'How should decisions about heritage be made?' is an Arts and Humanities Research Council Co-design Development Grant. In early 2013 the project team spent four months working together to explore the issues raised by decision making about heritage and then designed a research project. In our Phase 2 research (beginning in July 2013) the project will to root our bigger concerns with democracy and heritage in specific places and contexts by mapping who makes decisions, when and where. Our methodology, inspired by systemic action research approaches, uses a parallel set of three inquiry strands each oriented to heritage ‘as a system’ in different ways: ‘from within’ (using live projects to trace decision making), ‘experimenting’ (through a co-collecting project at the Science Museum) and ‘interrogating’ (publicly investigating the effects of ‘heritage’ in York). http://codesignheritage.wordpress.com/

1. How should
decisions about
heritage be
made?: Co-
designing and co-
producing a
research project
July 2013
…the story so far…

2. AHRC Connected Communities Programme
Co-Design Development Grant
The funding was broken into two phases. In Phase 1 (February-May 2013) we designed the research.
Phase 2 begins in July 2013 and runs for 12 months.

3. Martin Bashforth, York’s Alternative History and
Radical Historian
Mike Benson, Director, Bede’s World
Tim Boon, Head of Research and Public
History, Science Museum
Karen Brookfield, Deputy
Director, Strategy, Heritage Lottery Fund
Peter Brown, Director, York Civic Trust
Danny Callaghan, Independent Consultant and
Co-ordinator for Prescot Townscape Heritage
Initiative: ‘Building Stories’ and ‘The Potteries
Tile Trail’ (HLF All Our Stories).
Richard Courtney, University of Leicester
Alex Hale, Royal Commission of Ancient and
Historic Monuments Scotland
Paddy Hodgkiss, Riccall Community Archive
Rebecca Madgin, University of Leicester
Paul Manners, Director, National Co-ordinating
Centre for Public Engagement
Jennifer Timothy, Senior Building Conservation
Officer, Leicester City Council
Rachael Turner, MadLab and ‘The Ghosts of St
Pauls’ project (HLF All Our Stories)

4. Step 1
‘Entry Points’
Step 2
‘Scoping the
Issues’
Step 3
‘New
perspectives’ Step 4
‘Making
Decisions’
Step 5
‘Drafting of
Phase 2
design’

5. Step 1
‘Entry Points’
Before coming together, we reflected on the
question ‘how should decisions about heritage
be made?’ from where we work/live

6. Step 2
‘Scoping the
Issues’
In Workshop 1 we had two presentations to get us thinking. The first
from Mike Benson, Kathy Cremin and John Lawson about their work
at Ryedale Folk Museum and Bede’s World (key ideas: failure of
museum to connect with the people whose history they
represent, space, freedom of self).

7. Are we talking about the
deinstitutionalization of
the institution?
Who defines what is
significant?
You can’t look at
heritage in isolation
(need to zoom out)
Messy!
Who is ‘heritage’
for, past, present or
future?

8. Step 3
‘New
perspectives’
Danny
Callaghan
Mike
Benson
Members of the team visited other
organisations or groups to share
our ideas and see them through
other people’s eyes.
For
example…

9. Step 4
‘Making
Decisions’
Step 4
‘Making
Decisions’

14. Step 4
‘Making
Decisions’
Understanding better how
decisions are currently
made and putting ‘heritage
decision making’ in context
Support better (more
democratic) decisions to
be made

15. So rather than
seeking
consensus, we
explored ideas of
what Danny
Burns calls
‘parallel action’
‘people see and feel
connection between things’;
‘they know it is related to
their experience’ and ‘they
are energized and motivated’
(Danny Burns, Systemic Action
Research: A Strategy for
Whole System Change. Bristol:
Policy Press, p. 53.

16. This led to us designing three
inquiry strands – but within an
overall framework

17. • Can we ‘map’ and ‘model’ ‘heritage’ as a complex system?
• Who are the key players? How do they currently interact? How do these
vary in different places? How is planning decision making different from
community heritage contexts?
• Where are the different ‘decision-making’ points in ‘heritage’ systems?
• How are heritage decisions justified? What ideas are used to justify heritage
decision making? (future generations; significance). What does not get seen
as a ‘decision’ which should be?
• What is changing around us which is impacting on how ‘heritage’ works (e.g.
Localism Act, public sector cuts, philanthropy, changes in governance
structures)?
• What other models of decision making could we draw into a heritage
context? (deliberative democracy, associative democracy, horizontal
decision making, do-it-yourself approaches)?
• What theoretical and conceptual resources from other disciplines might
help (complexity theory, systems theory, actor network theory)?
• How might systemic action research as a means of understanding heritage
decision making itself help create changes with heritage decision making?

18. Aims: Decision making about heritage is difficult. This is partly
because heritage decision making has formed around the idea that
the interests of people in the past, present and future need to be
taken into account and that it is necessary to consider different and
sometimes conflicting ideas of what is important or significant. We
think we could make heritage decision making easier (and better) if
we could identify the ‘boundaries’, ‘sticking points’, ‘blocks’ and
‘exclusions’ in current practices. We will do this through actively
drawing on the multiple perspectives and locations of the Research
Team, through deploying experimental action research approaches
and holding these together with thinking informed by ideas of
systems and complexity to generate new insights. Understanding the
dynamics of ‘heritage decision making’ in this way will help everyone
with a stake to self-consciously develop decision making processes
and practices and through this reshape our understandings of
‘heritage’ itself.

19. Big Workshop 1: Mapping and modelling
heritage as a messy system
Inquiry Strand 1:
‘from within’
Inquiry Strand 2:
’experimenting’
Inquiry Strand 3:
‘interrogating’
Big Workshop 2: Revise map/model
Specific impact pathways… own
organisations, HLF, HLF applicants, wider practitioners
networks, hertiage studies

21. Inquiry Strand 1:
‘from within’
‘making the familiar strange’
Bede’s World
Potteries Tile
Trial
RCAHMS and
Clyde project
Leicester and
planning
decisions
self-reflection –
how does it
work here?
critical friend
Exploring
our overall
research
questions
with
people
locally

22. Inquiry Strand 2:
’experimenting’
What should we
collect?
And what issues
are raised by us
asking you?

23. Inquiry Strand 3:
‘interrogating’
Is heritage good for
York? (we’re
debating the precise
question at the
moment)
Grassroots
‘Public’
inquiry
Use of
big data Events
Participatory
exhibition

25. Mapping and modelling heritage as a
messy system
Inquiry Strand 1:
‘from within’
Inquiry Strand 2:
’experimenting’
Inquiry Strand 3:
‘interrogating’
Revise map/model
Specific impact paths… own organisations, HLF, HLF
applicants, wider practitioners networks, heritage
studies

26. Keep in touch…
Blog:
http://codesignheritage.wordpress
.com/
JISC Mailing list:
http://bit.ly/YWWnXP
Email: h.graham@leeds.ac.uk