Cultural Heritage, People and Place: Understanding value via a regional case study

The Cultural Heritage, People and Place: Understanding value via a regional case study project addresses the AHRC DCMS call Research culture and heritage capital with an interdisciplinary team. It seeks to holistically address overlapping thematic areas set out in strands B and C of the call ("exploring linkages between methodologies that measure why people value culture and heritage and economic techniques" and "defining and incorporating non-use values into social cost benefit analysis"). It engages with these through three aligned research questions:

1) How might narratives of locale and culture be drawn upon in the identification and development of more multifaceted and relevant definitions of non -use value?
2) How do these values align within the wider cultural ecosystem, what are the intersections and gaps across secondary data, and how might these be made visible?
3) Which cross disciplinary methods and interactions can be used to define, stimulate and measure multi scalar locale specific tangible and intangible cultural heritage values?

To address these, it will use a mixed methods approach that investigates current culture-led initiatives, focusing on an in depth study exploring the timely and highly relevant National Museums Liverpool (NML) Waterfront Transformation project, with NML as this project's research partner. This case study provides an ideal pilot site and project which will yield nationally applicable findings and recommendations in addition to its relevance to regional agendas. Here, the project will engage with existing and emergent data and produce new data through cross sectoral collaboration and co-creation strategies that develop the necessary holistic approach for capturing, articulating and analysing diverse values of culture and heritage. Liverpool and the city region will further provide a wider socio economic and cultural context that in many ways defines the challenges of evaluating cultural value(s). The city has rich tangible and intangible cultural heritage assets but it, and the wider city region, continue to face significant social and economic challenges and spatial inequalities. Here, the value(s) of culture and associated practices can be seen to go beyond - or are, at least, not inextricably bound to- the economic and are often difficult to capture.