Heritage-led urban regeneration: a scalable model for community engagement using immersive technologies

This project explores the capacity of immersive technologies to inform urban regeneration strategies, by harnessing the power of cultural heritage through community advocacy. We will undertake a consultation exercise with a selection of community heritage groups with an interest in urban heritage, to identify the ways in which they could employ immersive technologies to articulate their ideas and contributions to regeneration initiatives. They frequently have a wealth of knowledge about hidden or lost heritage assets which could inform regeneration projects, but do not always have the means to disseminate this beyond websites. A handful of recent projects have employed immersive experiences, both VR and AR, to present this heritage although this has tended to be driven by SMEs or university researchers, often providing funding unavailable to community heritage groups. While this has begun to show the potential of such technologies, the means for community heritage groups to engage with such technologies themselves, or to be able to approach SMEs to develop compelling funding applications has not hitherto been scoped or shared. We will therefore consult with creative industry SMEs who possess the relevant skills set to support the development of immersive experiences by such groups. We are seeking to identify the most effective, practicable and affordable means for community heritage groups to work with creative industry SMEs to use immersive technologies to champion imaginative regeneration.

Our project is framed with respect to the expectation that clearly now exists that local councils should lie at the heart of local action, and the recognition that urban regeneration initiatives frequently see councils engaged in co-production with community groups. We will scope out opportunities and methods of working through a review of existing projects employing immersive experiences in community engagement from across the country, both those driven by community groups and those delivered by sector leaders. We will hold a focus group workshop drawing on locally-based community heritage groups with an urban regeneration focus, creative industry SMEs and academic colleagues, to inform our reporting, and provide feedback on our initial findings and to assist in finalising our recommendations. We will use our consultation to propose a roadmap, or workflow, for producing community-led immersive experiences, identifying the kinds of challenges that are part of that workflow and which companies could help to solve them, thus promoting the different creative industries that could be involved. We will disseminate the results of our work in the form of both a written report and a video showcase. It is vitally important to give community heritage groups the tools to increase their effectiveness in their contributions to the future of their towns and cities; providing a roadmap to show them what they can achieve themselves using their typically extensive knowledge of the heritage of their areas and guiding them to the resources and partnerships they need to make compelling funding applications to acquire technical support where needed.

The immediate beneficiaries of our project will be community heritage groups who are seeking to promote the heritage of the towns and cities in which they live and to advocate for this heritage to be recognised in regeneration initiatives. It is clear that local councils are increasingly likely to involve community groups in their regeneration projects, as the former have both extensive knowledge about local heritage and also a commitment to disseminating this. In this project we are developing a roadmap, or model workflow, to guide community groups in how to make use of immersive technologies to articulate their work, whether this be easily available software packages or the need to team up with creative industry sector SMEs to seek funding. The project responds to a need in the urban regeneration process to give local communities an effective voice. In a 2017 joint report by the Local Government Association, Chief Cultural & Leisure Officers Association and Arts Council England (https://www.local.gov.uk/people-culture-place-role-culture-placemaking) it was argued that community engagement should lie at the heart of successful 'placemaking', and that this requires strong partnership working. In our project we are demonstrating that immersive technologies can enable and empower local communities to engage with local government and urban regeneration initiatives, and that local councils are interested in using its capabilities. There are certainly questions about extensibility, scalability, and how to involve the creative industries more widely to develop a workflow for a range of situations, and we will scope out responses to these issues. Our project will involve consultation with community heritage groups, creative sector SMEs and those involved in urban regeneration and its outcomes will be both a written report and a video showcase to present the roadmap and also exemplars of good practice. Community heritage groups have considerable knowledge about the history and heritage of their towns and cities, and are already often engaged in disseminating this through websites they create, but there are a host of new technologies available to them that our work will identify and explain. The work we are doing will also be of value to creative industry SMEs as it articulates for them a community need and identifies how they could collaborate with community groups to develop successful funding bids to deliver immersive experiences that contribute to the urban regeneration process.