Partners in History: collaborations in regional heritage

This application creates a team of researchers who are committed to community engagement. Their previous experience ranges from scholarly publication to innovative ways of presenting research and engaging with different audiences. They bring practical heritage experience and offer a distinctive interdisciplinary mixture: history, art history, creative writing, digital media and tourism studies. As members of the University's Heritage Hub network, the researchers will tap intellectual resources across the University and already have strong working relationships in the fields of cultural geography, education and film studies. Through this project they will share expertise with one another and with community groups. As well as history societies and museums, collaborations will include inter-general activities and previously marginalised groups to reflect Hertfordshire's demographic profile, the University's social responsibilities and the capacity of heritage to foster a sense of identity and belonging.
Through the University of Hertfordshire's Heritage Hub (HH), the University has made a start on these engagements and is currently looking for methods to increase their impact and reach. This application therefore captures a momentum that exists for exactly this sort of initiative. Individual HH members have delivered successful partnership projects (funded by KEEP3, AHRC and HLF, for example) and community interest has been stirred by events around 'Remembering the First World War'. The University, HH and History Department are also gaining ground as groups begin to appreciate the enthusiasm and support that exists in their local academic community. Without financial investment, current initiatives could fail to reach full potential, while new ideas may not emerge.
The HH network was formed in response to a real and urgent demand for outside engagement. What has been achieved already has demonstrated the enormous potential locked within the University, from digital storytelling to policy making, knowledge of local histories and analyses of tourist sites, and the scope to interest and address the needs of community groups. External groups often lack capacity or expertise to make the most of their resources or explore possibilities for partnership working or further research or marketing. The project would provide access to additional support, advice and networking as well as tangible results in terms of research activities, case studies, oral histories and other outputs.
On their side, community groups have an impressive record of heritage activity and specialised research. We have been working in an ad hoc way with those groups that have managed to locate appropriate experts in the University, but this project would allow us to expand, democratize and systematise such activity. The University of Hertfordshire's entrepreneurial approach and unusually outward-looking perspective have shaped our ambition to carve out something new in terms of outreach, public engagement and partnership working. Three of our proposed collaborative projects - Remembering the First World War; Low Carbon Pasts; Low Carbon Futures; and Instant Oral Histories -- are designed to provide a flexible framework to hold both academic and community research.
By opening the University and taking it out into the community through project open days we intend to forge greater understanding on both sides of the relationship. This will strengthen support for projects that are initiated by community groups and brought to the researchers for practical or historical advice. But it will also create new relationships. These might explore hitherto unstudied material held by groups and organisations around the county and investigate innovative methods of reaching both academic and general audiences. They have the potential to bridge a gap between academic research and its popular dissemination, create sustainable collaborations and enrich knowledge of local heritage.

This project will benefit a number of different audiences beyond the confines of academia, reaching hundreds directly through project activities and events, and thousands indirectly over time through conference papers, publications and the project website. In addition to academics in the field, the project will be of great benefit to students looking to increase their skills and employability through practical heritage project-related work. A special AHRC project in this area would add value to the current teaching and learning programme at the University, broadening access to volunteering or case studies in the real world. Other groups of beneficiaries include community groups and heritage organisations in the region, who through the project will be able to learn new skills, share their knowledge and increase their capacity and economic sustainability - through successful fundraising, volunteer training and interpretation initiatives. Heritage education is a classic way of instilling a sense of belonging, inclusion, participation and community pride. This project will therefore enable participants to deepen their understanding and engagement with the past as well as provide opportunities for intergenerational participation and inclusion of marginal groups. Other possibilities for community groups and heritage organisations includes greater respect and recognition of their work from the academic community, greater public awareness of their aims and research, networking opportunities, and an increase in membership numbers, subscriptions, visitor numbers, volunteers and volunteer training for their organisations. This stands alongside any direct intellectual outputs from project work such as exhibitions, oral history archives, publications or events, which will undoubtedly impact on their wider educational offer and lead to other new ideas.

Meanwhile, community groups and heritage organisations outside the region may benefit from the project website, the model of best practice and any other partnership opportunities this may present. The results of any project based research will be available through the website to other museums, heritage sites and community groups to use in their own educational programmes or partnership plans. One exciting possibility within this project is the opportunity it presents to reach out to community groups and organisations, such as sports club or charities, that do not generally consider themselves a heritage group or part of the heritage fabric of their communities, or who would not normally consider their initiatives to be heritage work with a broader appeal. By increasing the public understanding of 'heritage', enthusiasm and momentum will be generated for the future.

Looking beyond academia and heritage, the project may also present benefits for the commercial private sector in terms of understanding branding, identity and values, and the potential place of history and heritage within this. Organisational histories are one important way in which links can be made between the private sector and local heritage and educational organisations. On a larger scale, this project also has a fully integrated policy dimension - exploring the ways that heritage learning and proactive policy making can contribute to a model of best practice and more content, prosperous and sustainable communities.

Finally the project will benefit the wider public due to its emphasis on access - both physical, for those in the region - and intellectual, for those locally and those who wish to look at the website and any related social media online. In this sense the project could be of interest to local and family historians, the community archives movement, schoolchildren and students and anyone looking for related social history and heritage information on the web. Due to the focus on a website, as well as a programme of events and other forms of interpretation, impact will be fairly immediate and sustainable.