C O N T E X T 1 4 2 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 5 17 his take on the building in writing (which we published in the local press), and entered into dialogue and debate through social media and at an event we held.4 It was notable was that while people might not agree withWright that the building was worth saving, through the process a greater appreciation for the subtly of the design and quality of materials was in evidence. The type of arguments people were making against Stonebow House developed beyond the usual reactions of ‘pull it down’ to considering other buildings of the same period inYork and suggesting other ways in which the city might want to indicate that, asWright put it, ‘the 20th century happened here too’. An interesting aspect of the experiment was that there was very little desire by anyone –Wright included – to seek listed building status for Stonebow House. Instead there was a sense that – given the strong feelings the building evoked – the decision, if and when it came, needed to be a local one, though one informed by debate with people likeWright.Two comments made at the event seemed to sum this up. The first was ‘it’s a bit like the more you interact with it, the more friendly it becomes’, suggesting that thinking about the building became, through the event, a social and emotional process. And, finally, ‘it’s ours!’The sense that, love it or hate it, Stonebow House was now ‘part of York’.5 There was a sense that Stonebow House was now our responsibility. One way or the other, the feeling of the meeting was that people living inYork wanted to accept that responsibility, together and locally. Clearly there is a widespread recognition, fromHistoric England’s conservation principles to policy at all levels, that everyone should be able to participate.We want to end this part of our article by noting how that aim has often been extended by way of a values-based approach. That is to seek to extend the legitimacy of decisions experts might make by knowing more about what people think is important. The views of the public are understood not as knowledge (alternative expertise) or opinion (informed democratic debate) but as values. While this values-based approach shifts the object of knowledge toknowing about people’s views, the structure of expertise and decision-making is reinforced: experts seek to know about what people think is important so that they can make better decisions about it.Yet what we tried to model around Stonebow House is how exploring what is important to people and decision-making might be part of the same process: through creating the contexts within which people – through dialogue with professionals with traditional forms of expertise – can become informed participants in a deliberative debate. The main way in which experts have tended to earn legitimacy is through peer networks judging the quality of work.Whether in medicine with the royal societies, or academic peer review of articles or professional bodies such as IHBC. In contrast – like the Stonebow House experiments – our project team was designed to expand peer networks beyond strict professional boundaries and to cross institutional hierarchies and boundaries. Our final booklet, subtitled ‘Increasing participation from where you are’, is structured around four ways of working that we identified that might help professionals, and others, to develop new forms of legitimacy from a variety of different sources and networks.These ways are: Act Make change from where you are. Act aims to encourage us all to start to make things happen. Connect Cross boundaries and collaborate. Connect draws attention to the importance of building networks across institutional boundaries and between professionals and activists. Reflect See your work through other people’s eyes. Reflect is focused on the power of seeing issues from lots of different perspectives. Situate Understand your work in context. Situate was a way of evoking a key influence to our research methodology – systems thinking and specifically the work of Danny Burns, who has drawn systems thinking into action research approaches. You can read more about these and see examples of the ideas in practice on our project website and in our final project booklet. Danny Burns’ systemic action research approach shows the importance of drawing on many different people’s knowledge within a local system to develop a ‘working picture’.As Burns puts it:‘each situation is unique and its transformative potential lies in the relationships between interconnected people and organisations’. As our work on Stonebow House suggests, the same is true of any good, and truly legitimate, heritage decision. Helen Graham is university research fellow at the University of Leeds and a member of the Heritage Decisions research team. The Heritage Decisions research project was Humanities Research Council’s Connected Communities programme. Big claims have often been made for heritage. It is precisely the extent of these claims which have pushed heritage from being a matter only for experts to a matter for public and democratic debate. The front door of the YourBikeShed Café looking north up Micklegate, York (Photo: Pat Hadley, Wikimedia Commons) References 4Wright, J (2014) ‘Stonebow House reminds us thatYork lived through the 20th century’, York Mix, available at www.yorkmix.com/ life/environment-life/ stonebow-housereminds-us-that-yorklived-through-the-20thcentury/ (accessed 8 July 2015); Helen Graham (2014b) ‘Stonebow House: locals have their say’, York Mix, 10 April, available at www.yorkmix.com/ life/environment-life/ stonebow-house-localshave-their-say-its-aboutthe-content-whats-inside/ (accessed 8 July 2015) 5 Graham, H (2014) ‘Stonebow House: not exactly ‘yes’ or ‘no’, York: living with history, 6 August, available at https://livingwithhistory. wordpress.com/2014/08/06/ stonebow-house-notexactly-yes-or-noatour-last-event-therewas-a-lot-of-grey/ (accessed 27 August 2015); Graham, H (2014) ‘Stonebow House: running the arguments’, York: living with history, 6 August, available at https://livingwithhistory. wordpress.com/2014/08/06/ stonebow-house-runningthe-arguments/ (accessed 27 August 2015)
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