Beyond Landscape: Extending Historic Landscape Characterisation to develop a more inclusive and transparent approach to managing local heritage.

Decisions in heritage management - what is important, what to preserve, and how - have so far been made predominantly by heritage professionals and government bodies. Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC) was developed to support such decisions. However, current methods do not take into account what matters most to local communities, even though HLC is flexible enough to do so. This project aims to improve practice by engaging communities and volunteers to incorporate locally held social values - community places, local history, folktales and spiritual associations - into authorised heritage maps.