12 CONTEXT 184 : JUNE 2025 KATE CLARK Inclusive, values-based conservation to 2008 What matters and why, and to whom? Those questions, and the importance of being open to different views of heritage, were the focus of key figures in the world of conservation. Any review of influential conservation thinkers cannot ignore major policy shifts shaped not just by individuals but collectively. The authors or contributors to public policy documents are rarely named, most do not publish or are constrained by public sector codes of conduct from doing so. But their influence has been significant. This article draws on personal memories to identify some of the people involved in the shift towards a more inclusive, values-based approach that recognises conservation as not just a technical or an architectural design challenge, but a social process grounded in the complex values that people hold for their heritage. Individuals such as James Semple Kerr, Liz Forgan, Mike Coupe and Paul Drury were part of a much wider movement inside heritage institutions that emerged in the short decades of growth preceding the swingeing cuts of the noughties. That period fostered innovative thinking whose legacy can still be felt today, including the ‘people-based’ thinking of the (then) Heritage Lottery Fund. Inclusive, values-based conservation Inclusive, values-based conservation or thinking is a shorthand term for a group of trends in conservation thinking that are reflected in a series of documents such as the Burra Charter (1979), Conservation Issues in Strategic Plans (1993), Conservation Plans (1998 and 2002), Power of Place (2000), the Heritage Lottery Fund’s first two strategic plans, Capturing the Public Value of Heritage (2006) and the Conservation Principles (2008). Taken together they mark a shift in conservation thinking that recognises conservation as both a social and a technical activity – one that requires the ability to read, respect and work with the fabric of landscapes, buildings and objects grounded in the original SPAB principles – but also recognises that conservation can never be a neutral, value-free activity. Instead, it requires the practitioner to understand and work with the multiple different values that people hold for their heritage. Inclusive values-based thinking is not about experts imposing their values on others. Instead, James Semple Kerr was a pioneer of values-based thinking. (Drawing by Rob Cowan) Exeter High Street in around 1895
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