Turbo Island,Bristol: excavating a contemporary homeless place

This paper provides an assessment of the excavation of an apparently ordinary space in Bristol (UK) in 2009. Although the space appears unremarkable to most passers-by, it is unusual in being a place used routinely by many of the city’s street-drinking and homeless community. Homeless people were ‘colleagues’, involved in excavation, finds processing and interpretation. The collaborative nature of this project goes further than merely attempting to represent social groups who have traditionally been excluded from heritage practice and interpretation — it lays methodological foundations for praxis.     

Spaces of care in the city: the place of a community drop-in centre

This paper explores the ways in which drop-in centres may at times function as spaces of care in the city. Drawing on participant observation research within a particular centre in Bristol, a city in south-west England, it focuses upon social relations within the drop-in space and the various subjectivities that were observed to emerge in this relational environment. Through a consideration of individuals who appeared to be positively assisted by their involvement in the drop-in, a sense is developed of the different ways in which such agencies may function as spaces of care. Use is made of Carl Rogers' notion of the core conditions for successful therapeutic encounter, as developed within the person-centred school of humanistic psychotherapy, to explicate these positive experiences. At the same time it was clear that some individuals found the drop-in to be a less than comfortable or even exclusionary environment. The paper concludes by reflecting on the broader significance of drop-in centres as caring environments and on the value of humanistic conceptions of therapeutic relation for interpreting organizational spacings of subjectivity.     

Public space and memories of migration: erasing diversity through urban redevelopment in France

This article examines the meaning of public space and impact of heritage-led urban redevelopment in a diverse neighbourhood in Montpellier, France. It traces the relocation of a North African market from a central city plaza in favour of French antiques, and the resulting contestation over what constitutes local heritage, who has the capacity to determine how public space is used, and the seeming erasure of migrant identities and memories from an important community site. The paper considers how urban areas are re-imagined through a change in the materiality of public space, and outlines the role of outdoor markets in defining the social function of such spaces. The paper examines the intertwining of physical erasure (urban redevelopment and the removal of a diverse food market) and cultural erasure (the loss of certain community memories), and how these processes speak to broader debates about French national identity, cultural heritage, and the meanings attached to public spaces.     

International influence and local response: understanding community involvement in urban heritage conservation in China

This paper explores the situation of community engagement in the heritage sector in China, which is facing increasing international pressure particularly through donor agencies. It is argued that government-led residents’ committees do not essentially serve the interest of the local communities, whilst grassroots civil societies and NGOs are, to a great extent regulated, by the prevailing political power. Given the situation of insufficient community involvement in the sector of cultural heritage conservation in China, local government has adopted the international approach introduced by donor agencies, but this has not resulted in power sharing and the state constrains community involvement within certain limits. This paper examines the situation of community involvement in heritage management in the city of Yangzhou.     

From the ground up: cultural heritage practices as tools for empowerment in the Homeless Heritage project

Abstract

The Homeless Heritage project took place across two English cities (Bristol and York) between 2010 and 2014. The project sought to use a range of participatory heritage practices to engage contemporary homeless people in documenting their perspectives on each city. Drawing on data gathered over three and a half years this paper reflects on how collaborative cultural heritage practices can be useful in recording diverse stakeholder perspectives which can become catalysts for social change. It is further argued that two interactive exhibitions that resulted from the Homeless Heritage project contributed to the democratisation of knowledge, aiding negotiation of the complicated politics of contemporary homelessness in valuable ways.     

Playful heritage: excavating Ancient Greece in New York City

This article examines how concepts of ‘play’ can be used within studies of cultural heritage to build an alternative to the dominant use of consumer-orientated models within current scholarship. Using the example of how the traditions, motifs and history of Ancient Greece have been reused within New York, from the nineteenth century to the present day this work demonstrates that this is a heritage that has been ‘played with’ by successive generations as a means of establishing identity within the metropolis. Whilst the ideals of Athenian democracy and classical learning inspired the formation of the early American republic, these associations were brought into wider usage in New York with the arrival of significant Greek immigration into the city during the twentieth century. This provided a new opportunity of a playful use of Ancient Greek heritage as this émigré community built new identities and became established in the metropolis. The Greek American enclave of Astoria, located in the borough of Queens, will be the focus of this study as the site where this playful use of heritage has taken place, undertaken both by members of the Greek American community and also by individuals and groups responding to their presence.     

Manipulating the metonymic: the politics of civic identity and the Bristol Cenotaph, 1919–1932

The city of Bristol was one of the last major cities in Great Britain to unveil a civic memorial to commemorate the Great War 1914–1918. After Leicester (1925), Coventry (1927) and Liverpool (1930), Bristol's Cenotaph was unveiled in 1932, 14 years after the Armistice. During that lapse, its location, source of funding, and commemorative function were the focus of widespread disagreement and division in the city. This paper examines the nature of these disputes. The authors suggest that the tensions in locating a war memorial may have their origins in historic enmities between political and religious factions in the city. By examining in detail the source and manifestations of these disputes, the authors offer a detailed exemplar of how memory is shaped and controlled in British urban spaces.     

Bristol and the eruption of memory: Making the slave-trading past visible

This article describes the work undertaken by the public authorities of Bristol to construct, for this old slaving port, a collective memory of the trade in Africans. It shows how the use of urban space is necessary to resurrect that past and implies a visual model to inform a new gaze on the city. Through intensive action on the memory of slavery, the author suggests, from the work of Paul Ricoeur, the passage from silence to 'too much memory'. This excess can be viewed as the result of a political instrumentalization linked to the requirements of the British multicutural model. Further, these actions on memory reveal distinctly divergent intentions for the different communities of the city.     

‘It is where blokes can be blokes’: making places in a New Zealand rugby club

Using the case study of a New Zealand rugby club, in this article, we highlight the role of gender and performance in place attachment. We discuss various performances that contribute to achieving a sense of attachment of club members to the (imagined) community of the rugby club and the different physical spaces of its home ground. Even though performances are played out and read against the backdrop of a popular discourse of New Zealand rugby masculinity, we did not observe characteristics of stereotypical ‘rugby masculinity’ in all rugby places, nor were performances the same throughout one day. Instead, variations were found depending on whether performance was ‘front stage’ or ‘backstage’.     

When transport becomes a destination: deaf spaces and networks on the Mumbai suburban trains

ABSTRACT

This article considers dense social interactions in commuter trains and their crucial role within city-wide networks. Literature on social interactions in public transport has focused on how commuters have short interactions with each other, or constitute groups of train friends, but without situating them in wider geographies. The article focuses on deaf people in the Mumbai metropolis who travel in compartments reserved for disabled people, chatting and exchanging news and information. These spatial practices are facilitated by the peninsular geography and train infrastructure of Mumbai. In order to produce deaf spaces, where deaf sociality and sign language use are the organizing principles, deaf people strategically board particular trains and particular compartments, and sometimes remain in the train beyond their original destination. Mobile phones are used to coordinate these meetings. The diversity of people meeting in the train is high, such as with regard to gender, age, religion, caste, class and divisions are either perpetuated or abated. Because these compartments provide a diverse range of deaf people a space for daily meetings on the way to and from their (mostly hearing) work places and families; they are very important spaces to maintain and expand networks in the wider Mumbai deaf community.     

Cold War heritage and the planned community: Woomera Village in outback Australia

The heritage of the Cold War is attracting increasing international interest. Much of that revolves around technological legacies; less attention has been paid to the community infrastructure which supported defence research, weapons testing and military installations. Security and operational logistics meant that research and development was conducted not only in restricted settings but also in often geographically remote situations. An archetypal example is the Woomera Rocket Range in outback South Australia, where long-range weapons were trialled from 1947 under a joint project between the British and Australian governments. Woomera Village, established as a planned residential facility to support personnel employed on the Range, survives today in a similar role, but with a population greatly diminished from its late-1960s heyday. This paper introduces the Village against the backdrop of Cold War heritage and spatial planning ideology, surveys its raison d’être and growth as a Cold War town, and considers its modern-day status as a heritage place and sustainable community.     

Participation in the reuse of industrial heritage sites: the case of Oberschöneweide,Berlin

In recent years, the significance of the debate concerning the participation of local communities in the reuse and management of industrial heritage sites has grown considerably. However, the question of how participation takes place in practice has received little attention. This article shows how participation in the reuse of industrial heritage sites has functioned in the planning process in Berlin-Oberschöneweide. The article is theoretically grounded on debates on labour and community heritage. The field of planning, which is closely interwoven with that of heritage management, provides another important theoretical horizon. The qualitative investigation consisted of interviews with different actors. The findings show that Oberschöneweide’s industrial heritage site is important to the local community. Thus far, the community has been able to participate in the reuse and development process in a number of ways. In addition to the provisions made for community participation by the relevant authorities, and local initiatives have exerted an influence on the development of the area. Nevertheless, this participation has been limited and is in some respects problematic. Furthermore, the participation process referred not only to the industrial zone itself, but to the development of the district as a whole.     

Maintaining the absent other: the re-use of religious heritage sites in conflicts

This article explores the relationships between heritage and conflict by focusing on the re-use of religious architectural heritage in conflicts that resulted in the displacement of communities. Such re-uses place the autonomy of buildings in the absence of their original users under question. The study focuses on three churches in the northern part of Cyprus, which had new functions assigned by the actual community after the displacement of the original users. The article argues that when heritage is conserved by the mandate of the community, it reveals attempts to maintain the ‘absent other’ reflected by the way churches are adapted with minor alterations. Accordingly, it aims to contribute to theories that question how architecture can maintain its autonomy following conflicts and seeks to offer a new perspective on the debate regarding heritage-conflict relations by interpreting heritage as a sign of peace rather than conflict.     

Late 17th-century stoneware waste from the Tower Harratz Pottery,Bristol

Abstract

Large-scale redevelopment has taken place over the last seven years in the area now known as Temple Quay which lies between Temple Way and the Floating Harbour in Bristol (Fig. 1). Bristol and Region Archaeological Services have carried out excavations, evaluations and watching briefs on the various phases of this redevelopment. These have mainly been concerned with the Portwall, a defensive structure built during the mid 13th century, which ran from north to south through the development area. In 1994 the archaeological work included the total excavation of the medieval Tower Harratz (sometimes known as Tower Harris) and a Civil War gun battery or redoubt built infront of the tower. This note deals with the discovery of a group of late 17th-century stoneware waste during the archaeological work at Tower Harratz and its association with a pottery known from documents to have been established there in about 1695.     

Guerilla art,social value and absent heritage fabric

There is extensive commentary on the role of unauthorised art, but little on the coincidence of heritage value and guerilla art. This paper analyses the relationship of the two in a 2007 statue which is a monument to a lost place for which there is no surviving historic fabric. The statue functions not just as a place of memory, but of guerilla art; a complex interplay has emerged between an official piece of government art and unsanctioned community performance. Growing heritage emphasis on social value over the previous dominance of original fabric suggests that the delight with which the statue has been greeted illuminates evolving heritage philosophy, monument language and the emergence of the importance of the heritage community especially for its potential performance value at a site. The dramatic contribution that the statue has made to the city has an impact on the fields of landscaping, planning, history and heritage.     

Caught between nationalism and internationalism: replicating histories of Antarctica in Hobart

In December 2013, a replica of ‘Mawson’s Hut’ (a historic structure in Antarctica) joined a growing list of polar tourist attractions in the Australian city of Hobart, Tasmania. Initially promoted as the city’s ‘latest tourist hotspot,’ the ‘replica museum’ quickly took its place in Hobart’s newly redeveloped waterfront, reinforcing the city’s identity as an ‘Antarctic Gateway’. The hut forms part of a heritage cluster, an urban assemblage that weaves together the local and national, the past and present, the familiar and remote. In this article, we examine the replica hut in relation to the complex temporal and spatial relations that give it meaning, and to which it gives meaning. Our focus is the hut as a point of convergence between memory, material culture and the histories – and possible futures – of nationalism and internationalism. We argue that the replica hut, as a key site of Hobart’s Antarctic heritage tourism industry, reproduces and prioritises domestic readings of exploration and colonisation over a reading of Antarctic engagement as a transnational endeavour. However, like other ‘gateway city’ heritage sites, it has the potential for aligning with a larger trend in international heritage conservation and heritage diplomacy, that of prioritising narratives of the past that weave together transnational connections and associations.     

Reflecting on heritage and power: dynamics,strategies and appropriations in the Catalan Pyrenees and the French Alps

In this article we will explore the way in which different agents appropriate and use heritage to compete in specific power scenarios. We approach heritage discourses and practices as defining specific political arenas within which power relations are reconfigured. The protection of spaces and places as well as the processes of patrimonialisation that take place inside specific localities give rise to the emergence of new ways of exercising power. We will examine two ethnographic cases from South European mountain areas: the Parc National des Écrins in the French Alps and a Romanesque church in the Catalan Pyrenees. An analysis of both the protected area and the constructed heritage will enable us to focus on heritage as being produced, identified and valued within specific logics and value systems. We examine the dynamics that heritage and heritage policies produce in each context as well as the interest they promote. Heritage both organises different fields of forces and is appropriated by politicians, experts, and economic actors. We will discuss the entanglements, forces and dynamics that are activated and played out as a result of heritage processes in the larger process of contemporary political transformations.     

Resisting relocation and reconceptualising authenticity: the experiential and emotional values of the Southbank Undercroft,London, UK

In 2013 the Southbank Centre proposed the redevelopment of a complex of buildings including a famous skate spot known as the Undercroft. The 2013–14 campaign to protect the Undercroft drew strongly on heritage arguments, encapsulated in the tagline, ‘You Can’t Move History: You Can Secure the Future’. The campaign, which was ultimately successful as the Undercroft remains open and skateable, provides a lens through which three key areas of heritage theory and practice can be examined. Firstly, the campaign uses the term ‘found space’ to reconceptualise authenticity and places a greater emphasis on embodied experiences of, and emotional attachments to, historic urban spaces. Secondly, the concept of found space opens up a discussion surrounding the role of citizen expertise in understanding the experiential and emotional values of historic urban spaces. Finally, the paper concludes by considering the place for found space and citizen expertise within current heritage discourse and practice. The paper is accompanied by the award-winning film ‘You Can’t Move History’ which was produced by the research team in collaboration with Paul Richards from BrazenBunch and directed by skater, turned filmmaker, Winstan Whitter.     

Ensuring the Conservative Process: The Roman Walls of Lugo Maintenance Plan

In 2000 the walls of Lugo were added to the World Heritage List. In the Spanish scenario of UNESCO Sites this is the only one provided with a maintenance plan, which properly defines times for inspections and interventions, tools for the collection and management of data, human and financial resources. This plan has begun to ensure a conservation process which guarantees that this ancient artefact is used efficiently and safely over time. The walls are fully accessible and because of the dominant ramparts are used by citizens as a beloved and frequently used city park. This article aims to describe the strategy and the conservation process put in place on the Roman walls to preserve and keep them for posterity, showing that planned maintenance can also be an instrument of heritage enhancement.     

The production of emancipatory feminist spaces in a post-socialist context: organization of Ladyfest in Romania

Ladyfest – a Riot Grrrl feminist do-it-yourself festival – has been organized independently in cities around the world since the year 2000. The emancipatory spaces that activists at Ladyfest seek to cultivate through workshops, music, and art provide seeds of inspiration for transformative social change. The main strength of the festival is the capacity to strengthen networks. This article discusses how the idea for this festival arose in Olympia, Washington, expanded to other locations, and was later organized by young feminists in Romania. In 2005, young women in Timisoara organized the first such festival in their city with a community of women from both inside and outside of Romania, and held another festival in Bucharest in 2007. Retrospective interviews are used to unpack the meaning of such organizing in a post-socialist context with reflections on how feminism has changed in Romania over the past decade. Specifically, the analysis of this event offers insight on how the production of space can be used to catalyze interconnections between emancipatory feminist spaces, the mode of production, and flows of feminist knowledge and concepts.