Future Heritage Now: Delivering Creative Research Through Enhanced Scientific Analysis

We will exploit the potential of scientific equipment, portable tools of analysis, and digital data capture technology to significantly enhance the Trust's core functions to understand, look after, and promote our historic collections and sites. It will provide new pathways to innovative cultural and creative research and will provide rich data to better inform the management of material change of heritage assets now and in the future. The development of a mutual learning environment among universities, cultural institutions, and creative enterprises, will encourage a future generation of heritage scientists and practice-led specialists to address the contemporary challenges of managing material change of moveable and immoveable heritage.

The NT is home to a remarkable portfolio of heritage assets across the UK from historic buildings, monuments, landscapes, gardens, archaeological sites, as well as over a million objects in our care. The proposed upgrades and enhancements of scientific facilities, and historic digital data capture will significantly increase existing creative research capability and extend the breadth and geographic reach of our current provision to other organisations and networks. It will build on our reputation for conservation excellence and innovative cross-disciplinary partnerships, significantly increasing our support for others by providing a national-scale resource for collaboration, education, and shared training.

By exploiting the potential of portable tools of analysis we will undertake research to deepen understanding of how objects in our collections were made and used, and the cultural contexts in which they are situated. Crucially, scientific analysis will also help us to document change over time to inform choices of how change is managed now and in the future. Building on the exceptional public engagement programme established at Knole Conservation Studio, we will use augmented reality tools (AR) to enable novel approaches to develop and trial immersive content. This presents a unique opportunity to connect with the public and to share with other heritage organisations the challenges and choices of collection conservation presentation and management.

Enhanced heritage digital data capture tools, for example, geophysical survey equipment, photographometry, and handheld laser scanners will provide digital twin outputs to monitor change and enable research to make better informed choices of how we manage heritage now and in the future. These digital tools will provide new quality, multi-purpose datasets, which will support us and other historic asset managers to devise more effective interventions to maintain and adapt the historic environment to maximise benefits whilst retaining cultural value. This is particularly timely, as climate change is resulting in unprecedented impacts on historic sites.

We will develop relationships with new heritage research partners and stakeholders, especially those in under-served regions of the UK. Given the Trust's geographical reach, uniquely we will provide 'in the wild' state of the art evaluation of heritage assets by taking the tools to the assets, along with management and conservation protocols. This will enable a diverse range of researchers (including Early Career Researchers (ECRs), secondees, interns) to develop interdisciplinary capability, practice-led skills, and carry out knowledge exchange, to catalyse new creative research opportunities.

As an incremental step towards our ambitions to grow our research capacity and capability across the Trust, this project will provide the platform for creating a culture for mutual sharing of equipment and knowledge. This will be achieved through training, workshops, placements, and hosting through existing and new networks. The project will provide new economic opportunities, inform regulatory frameworks, and develop skills to meet heritage challenges now and in the future.