Local history as productive nostalgia? Change,continuity and sense of place in rural England

Local history groups are often negatively associated with a tendency to indulge in nostalgic practices that yearn for a romanticized past and propagate resistance to change. Their role in local politics and power networks (particularly in relation to planning and development processes) has also been critiqued as exacerbating issues of social inequality and exclusion. While not contesting the realities of such arguments, this paper adds nuance to such debates using the notion of ‘productive’ or ‘mobile’ nostalgia to explore possibilities for more positive renderings of local history and heritage activities. Empirical evidence from qualitative research in a rural village in Norfolk, England, is drawn on to demonstrate the role of these practices in providing a sense of continuity amid a continuously changing locale through the reassertion of place identities and attachments. Although by no means apolitical, this process need not necessarily be one of preservationism and resistance to change, but can be a mechanism through which residents are able to accept, or even welcome, changes to the social and physical constitution of their village. The paper also critically considers the value of productive nostalgia as a concept through which to explore local history practices and wider heritage movements.     

Heritage and scent: research and exhibition of Istanbul’s changing smellscapes

This paper examines heritage, and particularly intangible heritage, by concentrating on the experience of smell to explore a heritage site in Istanbul, Turkey: the Spice Market. Due to a restoration project, the site became the focus of the 2012 international workshop ‘Urban Cultural Heritage and Creative Practice,’ which aimed at documenting the existing and threatened scents of the marketplace. In 2016 a gallery exhibition, ‘Scent and the City,’ was created as part of an effort to raise awareness about how scent constitutes an important component of the heritage of place. After providing a brief overview of the marketplace’s transformations since its construction in the seventeenth century, this paper covers various methods of scent research, including scent walks, mapping, oral history interviews, and artistic performances, and illustrates how the smellscapes of this historic, and now touristic, quarter of Istanbul are changing. By bringing a sensory approach to this important heritage site in Istanbul we demonstrate how an embodied approach, which forefronts scent as intangible heritage and a primary modality, can serve as a catalyst for individuals and communities to access their memories, emotions, and values and increase awareness of the role scent plays in defining locality.     

Making digital heritage about people’s life stories

Abstract

Actively creating new digital heritage content about people’s life histories is part of the democratisation of heritage engagement with the public. The approach of documenting unofficial histories is supported by a growing literature. Unofficial stories contribute new perspectives on the heritage identity of a region. The case study of the ‘Local People’ exhibition, curated by the author in 2013 in the North West of Ireland, is used to discuss the methodology of a digital curatorial process, www.localpeopleireland.com. This article argues that gathering and presenting unofficial histories of individuals' life experiences, can disrupt official narratives of The Troubles and challenge a regional identity based on conflict and division. The making of digital history is analysed as a curatorial process, rather than the ease of use of technology. The methods used included: filmed interviews, new portrait photography and the digitisation of family photograph albums. A virtual exhibition was produced and new digital historical sources were created that transform intangible heritage by crystallising people’s voices and images into ‘tangible’ digital objects. ‘Local People’ utilised Facebook https://www.facebook.com/localpeopleproject/?fref=ts and Vimeo https://vimeo.com/album/2518991. It is argued that the digital space provides a ‘virtual contact zone’ in which diverse, unofficial and personal narratives can be presented together.