Katrina FOXTON
(University of York, UK)
Keywords: ‘local’, place-making activities, communications
Abstract:
This project cautiously adopts the inclusive aspirations of the Faro Convention alongside a critical assessment of value-led heritage management. It forms as an ongoing ‘multi-local’ ethnography (Marcus 1995, Rodman 2003, Pink 2008) undertaken with several different local groups in the City of York: one institutional, one activist and one excluded. Via the phenomenological arguments of Heidegger (2001) and interpretivist ethnographers (Marcus 1997, Pink 2007 & 2008, Clifford 1990) four research objectives were raised which query and compare the different place-values held by groups, their relationship to everyday experience in or of places, their preferred methods of communication and other activities associated to valued localities.
The methods consist of participatory fieldnotes, ethnographic interviewing and a quantitative survey designed from the prior research activities. Qualitative coded and quantitative data, alongside accounts of participatory activities are expected to demonstrate the relationship between place-values which may (or may not) permeate across different localities effectively through identified communication tools (e.g. posters, emails, social media). The participatory research undertaken with the excluded group in relation to the other two (who arguably have more resources, autonomy and, significantly, potentially more literacy skills) is expected to highlight that providing space for multivalent definitions of heritage is not simply a case of contesting hegemonic, paper+/screen-generated narratives, but allowing for a different kind of ‘place-making activity’ altogether (Pink 2008).