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'World Heritage: Global Challenges, Local Solutions', Ironbridge, UK, 4-7 May 2006
Charlotte Andrews
PhD Student, Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge (Curator on sabbatical, Bermuda Maritime Museum)
Issues
of best practice, sustainability and inclusion relating to World Heritage
management were explored this spring at Ironbridge, one of 812 sites of
'outstanding universal value' currently designated under the 1972 UNESCO
Convention. The Ironbridge Institute and Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, with the
support of English Heritage and ICOMOS UK, coordinated four days of
presentation, discussion and excursion for an international delegation of
heritage scholars and professionals. Despite ranging perspectives, we delegates
emerged from the Gorge's deceptively natural-looking industrial landscape no
doubt stimulated to further consider the conference's explicit and underlying
themes. The issues indeed proved to have broader bearing on heritage research
and praxis than the conference title suggested.
The impulse to identify management models offering stable and shared
structure, values and leadership was obvious in the proceedings. This is an
understandable reaction to the often difficult and imprecise management of
complex World Heritage sites, such as Budapest presented by Erzsébet Kovács,
or the case of Ironbridge itself relayed in turn by Philip Davis , English
Heritage Chair and Ironbridge Lecture speaker Sir Neil Cossons, and local MP
David Wright . This urge for best practice also emphasises the economic and
political importance of securing nominations for communities and states.
Accordingly, Chris Blanford and Christopher Young respectively underscored the
value of management plans and regular reporting as 'encouraged' by UNESCO, while
Christopher Pound proposed his method to assess and compare management values
over time and at different sites as an operational aid. Delegates' pronounced
attention to UNESCO's decision-making processes and criteria, and the growing
reliance on 'objective' professional consultants (who were well represented at
Ironbridge) underlined the desire for prescribed and integrated management
strategies. Speakers did issue 'get real' cautions of the limitations of
standardised approaches to come to the rescue of local and state parties
challenged by shifting site-specific responsibilities. Nonetheless,
participants' disproportionate attention and acquiescent attitude towards the
World Heritage framework, and somewhat uncritical subscription to universalist
and nationalist discourses, reflected the influence of a bureaucratic and
politicised global awards scheme on professional and public psyches.
The tendency to institutionalise or alienate site management under the
shadow of UNESCO was further revealed and problematised by papers addressing the
World Heritage 'brand' from different angles. John Rodger showed how the Welsh
site of Blaenavon has used branding to the advantage of local regeneration, but
with subtle concession to alien marketing values. David Breeze stimulated debate
over the potential and transformative nature of international partnership and
globalised heritage with his talk on the multinational site 'Frontiers of the
Roman Empire', which is pushing collaborative and management demands to new
levels. Brijesh Thapa highlighted the poor 'symbiotic balance' between official
mandates and development pressures in Nepal, which currently has sites on the
World Heritage in Danger List. Katie Lamberto's study of Slovenia's Skocjan
Caves illustrated how interpretation conceived
through assumed or unconventional lenses can alternatively block or
facilitate a site's ability to effectively communicate its significance.
Research by Angela McClanahan into grassroots perceptions of British Neolithic
sites attempted a more 'holistic view' of the way heritage functions as a
counter to 'top-down' forces that define sites and influence their operations. Chiara
Bortolotto's analysis of distinct tangible and intangible heritage categories
disclosed the artifice and contradiction inherent in their dichotomous
construction and reification in heritage theory and practice.
Likewise and referencing the disadvantaged context of Cape Verde, Marie
Louise Stig Sørensen questioned the meanings behind the heritage sector's
unexamined and indiscriminate use of language such as 'sustainability' and
'sustainable development', pointing to an impoverished theoretical framework
that regularly takes the intervention of heritage management and unequal
community resources and agency for granted. Other papers falling under the
session banner of 'sustainability' also demonstrated that the core meaning of
the term lies in relationships between heritage management and issues seemingly
beyond its borders. Rob Woodside's surprisingly poignant consideration of the
link of heritage to climate change imagined how overlapping values might help us
to adapt and cope with the large scale impact and high rate of change facing
both tangible and intangible aspects of World Heritage. Similarly, Anastasia
Telesetsky proposed the symmetry between World Heritage protection and poverty
reduction strategies, suggesting we think outside the cure-all box of cultural
tourism. Tracey L-D Lu's presentation
of Chinese sites in Anhui Province illustrated tourism's destructive effects on
local communities and traditional lifeways, while Hilary Du Cros and Kong Weng
Hang's study of tourist congestion in Macao suggested that identifying causal
factors now is key to effective short and long-term site management. The papers
and discussion acknowledged that the dynamism of culture and trials of site
management demand multi-disciplinary approaches and moving our thinking beyond
simplistic interpretations, such as treating cultural tourism as an isolated
scapegoat or always viewing globalisation as a threat to authentic local
culture.
Predictably but deservedly, talks and discussion were specifically
devoted to relationships with the multiple communities associated with World
Heritage sites, examining the challenges, benefits and responsibilities of
collaboration and outreach, and the extent to which these efforts support
'sustainability'. Paul Belford reported on research-driven community archaeology
projects at the World Heritage sites of Ironbridge and St. George's, Bermuda,
which aim to break down barriers between local people and their heritage by
incorporating community perspectives and encouraging a broader range of
interpretations of the past. An account by Dennis Rodwell of the tentative
Romanian site of Sibiu also underscored the importance of community-based
research by highlighting the extensive involvement and study of local residents
in shaping that site's restoration programmes. Melanie Pomeroy-Kellinger told of
the ongoing negotiation of heritage values among the multiple communities at
Avebury to accentuate the distinction and considerable gap between a sense of
ownership and a sense of responsibility for designated World Heritage.
Reflecting upon the Levi Jordon Plantation community archaeology project in
Texas, Carol McDavid stressed the delicacy of consultation and collaboration and
the sensitivity required—especially regarding forms of communication—if
non-mandated public initiatives are to effectively empower communities to
sustainably manage their heritage. Jennie Morgan's study of the Auckland
Museum's relationship and Pacific Islands communities also underlined the need
for clear communication in the difficult process of building and maintaining
productive relationships among those with 'conflicting imaginings of community'.
In another example of public needs or aspirations clashing with heritage ideals,
Robert Ogilvie responded to the problem of public collecting at Nova Scotia's
Joggins Fossil Cliffs with some creative but risky solutions.
Throughout the two dozen spoken papers, discussions and local site and
museum visits, delegates expressed a desire for greater equilibrium in World
Heritage management. A lively closing discussion led by Susan Denyer of ICOMOS-UK
and John Carman especially emphasised the need for a more comfortable
middle-ground between the extremes of prescribed and organic practice, between
macro and micro agendas, between theoretical and practical interpretations.
Amidst animated debate,
consensus formed around the idea that navigating these gaps entails alert
scrutiny of approaches and discourses, and their impacts on different temporal
and geographic scales. Special consideration was given to the
language of heritage and its tremendous potency.
Notwithstanding the widening of UNESCO criteria (attendant to the expanding
concept of heritage generally) talks brought into relief the continuing narrow
conceptualisation and validation of heritage within the World Heritage rubric.
Certain types of heritage—particularly the iconic, articulate and politically
correct—direct local and global culture along the lines of dominant values, as
opposed to greater cultural diversity. Expectations for World Heritage
designation and branding must also better balance with its real added-value and
costs as a transformative agenda intervening in social circumstances that are
only partially concerned with heritage values. Discussants called for greater
critical reflection of our treatment of World Heritage itself and the excessive
power we grant to this concept and category. Appeals for greater reciprocity
between management and research discourses included a strong case for greater
investment in theoretical research as a means to examine the underlying elements
of contextualised praxis. The tendency for researchers to stand separate from
operational and local issues was also challenged with appeals for more grounded
methods and attitudes. The papers demonstrated the complexities of building
relationships in practice and stressed that there can be no prescribed models
when site 'stakeholders' rarely share the same knowledge and perceptions with
one another. Deciding whom we have particular responsibilities to and conceiving
mutual expectations for multiple World Heritage communities can only rely on
thoughtful reciprocity. In my view, the experiences and exchanges at 'World
Heritage: Global Challenges, Local Solutions' gave a firm push towards such
enhanced understandings and processes.
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