32 C O N T E X T 9 9 : M A Y 2 0 0 7 English Heritage is just one participant, and many of our priorities are shared by other agencies. It is vitally important that the sector works together, both to pool resources and to engage in a dialogue. Each interest has a particular role to play, and co-ordinating effort will help to make slender resources go further. Some simple questions can be posed as a starting point in the identification of research priorities. We might usefully ask: •Where are the gaps in our understanding of the historic environment? •How can research help to engage and enthuse a wide audience in issues relating to the historic environment? •What sort of research will assist sustainable management? •How can research assist partners and communities in caring for the historic environment? Consultation clearly lies at the centre of answering these questions. Many partners are difficult to consult, not through lack of will, but simply because they lack the type of representation that provides an obvious point of contact. How, for example, is English Heritage to assess the needs of local communities? Others, however, like IHBC members, are approachable through professional organisations, and these give the opportunity for collaborative working to identify the generic issues of most importance and the best response to them. Collaboration will put English Heritage in a better position to devise strategic research programmes which address the needs of the historic environment sector and to assign its resources according to those priorities. To be effective at a strategic level, research should, in most cases, rise above the particular to address issues shared by those concerned with the historic environment. Research in response to casework, valuable as it is in enabling decision making relating to individual sites, does not always have a wider impact. To help in getting a broad view of research needs, English Heritage has established a number of research policy posts in key aspects of the historic environment: the posts cover prehistoric, Roman and industrial archaeology, places of worship, and the rural and urban historic environments.The posts are responsible for setting priorities for research, for identifying the proper role of English Heritage within each of these fields, and for working with partners to get best value from available resources. As the body which represents professional conservation practice, IHBC is a key partner for English Heritage, for its members deal on a daily basis with the care of the historic environment. The fate of the conservation officer and professional practitioner, however, is to be swamped with casework, and rarely is there an opportunity to compare experiences with colleagues in other areas. The needs of conservation officers for research are many and various, but it is important that strategic research responses are developed to address the general rather than the particular, even if an issue of widespread concern is explored through individual examples. In the latter case, the key is to draw the lessons from an exemplar and make them available elsewhere. The author of this article is responsible for developing the research policy relating to the urban historic environment. What is needed, and what this article probes, is a mechanism which will allow the generic research needs of IHBC’s membership in relation to the care and presentation of our historic towns and cities to emerge from the mass of individual casework issues. Regeneration, government policies relating to the intensive use of brownfield land, growth areas and low-demand housing, and the erosion of character in suburbs are all issues which have serious implications for the urban historic environment. The question for English Heritage and for IHBC members is how we can work together to identify research needs and devise effective responses. There have been many examples of collaboration between English Heritage and historic environment professionals, usually in local government.The national programme of historic landscape characterisation is providing an assessment of all towns and cities in the country, as an aid to the planning of change and as a starting point for the assessment of significance. More detailed research into aspects of the urban historic environment has underpinned regeneration in a number of cities: in Birmingham, research into the Jewellery Quarter resulted in new and revised listings, new boundaries for conservation areas, and a programme of publication which made a wide audience better aware of the interest and importance of the area. A similar programme of research has been undertaken in Liverpool, where the rich legacy of the port city has been the centrepiece of efforts to secure heritage-led regeneration. A pilot study of Liverpool’s parks and open spaces has served to highlight the issues facing parks management and has contributed to a debate about a seriously under-resourced aspect of the urban historic environment. The issue for English Heritage and IHBC, therefore, is how we can work together to plan programmes of research which address the main issues affecting the understanding and conservation of our towns and cities. What is the best mechanism for identifying and anticipating need? Can IHBC provide a forum which draws out the generic issues faced by its membership? If the answer is yes, then there is a practicable means of joining up conservation need with English Heritage’s resources, both in terms of its in-house research capacity and of its Historic Environment Enabling Programme, a budget used to commission the research which supports English Heritage’s strategic aims. When English Heritage and IHBC can be confident that they are addressing priorities in areas of shared concern, then much good can result. The English Heritage door is open to a collective IHBC response on approaches which seek to address issues of wide concern in the understanding, enjoyment and care of the urban historic environment. Colum Giles is head of urban research policy at English Heritage. 1 English Heritage 2005 Discovering the Past Shaping the Future: Research Strategy 2005–2010; English Heritage 2005 English Heritage Research Agenda: an introduction to English Heritage’s Research Themes and Programmes. These are available at www. english-heritage.org.uk/ research&conservation/ archaeology&buildings/ researchstrategy.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgyMjA=