Linked to the 'How should decisions about heritage be made?' research project. The slides tell a story about how we developed our research aims.

1. How should decisions about
heritage be made?: Co-designing a
research project
Generating our research aims,
Workshop 2, York 30th April- 1st May
http://codesignheritage.wordpress.com/
AHRC Connected Communities Co-design
Development Grant
Photographs by Alex Hale

2. …we’d been talking for a
while so it felt like time for
each of us to have a go at
what we thought our
research aims were…

3. …umm, hard work…

4. …and now for
(drumroll) the aims…

18. …and these 13 aims
turned into our final
Phase 2 research aims
through one person
drafting and then
everyone commenting …
Aims: Decision making about heritage is difficult. This is partly because heritage decision
making has formed around the idea that the interests of people in the past, present and future
need to be taken into account and that it is necessary to consider different and sometimes
conflicting ideas of what is important or significant. We think we could make heritage decision
making easier – and better – if we could identify the ‘boundaries’, ‘sticking points’, ‘blocks’ and
‘exclusions’ in current practices. We will do this through actively drawing on the multiple
perspectives and locations of the research team, through deploying experimental action
research approaches and holding these together with thinking informed by ideas of
complexity, networks and mess to generate new insights. Understanding the dynamics of
‘heritage decision making’ in this way will help everyone with a stake to self-consciously
develop decision making processes and practices and through this reshape our understandings
of ‘heritage’ itself.
For more about the project, our co-design process and the research design we developed see:
http://codesignheritage.wordpress.com/