(Multi)Cultural Heritage: New Perspectives on Public Culture, Identity and Citizenship

The project seeks to understand the ways that immigrant and ethnic communities engage with their heritage through public cultural expressions organised OUTSIDE of mainstream institutions - including creative or exhibitionary or museum activities. The project draws attention to how and why organisations express cultural heritage, with heritage not always understood as buildings and objects, but as traditions, characteristics and ways of thinking drawn from the past. The study will examine the structures and processes of (multi)cultural organisations, their stakeholders and audiences, and their motivations. It will also ask how their heritage activities might express new ideas about belonging and citizenship, and how they might participate more extensively in heritage and cultural policy-making.
The project integrates research and leadership components, focusing efforts on field research at seven case study sites, and four leadership workshops. A key aspect will be to engage and mobilise a multicultural team of academics, practitioners and cultural professionals as co-researchers as well as workshop participants.
The RESEARCH will document, analyse and compare, in dialogue with case study partners, the organisational environments and practices that constitute public heritage expressions among multicultural organisations. Analysis will seek to understand how the negotiation and adaptation of heritage represents a potential source of tension, as well as solidarity, within both communities and wider society. The study will focus on groups in Manchester and Newcastle, with diverse size, ethnicity and policy experiences. Case studies include the Manchester Jewish Museum; Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art; Vamos; Sangini; the Angelou Centre, the Iranian group Women Together for Community, and the virtual site Everyday Muslim.
Case sites will be investigated using documents, observation, interviews and participatory methods with stakeholders, practitioners and audiences. An Advisory Board of academic, case site and institutional actors will guide the project. The diverse sites will be drawn together in a series of four one-day workshops to discuss the methodology, data collected, shared issues and impacts, and implications for policy making and action. The intent is to embed knowledge exchange, networking and dissemination activities within the research process, thereby ensuring that participants will learn methods, interact and share research, and explore future collaborations beyond the project.
The LEADERSHIP activities will stimulate new connections, networks, tools and practices among practitioners and cultural professionals, as well as enhance the leadership skills of the PI as a leading academic in this topic. Four workshops will bring case site participants together, with resource people as needed, to debate their thoughts on the research and its potential policy consequences. The PI must be a sensitive facilitator and negotiator with minority participants, both in the context of the research and related engagement activities. Further, the project seeks to enhance the leadership capabilities of multicultural practitioners themselves to build a lasting legacy. The PI will also establish a new Multicultural Identity & Heritage Research Group at Northumbria.
Dissemination will include academic, policy, and public outputs. The main academic output will be an edited book on (Multi)Cultural Heritage. As well, global/national/local conference panels will be organised (Assoc. of Critical Heritage Studies, MeCCSA, AIM), and peer-reviewed articles submitted to 'Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society' and 'Cultural Trends'. A policy strategy document will be prepared for ACE, DCMS, EH and National Trust. Public engagements will be a portable exhibition; a multi-component website hosted beyond the project;and an annual symposium event at Northumbria co-produced with the multicultural partners.

The core aims of this project are to conduct original research into multicultural heritage-making, and to develop the PI's leadership role in creating connections with and among multicultural heritage organisations in the North of England. Reflecting the project's novel approach, the project will impact three main non-academic beneficiaries: immigrant and ethnic organisations and practitioners; experts and policy-makers from governmental and non-governmental agencies; and the general public concerned about understanding, protecting and expressing heritage in its many forms.

Participating multicultural organisations will be directly impacted through the co-production and dialogue that is central to the research, with case study data collection and workshops galvanising participants to question and shape analysis and knowledge-production. Understanding their own knowledge-making as an integral part of the history, society and culture in the UK today will reinforce their capacity to assert legitimacy in the shared public sphere, and contribute to longer-term empowerment through public policy-making. Part of the impact of workshop sessions will be to enable participants to enhance connections and collaborations across their diverse groups, but also to change attitudes and narratives within the mainstream cultural and heritage sectors, for example by connecting them to larger national and international networks and associations.

The project will have a direct impact on heritage and cultural policy-makers through the fourth workshop on policy and its policy strategy document co-produced with project partners. The strategy document will identify drawbacks or opportunities in existing heritage and cultural policy-making, and a series of specific ideas or pathways about facilitating interactions between ethnic or immigrant communities and policy stakeholders. In addition, findings of the qualitative Case Study research will also be disseminated to policy-makers through AHRC's Highlight Notice and through academic articles in cultural policy journals like Cultural Trends.

The final target of impact is the general public in the UK. The research of this network has as its ultimate goal raising all people's awareness, understanding and appreciation of the diverse nature of the narratives and participants that make up the UK's past and its heritage. The project as a whole, through its academic and practitioner impacts, will benefit the public in the long term, but also directly through specific leadership activities. These include the project website made available to the general public, an annual symposium/event and a portable exhibition, each managed long term by Northumbria through its Cultural and Creative Industries MA programme.

As a final step, the project participants will co-design in the latter stages of the project a coherent 'next steps' document to guide any desired long-term project outcomes and interactions with academia, practitioners, policy-makers and the general public.