C O N T E X T 9 1 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 5 27 questionable whether or not some plans have really been worth it. Perhaps the biggest challenge for heritage professionals has been that of working with stakeholders. Over the past ten years there has been a move towards a much greater degree of community participation in the planning system in general, and this is beginning to filter through to heritage. Yet working with communities can be expensive, difficult, and does not always produce the answer you might want. In order to overcome this, we have developed a workshop approach that can be used with stakeholders at any type of heritage sites. There have been over a hundred such events, and these have proven to be a simple and practical way of involving key people in planning. English Heritage and the North East Civic Trust took this a step further at Byker in Newcastle, where the community helped to identify what was important about the estate, what they wanted changed and what they wanted to be kept.The event showed that local communities often have a very clear idea about the values of a place and how that affects their lives. The other challenge has been complexity. Heritage sites often include everything from archives to wildlife, but practitioners do not always find it easy to work across different heritage areas. Museums may fail to take their building or landscape into account, archaeologists battle with ecologists, and architects may struggle with wider landscape issues. Then to sustain a site in the long run requires an understanding of business planning, marketing, sustainable development, legislation, peoplemanagement, interpretation, and the technicalities of repair maintenance and land management. Capturing such a range of issues in a way that is easy to read and usable requires extraordinary skill.Yet it is this blend of knowledge, experience and skills that makes managing heritage both difficult and rewarding. In 2003 the HLF commissioned Demos to explore the impact and benefit of our funding over the past decade. In their report Challenge and Change: HLF and cultural value Robert Hewison and John Holden set out a history of the HLF, showing how it has changed over the period. In order to capture the benefits of what has been achieved, they have chosen to use the ideas of public value as a starting point. They draw on the arguments used by Tessa Jowell, the secretary of state, in her essay on Government and the Value of Culture, in which she notes that there is a growing disenchantment with a purely instrumental approach to cultural policy. She argues that it is important to debate the value of culture in its own terms. Public value is an analytical framework, referred to in a consultation document by the Strategy Unit of the Cabinet Office. It is seen as a useful way of thinking about the goals and performance of public policy. It is about the value added by government and the public sector in its widest sense, and is the difference between what citizens give to and what they receive from public bodies. Demos argues that as it has developed over the past century, heritage practice has much in common with thinking about public value, and that all heritage decisions are based on understanding value. Demos has looked not just at the HLF’s outputs, but at its processes and practices. It argues that the benefits can be captured in terms of stewardship, trust, equity and fairness, resilience in the organisations we fund, value for money, well being, prosperity, learning and stronger local communities. Heritage is increasingly being seen as an exercise conducted in public rather than a private game played by a small number of experts. It is about places and things that matter to people.We have all moved beyond the monument and country house, to a much wider vision that embraces all sorts of heritage. It is less about drawing red lines on maps and more about negotiating public value in society. Heritage is as much a social activity as a technical one. Heritage practice is changing. It is no longer enough for experts to be the sole arbiters of what is important and why. This does not mean that there is no role for conservation expertise. Indeed in a world where conservation engages more actively with communities, there are demands for new skills. Knowledge and understanding of heritage needs to be supplemented by the ability to engage with communities to capture a wider range of values, and to negotiate the complex process of helping to hand on what is important to the future. Conservation management planning is not just a piece of bureaucracy. It has the power to be a common script that helps us to engage with other people. It also forces us to be more consistent and transparent in what we do. The benefits are potentially huge in the sense that heritage can and should have a much higher public profile and a much wider relevance. The cost may be in a degree of control. Understanding value is simply the whole basis that connects heritage to design, to communities and to society at large. Kate Clark is deputy director, policy and research, for the Heritage Lottery Fund. The guidance on conservation management plans, the model brief and checklists are available on the HLF website at www.hlf.org.uk/English/ PublicationsAndInfo/ AccessingPublications/ GuidanceNotes.htm. Challenge and Change: HLF and cultural value is available on the HLF website at www.hlf.org.uk/English/ PublicationsAndInfo/ AccessingPublications/ OtherPublications.htm. The book Informed Conservation is a useful guide to all aspects of information in the conservation process, including conservation plans and commissioning building analysis. Although the English Heritage website states that it is not available, we are assured that there are copies still for sale from English Heritage at £10. Management plans have long been central to good landscape practice. Conservation management planning brings the lessons of landscape planning together with the need to understand significance and different types of heritage.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgyMjA=