CONTEXT 184 : JUNE 2025 15 LEADERS OF CONSERVATION THOUGHT sustainable development linked environmental, economic and social values as a powerful new way of thinking but omitted cultural heritage. Two key figures (the planner Mike Coupe and archaeologist Graham Fairclough) had been instrumental throughout the 1990s in bringing cultural heritage into policy on sustainable development, working in partnership with English Nature and the Countryside Agency. This work built on the Civic Trust/Council for British Archaeology work on historic towns, the Arup/BDF work on modelling the capacity for change, and the thinking that Anna McPherson and others had been doing on conservation area appraisal, and historic landscape characterisation that came together into the Quality-of-Life Capital model, a precursor for today’s thinking about natural capital and environmental impact assessment. Mike had also been involved in the 1994 Nara document on authenticity. Power of Place (2000), and the more conservative government response, A Force for the Future (2001), set a broader, more inclusive agenda for conservation that gave it a role in inclusion and diversity, in sustainability and the environment, and which recognised its economic value. More important, it connected heritage to other policy agendas. The legacy of Power of Place can still be seen in long-running initiatives such as Heritage Counts, which gathers data on the historic environment and its economic, social and environmental benefits of heritage, drawing together data from the Heritage Tourism Monitor and information on buildings at risk. Susan Macdonald moved to the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles, where she initiated the Values of Heritage Management work, bringing economists, anthropologists, archaeologists and heritage managers together. Paul Drury convened the initial working group that captured the move from monuments to people in heritage and set the foundations for what became the Faro Convention on the Value of Heritage to Society (2005), which recognises that a right to a cultural heritage brings with it a duty to respect that of others. The legacy of Power of Place is also apparent in the Conservation Principles (2008) and English Heritage’s Constructive Conservation approach, championed by Simon Thurley. There had long been pressure for a UK heritage charter that captured some of this valuesbased thinking, and after several attempts the initiative was taken up by English Heritage, who commissioned Paul and Anna McPherson Drury. Their Conservation Principles provided a more open, transparent and inclusive decisionmaking framework that was not about selecting what to protect (designation) but more about structuring decisions about what is important. Mirroring the values-based conservation planning process, they talk about ‘places’ as a term for any part of the historic environment (including below the ground and under water). A more nuanced approach to values distinguishes those used in designation from the wider range of values that are relevant to day-to-day management. Such values embody the sustainable development principles in the sense of shaping and sustaining the historic environment today in a way that does not compromise the ability of future generations to do so in their own ways. The HLF way Meanwhile the HLF, with Forgan and Carole Souter at the helm, moved in its first (2001) and second (2008) Strategic Plans to a more inclusive approach, with funding for access and inclusion as well as conservation. The plans integrated values-based thinking into the application process, asking applicants to tell them what mattered. Despite a growing body of social, economic and place-based evaluation, and impact research commissioned by environmental economist Gareth Maeer, the fund was struggling to articulate the wider value of that investment. In Challenge and Change, John Holden of Demos and Robert Hewison presented a group of measures that brought together the values-based thinking of Jim Kerr and the HLF guidance, with the sustainability work of Power of Place and Mark H. Moore’s thinking about how institutions created public value. This recognised that values such as trust, and accountability and ethical values, were as important in heritage institutions as other values. The Capturing the Public Value of Heritage approach was launched at an event that heard from a diverse range of speakers, including members of the public who had taken part in citizens’ juries, community groups and local authority heritage champions as well as key thinkers. Values-based thinking today The post-2008 heritage world is more challenging as a reduced public sector struggles to deal with everyday casework, and with new challenges such as affordable housing and the resilience of heritage organisations. Nevertheless, the legacy of influential figures in heritage conservation in the 1990s and early 2000s lives on. Conservation plans never were embraced by the (then) English Heritage, perhaps because they are more useful as day-to-day site management documents than in statutory case work, but the principles of heritage impact assessment
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MzI0Mzk=