these matters I closed by reminding members of the old Chinese saying that ‘the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’. I am pleased to report that, despite these turbulent times, that journey is now underway. Mike Brown is President of the IHBC (president@ihbc.org.uk), Director of Conservation & Design Ltd and head of the conservation service at East Herts District Council.

"# Y E A R B O O K ! " ! # CHAIR’S REVIEW CHANGE AND ADAPTATION DAVID McDONALD, IHBC CHAIR A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: It’s loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. From Endymion, by John Keats I happened to see these opening lines from Keats’s epic poem recently on Poems on the Underground in a Piccadilly line carriage. It was there to commemorate the poet on the #''th anniversary of his death in "(#", but it did strike me as being particularly apt during the pandemic. We have all been forced to re-evaluate our surroundings and consider afresh beauty in the built and natural environment. Keats was perhaps ahead of his time in connecting beauty with health and well-being. The fact that I was travelling on the London Underground at all was an unusual event. As a London resident, I would have been travelling on the tube on an almost a daily basis before the pandemic, but for the past ") months my journeys on public transport have been minimal and for essential purposes only. As I write, final opening up of restrictions in England has been delayed by a month, but I am conscious that even when they have, work patterns will be di%erent, with consequences not only for public transport but also for employment in town centres and how we use buildings and public spaces. In IHBC Yearbook !"!", I mentioned the immediate e%ects that the pandemic was having on the IHBC, and it was di&cult to be anything other than rather downbeat. In retrospect I was right to be cautious, but now I have the chance to take the longer view. As our President mentioned in his Welcome to this Yearbook, the IHBC has moved rapidly to digital ways of working as exemplified by our online Annual School and also our committees and other meetings including the AGM. For me, another aspect has been the interaction with other organisations in the sector, and an appreciation of the range of individuals and groups involved and their contribution to maintaining the historic environment. As an organisation we were conscious of threats such as loss of income from subscriptions, loss of jobs advertising revenue and other issues, but we were able to make adjustments accordingly. We were also aware that there might be e%ects on our members’ employment in both the public and private sectors. However, for those organisations whose main business was the income generated from their buildings and grounds open to the public, the issue was much more serious. This a%ected organisations from the largest such as the National Trust to many small ones, both private and voluntary, whose main income is from visitors and events. For some it was a double whammy: on the one hand they were encouraged to keep open spaces available for recreation throughout lockdown, but on the other they were required to keep all income-generating facilities closed. I have been impressed with how many diverse organisations have come together to respond, and importantly to engage with government to ensure that heritage has managed to attract a reasonable share of resources to sustain recovery. Other parts of the historic environment sector a%ected include education and training. At our recent Annual School, a webinar was devoted to how Reading University and West Dean College of Arts and Conservation coped with the pandemic. Both organisations unsurprisingly were moving towards virtual lectures and tutorials. While these might work well for the academic content of courses, the lack of site visits remained a problem and in the case of West Dean the demonstration of practical skills was another. Parallel problems were also found at amenity societies such as the Victorian Society. A change from in-person to virtual lectures was possible, but there was a considerable loss of income in not being able o%er visits to places of historic interest to its members and others. If there has been a common thread throughout the pandemic it has been that of change. It might be seen to be too obvious to include climate change in that definition, but the threat and opportunities to rise to this challenge have continued. The IHBC’s Green Panel continues its excellent work and is working with The Heritage Alliance and the Climate Heritage Network to make representations to the COP#* climate change conference in Glasgow in November #'#". We continue to be represented in the Sustainable Traditional Buildings Alliance. This all epitomises the new spirit of cooperation in our field. Another contributor to change in the sector over the year was the toppling of the Colston statue in

R E V I E W A N D A N A L Y S I S "$ Bristol, itself prompted by the killing of George Floyd in the USA. I have written extensively in Context about contested heritage. My view is that as well as considering how we might deal with those sculptures and plaques which commemorate those connected with the slave trade, we need to consider the wider issue of inequality and how we deal with it. The varying responses to contested heritage have also illustrated another theme over the past year: people. This shift in focus from the physical fabric of the historic environment to those who share in its heritage was certainly a central theme of this year’s IHBC annual school, entitled ‘Historic Places: People Places’. That theme is also reflected in the contents of this Yearbook. Aishwarya Tipnis reflects on how our perception of the historic environment is influenced by our values and world-view as well as its physical appearance. Loes Veldpaus continues this theme in considering conservation as care. This is given a very practical focus by Charlotte Bowles-Lewis and Claire Dovey-Evans who describe some innovative ways of engaging local people in Gloucester’s Townscape Heritage Initiative. Jonathan Taylor looks at the relationship between people and heritage, and Dave Chetwyn reflects on current politics in examining how heritage can contribute geographically to the government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda. In conclusion, I believe we are entering a post-pandemic era of transition. In England, that transition may include radical changes to planning practice. There has been extensive consultation following the publication of the Planning White Paper (PWP) earlier this year. A new Planning Bill is promised in the autumn which is likely to include proposals which will have a major e%ect in how we manage change in the historic environment. As a precursor to the PWP, the government published Living with beauty, the Report of the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission in January #'#', all of which has fed into its proposals for design codes. There will be much for us to consider over the next few months, and time for us to consider Keats’s prophetic words from two centuries ago. David McDonald is Chair of the IHBC (chair@ihbc.org.uk), having been a member since #$$%. He worked for over !" years at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea as Conservation and Design Team Leader and has a diploma in conservation from the Architectural Association. Lockdown lions (Photo: Hugo Marchant)

R E V I E W A N D A N A L Y S I S "% DIRECTOR’S UPDATE LESSONS FROM THE PANDEMIC SEAN O’REILLY, IHBC DIRECTOR We’ve faced a huge number of challenges in the past year and more, like everyone else. Nevertheless, we have managed to maintain a very high level of activity, impact and influence across all the interests that shape our built and historic environment, its care and especially its conservation. The pandemic has continued to be a serious concern for us corporately as well as individually, but the financial measures we instigated in #'#' served well to secure our viability in the short term – inevitably a concern for smaller charitable organisations such as ours faced by potentially catastrophic changes in our operating environment. We have continued to respond to the worst e%ects of the pandemic in #'#" and have now completed our challenging but highly successful two-day ‘virtual’ Brighton School, hosted with the invaluable support of our South East Branch. Now we are looking ahead with cautious optimism as we move out of lockdown, helped not least by the government’s relaxed monetary policy. Understandably, the longer-term future remains uncertain, but at least we know we can adapt successfully to weather this particular storm. One invaluable resource we now have is the experience gained from developing, hosting and delivering our successful ‘snap’ school in June #'#'. Exploring ‘Reflections and speculations from a global pandemic’, this virtual version of our day school was slimmed down from a traditional three-day school in a last minute pandemic pivot. Its two webinar-style sessions boasted an unprecedented array of global and local expertise and experience. In particular, Carl Elefante, former president of the American Institute of Architects, delved into his mantra that ‘the greenest building is the one that already exists’. This was the perfect complement to the most critical agenda for humanity, as well as for the IHBC: energy and climate change. With some +'' participants over two sessions, that day alone could have been the highlight for the year, but it was only the start. September #'#' saw the launch of the UK-wide Westminster-based All Party Parliamentary Group on ‘Conservation, Places and People’ (CPP APPG), with the IHBC as its supporting secretariat. That APPG now boasts members with credentials no less luminary in their own roles and remits than Carl’s, not least APPG Vice Chair Lord (Bob) Kerslake, past lead at She&eld City Council, Homes and Communities Agency, and the Home Civil Service. Already they are wielding huge weight for our cause. Our #'#' briefing to the Flooded streets in Matlock, Derbyshire: the direct and indirect consequences of climate change are increasingly the focus of much of our work. (Photo: iStock.com/Jonathan Christian Photography)

&' Y E A R B O O K ! " ! # APPG on England’s Planning White Paper added such credibility to the IHBC’s submission on the linked Parliamentary Committee planning inquiry that the IHBC was cited regularly in the committee’s response. Early in #'#" we also commenced receiving the evidence for our APPG’s inaugural inquiry into ‘#"st Century Places: Values and Benefits’. While again the pandemic has generated delays, that inquiry is already bearing real fruits, o%ering strategic platforms for heritage advocacy by other bodies, including Historic England, The Heritage Alliance and Locality to date. However, we have not yet managed to bring on board key players from other Home Countries, a failing that we will work hard to address. The list of the institute’s achievements grew further with the approval of our new Articles of Association and the adoption of our new Corporate Plan !"!"–!' (CP#)). While the successes above have helped advance our charitable work, these developments – internal though they are – are already having substantial impacts on our capacity to change the fundamentals of risk management in the IHBC. Our new Articles mark the major step forward in modernising the IHBC. That we could secure almost unanimous approval from the AGM for the adoption of both the new constitution and CP#), itself more of a renewal than a revision, is a real triumph. The best indicator of their collective impact – if perhaps also the most outwardly tedious - is a substantial reduction in risks carried by the IHBC. The next stage in governance is the recruitment of fresh faces to help shape and lead on the next tier of corporate regulation. Already new volunteers with very specific skills sets have come forward to help our existing o&cers, including Lynda Jubb, Rebecca Thompson and Mark Douglas, all of whom will be familiar to some, but probably none to all. Critical for the future too is the refinement of the IHBC’s new Council, a body which will include representatives from all disciplines and from across the UK, and which will elect and be chaired by the IHBC President. In more practical terms, the success of our #'#' ‘Virtual School’ continued into the infinitely more ambitious and challenging two-day format of our virtual #'#" Brighton School. As with so many of our more recent achievements, its success rose from the capacity and contributions of skilled volunteers working closely with the IHBC’s National O&ce. Similarly, our long tradition of more formal alliances meant we benefitted from diverse new partnerships with others, and we now have a ‘memorandum of understanding’ with the local government archaeologist network, ALGAO:UK, and a joint research award initiative with the UK’s lead body for architectural historians, the SAHGB. These new alliances enrich our established links with more mainstream players such as England’s National Planning Forum. New practice support also has advanced despite pandemic pauses. Continuing professional development (CPD) supported by our free monthly CPD Circular is especially popular, and the delayed ‘local delivery’ training events have recommenced. Sustainability and the challenges of climate change span the spectrum of our operations, so we have continued to work closely with other organisations on these matters, from the international Climate Heritage Network to the Sustainable Traditional Buildings Alliance. Contributing to COP#* (UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties) in Glasgow in #'#" is a priority, and we will approach that initially through partnerships as well as within national link bodies such as the Built Environment Forum Scotland and The Heritage Alliance. It is just possible that we may also have a formal IHBC presence at COP#* too. It’s yet another example of work in progress, but fingers crossed… Seán O’Reilly is the Director of IHBC (director@ihbc.org.uk), joining in !""' after working at the Architectural Heritage Society of Scotland. He has written, contributed to and edited numerous publications in architectural history and conservation. While the sights and sounds of Brighton were much missed at the Annual School, going virtual meant that many more people could attend.

R E V I E W A N D A N A L Y S I S &( PUBLIC CONSULTATION and ENGAGEMENT CHARLOTTE BOWLES!LEWIS and CLAIRE DOVEY!EVANS WHEN FACED with a person holding a clipboard in the street most of us put our heads down and walk on by. However, not everyone is selling something we neither need nor want and there is a danger that we will miss the important stu%. Public consultations on issues a%ecting the community are particularly vulnerable, and unless the message stands out from the crowd, we may miss the chance to have our say on important discussions a%ecting our community. With Covid-"$ restrictions it is unlikely that we will meet someone face to face at the moment, but there may be a social media poll, virtual meeting, or survey online we could contribute to, if our attention can only be caught for a moment and engaged. For those of us who work within a local authority in England or Wales, councils are required to prepare a ’statement of community involvement’ (under Section "( of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act !""%) which sets out when and how they will consult when preparing new plans and in determining significant planning applications. This requirement to consult and engage is important, but how do we engage and consult e%ectively? How can we avoid consultation fatigue? There is a further question regarding consultation in the context of grant awards such as from the National Lottery Heritage Fund or through a government regeneration scheme. In these cases, are there any additional requirements? Should we be doing things di%erently or do we simply follow the standard requirements? At Gloucester City Council we use a range of consultation techniques in seeking to engage with di%erent groups to establish the most e%ective means of enabling all our communities to make their views known and help shape the city. Some people will prefer direct contact with the council, either face-to-face or over the phone. Others may prefer communicating through the web, emails, or text messaging. Some may need directly targeted communication because of disability, culture, language, or literacy factors. It is vital though, to engage with people and to get their ideas and opinions. And not just because we are told that we have to. The success and long-term sustainability of a project and its aims and values rest on making sure the audience understands what we are trying to do, supports what we are trying to do and feels involved with the process. It is important to open the channels of communication. To be successful, there is a need to embed the principles of the project within the local community, which can take time. In Gloucester, we have delivered a successful Townscape Heritage Initiative (THI) in the Southgate Street area of the city, and we have just completed year one of a High Street Heritage Action Zone scheme in the Cathedral Quarter of the city. We have learnt from the evaluation of the THI, and we are implementing that learning into our Cathedral Quarter project. Working with Historic England we have produced The Fabularium actors, ‘Firm Footings’ and ‘Faulty Bearings’ engaging people under !" in the future plans for their city

&) Y E A R B O O K ! " ! # The Whisperer consultation: participants (bottom left) were encouraged to contemplate past, present, and future issues for the city, and to communicate their ideas a community engagement plan and a communications plan, setting out the project’s key milestones and the promotional opportunities for each of them. With greater publicity there should be greater awareness, better engagement, and more willingness to take part in consultation. The council has tried to go further rather than follow the rule book on consultation practice. Two case studies, the Gloucester Heritage Strategy and Cathedral Quarter Heritage Action Zone are examples of what can be done with a small amount of funding and capacity. GLOUCESTER HERITAGE STRATEGY The city’s ten-year heritage strategy was developed in #'"$ as part of the Gloucester Great Place scheme, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council England. The Great Place scheme placed a strategic focus on enhancing Gloucester’s heritage for all and sought to embed a culture of developing a holistic approach to the regeneration of the city. This would in turn seek to facilitate proactive working with developers, members, stakeholders, and partners, whether professional or residents of the city and beyond. The key to discussing the aims and challenges of the strategy was through stakeholder engagement and several consultations. Gloucester City Council working with appointed consultants and Gloucester Culture Trust decided to add to the standard consultation process of workshops, face-to-face meetings and online consultation, and try something di%erent to be more inclusive and engaging. The Culture Trust appointed two creatives: the first of these were ‘The Fabularium’ actors who perform stories depicted through various media from acrobatic and circus skills to mask and puppetry, live music, and storytelling. The second was ‘The Whisperer’ who encouraged participants to think about the city of Gloucester in a deep and reflective manner. Both asked the same two questions relating to Gloucester’s historic buildings and areas: firstly, what would people like to see happen over the next decade? Secondly, looking more generally at the city’s strengths and weaknesses, what needed to change over the next decade? The Fabularium’s two actors, called Firm Footings and Faulty Bearings in Victorian costume engaged members of the public, targeting those under ,'. The moveable act allowed the actors to approach members of the public who appeared interested in the act and willing to engage. They could move to various locations to gauge levels of engagement in di%erent parts of the city centre. The survey was conducted over six one-hour sessions over two days and interviewed *$ people over the weekend. The results of the survey provided a good insight into Gloucester’s view of the term Heritage and how the public generally feels about the city. It has highlighted several key issues where the public agrees require attention, such as handling crime, anti-social behaviour, alcoholism, and the altered dynamic of public spaces at night. A need for reinvigorating public spaces that have been left to decline and become deprived in favour of areas that are considered landmarks and more popular with tourists was also identified. The Whisperer facilitated both group conversations and individual contemplation at Gloucester ## Southgate Street, Gloucester before and after facade improvements enabled by the THI (both photos: Charlotte Bowles-Lewis)

R E V I E W A N D A N A L Y S I S &! Cathedral. While a smaller number of participants was engaged, they were all under #) and had not participated in the heritage consultation through the online survey and workshops. The data was gathered through a variety of media such as post-it notes, drawings and audio recordings. Two findings which formed a common theme related to the crucial role of the city to build a future where people can fulfil their aspirations. These were the need to consult with young people and act upon providing relevant opportunities to build trusted relationships; and secondly, the need to empower the voices of younger generations to become curious and confident about their city. There was also a passion for high quality, diverse and challenging art, and culture, driven through partnership to bring vibrancy to the city. Both sessions were invaluable, and it provided a younger voice which had been missed through the stakeholder engagement, workshops, and online surveys. Therefore, taking a di%erent approach and utilising a small budget made a big di%erence in shaping the strategy. This is an approach which will be used again in the city and has been included in our future grant funding programmes. CATHEDRAL QUARTER HERITAGE ACTION ZONE Gloucester City Council was privileged to be awarded £".$ million from Historic England to capitalise on Westgate’s untapped potential and boost the number of people living, working, and taking pride in the area. Despite its strong historic character, being one of the oldest and bestpreserved areas of Gloucester and the main commercial route linking the cathedral to the rest of the city and a central location, Westgate Street is underperforming. We have developed a brand for the project, which is vibrant and exciting and a separate website, www.cathedralquartergloucester.uk. The Cathedral Quarter Heritage Action Zone is delivered by a partnership and a steering group involving lots of di%erent stakeholder groups. A separate website was seen as a ‘must’ to give the project a digital base, a visually exciting and engaging set of pages, and not just another page on the council’s site as created for the THI. We have also developed Cathedral Quarter social media pages on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, again separate to the council’s channels. We now have a set of tools that we can use to promote the project to audiences, to engage them, and to direct them to any consultation or evaluation activities that we might plan as part of the project. It is important to aim these consultation activities and opportunities at the targeted audience as it is not possible to reach di%erent communities and groups using the same method each time. Social media is great for more visual and one-o% events. We do not currently have any programmes which track social media impact, but this is something we will consider as our posts and !$ artwork by Joe Hill as part of the Interactive Archaeology event which encouraged visitors to engage with the archaeology of the city and the wider Cathedral Quarter Heritage Action Zone (both photos: !$ Joe and Max) Branding for the project is designed to be vibrant and exciting.

&# Y E A R B O O K ! " ! # pages become more popular. With restrictions easing last summer the launch event needed to be active, outdoors, socially distanced, and social media driven. The Cathedral Quarter Project O&cer came up with the idea of a ,- interactive archaeology event. The aim of Interactive Archaeology was to raise awareness of the project, and to engage local people with the history and heritage of the area through an innovative art installation. It was also intended that the event would attract people back to the high street safely (given Covid-"$), with a well stewarded and managed event which would draw people in and provide improved footfall for local businesses. Gloucester is an ancient city and significant archaeological remains of the city walls, Roman buildings and even medieval churches survive beneath the city streets. The project aimed to interpret and engage people with that heritage by bringing some of these to life in three-dimensional form as pavement art. Five pieces of artwork were set out along Westgate Street, depicting di%erent archaeological features and Westgate stories. Joe Hill (,- Joe and Max) was chosen to deliver this artwork as he states that his artwork is not complete until someone is interacting with it, by posing within it and taking photographs. An accompanying exhibition and consultation event were held in a vacant empty shop which explained more about the history of the street and o%ered the chance to find out about the Cathedral Quarter project. An online survey was promoted and made available for the following two weeks for local people to complete, asking for perceptions of Westgate and feedback on the types of event that they might attend, help to organise, or participate in, to inform a programme of cultural activity. Stewards gave out small cards to as many visiting groups as possible. These cards had the hashtags to use when posting images on social media and a QR code which linked through to the survey website. Social media coverage was very strong, and we had lots of visitors and survey participants as a result. We asked people for three words that they would use to describe the street. We will ask the same questions year on year and see how the results change. The results were posted on social media so that they could be seen. A word cloud was used for this as it is quite an easy visual representation of the responses. The event was well received, boosted responses to the survey and gave us the responses we needed for both baseline information and for development of our cultural programme. A video recording the event can be seen at vimeo. com/.*#*$(,.,. With our cultural programme we will be taking on community producers to work with local people to come up with ideas for events and activities that bring heritage to life. Again, involving local people in the early stages and developing their skills and abilities to continue with this type of work after the project closes. Cathedral Quarter HAZ has also launched a reminiscence project, ‘Westgate Stories’ in partnership with Gloucestershire Archives, the Museum of Gloucester, Gloucester Civic Trust and Gloucester Cathedral Archive. People’s knowledge and past experiences are important to us in helping to shape the project. We need that input. We need local people, and we want them to help us. Through this aspect of the project, we can engage them with the wider project aspirations and help to spread the aims and key messages of Cathedral Quarter. Hopefully, people will feel that they are contributing and helping us to deliver this project. If they are involved in this way, it is much more likely that the work done, and the awareness raised will continue after the project is completed. The vacant shop unit we used previously is being fitted out as a consultation space and will be used as a venue for drop-in sessions about the project and to pass on information, photographs, memories and stories. Having a presence on the High Street will really help with the consultation and engagement activities planned over the next three years. WHAT’S NEXT? We have learned that opportunities to consult, engage, and to gather information for evaluation are woven through all aspects of work in the historic environment. The challenge is to identify them early, make them relevant, interesting, and useful. Questions need to be carefully chosen, and the methods or media used must be suitable for the audience and the type of information we wish to gather. If feedback can be encouraged through events, or through experiences tailored to your audience, all the better. It is hoped that with the relaxing of Covid-"$ restrictions we can undertake engagement and consultations again face-to-face. However, in the meantime the virtual world has been embraced and, in some cases, wider audiences have been engaged. Therefore, this new technology should not be forgotten, and a mix of platforms should be continued to be used post pandemic. We are still learning in Gloucester and not everything will be successful but it’s worth a go, and always worth seeing what that person with the clipboard wants to ask you. Charlotte Bowles-Lewis is Principal Conservation O(cer and Claire Dovey-Evans is Cathedral Quarter Project O(cer, Gloucester City Council. A word cloud used to help people visualise responses to the Cathedral Quarter consultation

R E V I E W A N D A N A L Y S I S &% WHO CARES? LOES VELDPAUS IT’S THE session after lunch. I’ve squeezed myself back into my chair in a full auditorium in what used to be a redundant railway building in Stirling – you may well have been there with me. It is a darkened room, and I guess we’re all a bit full, of abundant food and of all the presentations and pointers provided over the past two days. The next speaker will have to entertain the drowsy after-lunch audience on day two. I say something like, ‘engaging them might be a challenge’ to my colleague, but he responds ‘I know her. It’ll be good, she’s good. This is an important story.’ No less than "' minutes in, I am very much proven wrong. Drone footage of the Glasgow School of Art, or of what is left of the building after the second fire, draws out gasps of horror. I pull myself out of the story to observe a mesmerised and emotional audience. This conference is on how best to restore old and knackered buildings, and the empathy is palpable. Imagine this happens to you, to your building, so helpless, incapacitated in the face of a raging fire and the destruction it leaves behind. Both the speaker and the audience full of ‘heritage people’ clearly care, a lot. For the material, the stories, and the people involved. It is like grieving a loss through a process of sharing, storytelling, restoring, and recreating. It made me realise that we hardly ever talk about restoring heritage as a practice of care – strange really, as caring for old buildings is such a common way of defining built heritage conservation. I was attending this Heritage Trust Network event with a colleague from the Tyne and Wear Building Preservation Trust (TWBPT). I wanted to learn more about the restoration of built heritage in practice in the UK, because we had just started collaborating on a restoration project in Sunderland as part of OpenHeritage, a large EU funded research project. In OpenHeritage (see https://openheritage.eu) we research and develop ‘inclusive governance and finance models’ for adaptive heritage reuse, with a focus on economically, geographically, and/ or societally ‘marginalised’ heritage. We look at governance, community engagement, and financial mechanisms in case studies and regulatory frameworks across ") European Drone’s eye view and digital model of the burnt out shell of Glasgow School of Art following the second fire (Images: Glasgow School of Art)

(' Y E A R B O O K ! " ! # countries. What all these cases have in common is a group of people who care. Nothing new, you think, of course they do. Why else would you get involved in a heritage project? Because it is so self-evident, I want to explore this idea of conservation (including restoration and heritage protection more generally) as a form of care. What are the ways we (don’t) care, the issues we (don’t) care about, the things we (don’t) care for, and who do we (not) care for? What if the ethics of care are the ethics of conservation? What is this care for, what does it do, who benefits from it? It might seem easy and innocent to think about care, and conservation, as inherently good – but are they? In the various case studies in OpenHeritage project we explore collaborative approaches. They take di%erent shapes everywhere, but what’s clear is that more ‘people-centred’ heritage projects are happening all across Europe. Exploring the ‘human’ dimension in heritage can mean a variety of sometimes overlapping things. Some focus on (future) use and users, other on making a wider range of stories, memories, traditions, practices, and skills integral to the process. It is visible in the everincreasing demand for involving and engaging more people, whether that is to identify, define, (re)use, research, or restore the historic environment. It is also reflected in the changing role for heritage professionals, who are to facilitate these relations between people, and between people and heritage. This goes beyond organising engagement or skills development. In Sunderland for example, we work on a restoration project located on a former high street in the Heritage Action Zone. / The buildings saw underuse, vacancy and deterioration for decades. The current gradual restoration led by the TWBPT is undertaken in collaboration with various other local stakeholders, to develop new uses, create mutual benefit in doing the buildings up, and provide accessible space for a variety of users. It was clear from the beginning that developing a viable future for these dilapidated buildings would mean tending to their material, as much as it would be about stimulating, facilitating, and weaving a self-sustaining network of care around them, to ensure future maintenance and use. So, yes, the work includes the usual construction and restoration works. It also means that from the very beginning, we try to develop and facilitate collaborations with and between (future) tenant(s) and users, local organisations, small businesses, artists, neighbourhood organisations, the local college and university, local government and the wider heritage sector in Sunderland and the region. This networkbuilding and collaborative work is entangled with ensuring sustained care for these buildings. This is not just fun events and creative workshops, but a long-term and often invisible process of meetings, strategising and plotting plan a, b and c, of working through conflicts, setbacks, and successes, of figuring out and formalising financial and legal responsibilities, risks, and contracts. Some people care first and foremost for the buildings, whether that is its layers of history, bricks, or the accuracy of the restored shopfronts. Others care much more for the space that is created, and the building is valued for its ability to provide accessible space, a safe space, an event space or a community space, or a place to meet, to chat, to listen, to experience, to learn. Both care for the buildings, yet the latter are often not seen as part of the conservation process. However, aren’t heritage values, historic interest and character all part of how accessible and welcoming these spaces are? I think the answer becomes more obvious, when we ask ourselves who is – and who is not – being cared for by caring for this heritage? Who was considered in deciding which stories would be highlighted, whose needs and voices were taken into account when redesigning the space, which histories are carefully researched, and which are carelessly, or conveniently, forgotten? It can be complicated and expensive to navigate planning, heritage, and building regulations and procedures. As a result, it may seem A temporary space adjacent to the Jam Factory in Lviv, Ukraine, and (below) a jam jar from the late #$$"s, one of the objects the Jam Factory team received from the people who took part in the Tell your Story project (Photos:The Jam Factory)

R E V I E W A N D A N A L Y S I S (" A visit from the Architectural Heritage Fund in %"&' to Sunderland’s Hight Street West before the major restoration of &(%/# started in early %"%". like one less complication to just focus on the ‘formal’ histories rather than trying to understand and include the subaltern, di&cult, and unexplored ones, but is it? Many of the projects in OpenHeritage, for example the Praga Lab in Warsaw 0 and the Jam Factory in Lviv, Ukraine 1 focus explicitly on collecting, revealing, and showcasing invisible and forgotten stories. Stories that were not in the archives but in living and passed-on memory. Stories of residents and factory workers. For the Jam Factory, an oral history and mapping project ‘Tell Your Story’2 helped build engagement and understanding. The Praga Lab team is working on a living memory exhibition 3 to establish links between the history of manufacturing and new ways of working and making. These projects do not just spark awareness, or fill gaps in the ‘formal’ histories. They build connections and explicitly include groups of people whose heritage is often not celebrated – and thus we could argue, not cared for – in formal heritage sites. Ordinary and extraordinary stories, for example of women and/or working class people and/or immigrants, as well as of the processes and practices, such as the jam making in Lviv. In Sunderland we co-organised an exhibition and events around the ‘Rebel Women of Sunderland’ project. 4 A list of local women to celebrate was crowdsourced via social media, and these women’s stories were brought to life through working with local creatives. This trend of people centred heritage is great. We just need to remember who is centred – and who is cared for. Being willing to explore a more multivocal past is the start of telling a wider variety of stories. A next step is to actively find ways to address those other histories, that you may consider di&cult or contested, and not just the once that are useful to develop the project. One of the OpenHeritage cases, the Marineterrein (Navy Yard) in Amsterdam,+ is a relevant example here. It is considered a highly innovative project when it comes to public-private area development, with a clear focus on people. However, to highlight the character of the area, there is a focus on its central role in "+th-century shipbuilding, water- Works to &(%/# by the Tyne and Wear Building Preservation Trust approaching completion

(& Y E A R B O O K ! " ! # engineering, and maritime exploration, while mostly skipping over any links to the Dutch East India Company (VOC),5 which would mean better understanding their connections to colonisation and slavery. Also here, we can ask who is this for, who is centred? What, and who, is being cared for, by caring for this heritage in this way? Erasure of stories can happen, however much we care. The ‘Jewish district’ of Budapest for example, saw acute gentrification and touristification as a result of the success of ‘ruin bars’ like Szimpla Kert (Simple Garden). $ These bars, which started to use dilapidated ‘ruins’ in the Jewish district for informal alternative, non-conformist, non-consumerist underground culture, became incredibly successful. Their ‘success’ helps maintain the physical heritage of the area and creates a stronger local night-time economy. And although Szimpla reinvests its profits in urban activism and anti-gentrification initiatives, it is not enough to counter the displacement of residents, and the rapidly changing local identity. There is also significant Jewish tourism in the district, and this easily leads to a focus on a ‘tourism’ story, whereas there is not just one story, layer, or community, and the question is how to make sure multiple voices and stories are told and heard. This is also important in terms of visual presence, including practices, events, clothing, cuisine, and gathering, and with it the restaurants, cultural institutions and commemorative spaces in the district. As in that room in Stirling, looking at the presentation about the Glasgow School of Art, there is no doubt in my mind that the people involved in all these OpenHeritage cases care. I would even say that many of these projects would be impossible without people who care. But that doesn’t mean we should not question who they (we) care for, and who feels cared for by them (us), and what the intended and unintended results of this care work are. What I wanted to show is that using the term care instead of conservation can help us see the importance of people-centred work, but also put it in a di%erent light. The term draws attention to the fact that none of these restoration or conservation projects is about the buildings only. They are about relationships, whether these are between people, between people and heritage, and between people through heritage. In other words: caring for places shouldn’t be separate from caring for people, neither in the way we do projects, nor in the funding or policies. And indeed, (re)establishing and facilitating the necessary networks, trust, mutually supportive communities, and spaces is not easy, especially after long periods of neglect. The other point is that neither the work undertaken in the name of care nor that in the name of conservation, is inherently good. How you care, and who and what you care for is selective. Which people are centred in a people centred approach, who gains, and who stands to lose if care is withdrawn or imposed? Proposing this di%erent lens, shows how conservation includes and excludes – it asks us to think about how we select who we care, who we conserve, for, and also who not, in the buildings and the stories we focus on. I hope that thinking about conservation as care can broaden our view, and shift our perspective, and enrich the way we ‘do’ conservation – as a practice of care for one another and our environment. 6 https://openheritage.eu/high-streetsunderland-great-britain/ and https://historicengland.org.uk/ services-skills/heritage-action-zones/ sunderland/ # https://openheritage.eu/praga-districtwarsaw-poland/ , https://openheritage.eu/#'"(/""/##/ lviv-jam-factory/ . http://jamfactory.tilda.ws/ ) https://openheritage.eu/timeline/ living-memory-exhibition/ * https://sunderlandculture.org.uk/ rebelwomen/ + https://openheritage.eu/#'"(/""/##/ the-navy-yard-amsterdam/ ( https://dutchreview.com/culture/ history/voc-dutch-east-india-companyexplained/ $ https://openheritage.eu/#'"(/""/##/ jewish-quarter-budapest/ Loes Veldpaus is a researcher at the School of Architecture Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University. She was educated an architect in the Netherlands (TU Eindhoven) and now undertakes social research in the context of heritage, urban governance, and adaptive re-use. Her current work focusses on heritage planning and policy, and the political nature of heritage, and what people think heritage is and does. Rebel Girls workshop Heritage Open Days %"&', &(" High Street West Sunderland, in the background the Rebel Women of Sunderland exhibition

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