All events will take place at NIKU’s office in Storgata 2, Oslo. There will a digital option for the open lectures on June 8 and 9.

Programme

Tuesday June 7 2022 – Heritage and Social Value Workshop

Siân Jones and Liz Robson (The University of Stirling)

Time: 08:45-15:00 Venue: NIKU, Storgata 2, 0155 Oslo

The social and communal values associated with historic buildings, monuments and places are an increasingly important aspect of heritage management and conservation. However, whilst evident in international heritage instruments, as well as national strategies and policies in many countries, there has been less progress in addressing such values in practice. One of the key hurdles is that the forms of expertise and methods involved in assessing social and communal values have not been included in heritage management and conservation historically.

This workshop provides an opportunity for heritage professionals and researchers to discuss and critically reflect on the place of social value in their own work. It will also introduce participants to a range of methods that can be used in the assessment of social and communal values, ranging from researcher-led to community participatory approaches.

Using case studies, we will discuss the ways in which methods can be combined and kinds of knowledge they produce. We will finish by reflecting on the kinds of guidance and support that heritage researchers and practitioners need to apply these approaches in their work (with reference to the Social Value Toolkit).

The workshop will draw on the University of Stirling’s research programme on Valuing the Historic Environment, specifically on a collaborative doctoral project with Historic Environment Scotland, Wrestling with Social Value.

It will be led by Siân Jones (Professor of Heritage and PhD supervisor) and Elizabeth Robson (the PhD Candidate for the project).

Sign up here.

Wednesday June 8 2022 – Lecture on Investigating Resilience and Sustainability in Heritage Organisations with Social Purpose/Lecture on Cultural Biographical Approaches in Heritage Practice

Time: 14:00-15:45. Venue: NIKU, Storgata 2, 0155 Oslo

Investigating Resilience and Sustainability in Heritage Organisations with Social Purpose, Hanneke Booij (The University of Stirling)

The Past We Inherit, the Future We Shape: Investigating Resilience and Sustainability in Heritage Organisations with Social Purpose

This presentation will focus on Hanneke Booij’s PhD research, an ethnographic collaboration with the Glasgow Building Preservation Trust, where she investigates how small heritage organisations understand and configure resilience and sustainability in their daily heritage practice.

It will explain the Scottish policy context and the funding landscape within which they work as well as highlight how small heritage organisations re-orientate to fulfil a wider range of values, public and social benefit agendas. Reflecting on the impacts of the pandemic for small heritage organisations, she will describe how small heritage organisations adapted and struggled with the loss of income as well as with the concept of becoming digitally purposeful.

Cultural biographical approaches in heritage practice, Sally Foster (The University of Stirling)

Drawing on the experience of producing in-depth cultural biographies for three Scottish national icons (Iona’s St John’s Cross replica & Hilton of Cadboll Pictish cross-slab with Siân Jones, the Stone of Destiny in progress), this paper will offer reflections on the character, pros and cons of such an approach in heritage contexts.

Dr Sally Foster is Senior Lecturer in Heritage and Conservation (from 1 August Professor) at Stirling University. She worked for over 20 years as a cultural heritage practitioner with Scottish national heritage bodies before returning to academia in 2010. This background shapes how her interdisciplinary research focuses on generating meaningful and impact narratives about value and significance of places and things for people. This involves evidencing how heritage resources are, or could be, relevant to the past and future. With Siân Jones, her most recent publication is My Life as a Replica: St John’s Cross, Iona; see also replicas.stir.ac.uk. Since 2020, she is Secretary of the European Association of Archaeologists.

Sign up here.

 

Thursday June 9 2022 – Seminar on Digital Heritage Futures/Lecture on Heritage and Nationalism: understanding populism through big data’

Lecture: Heritage and Nationalism. Understanding populism through big data, Chiara Bonacchi (The University of Edinburg)

Time: 10:30-12:00. Venue: NIKU, Storgata 2, 0155 Oslo

How was the Roman Empire invoked in Brexit Britain and in Donald Trump’s United States of America, and to what purpose? And why is it critical to answer these questions? Bonacchi’s book Heritage and Nationalism explores how people’s perceptions and experiences of the ancient past shape political identitities in the digital age.

This will be the topic of Chiara Bonacchi’s lecture on June 9.

Sign up here.

Seminar: Digital Heritage Futures. Needs, challenges & opportunitie. Chiara Bonacchi (The University of Edinburg) and Joel Taylor (The Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Reserach)

Time: 12:00-14:00. Venue: NIKU, Storgata 2, 0155 Oslo

Dr Chiara Bonacchi (University of Edinburgh) and Dr Joel Taylor (NIKU) will host a discussion on the futures of digital heritage in Norway.

They will debate needs and challenges faced by different heritage ‘makers’ in planning for future digitally-enabled heritage projects and interventions that can bring about positive social change.

In discussing this topic, we will focus particularly on four key areas of digital heritage practice:

• Contemporary web collecting
• Integration of born-digital and digitised collections
• Co-production of community archives and museums online
• Provision of guidance (internal or external) about digitally-enabled goals, strategies and methods of heritage curation.

For each of these areas we will identify and exchange knowledge about: most pressing needs, decision-making processes and relationships involved, as well as expected challenges.

Our aim is to create a scoping exercise that can help to inform digital heritage futures in Norway, potentially through collaborative projects and consultation. Participants will be invited to form a themed network with this aim.

Places are limited. The workshop will be in English.

Interested in joining? Send an email to joel.taylor@niku.no by June 6.