Building Shared Heritages: Cultural Diversity in Leicester

The University of Leicester has a rich tradition of public engagement in its arts and humanities research. This award will facilitate the consolidation and of existing outreach and community engagement work to compliment the wider university drive to embed public engagement in its research strategy. The research skills held at Leicester in regards to heritage studies include, archaeology, urban history, museum studies, geography, English studies, and English local history. The public engagement work based in these disciplines is focused on diversity issues in terms of participation and access to resources, notably archival resources, oral history archives, and innovative methodologies that open up democratic access for communities to define and manage their heritage. Consequently, the University of Leicester is well situated to lead public engagement in the participation of community heritage. Its emphasis upon diversity in heritage studies is key indicators of a commitment to a civic and democratic framework to promote heritage within Leicester's diverse communities. This is represented in the CV's of the researchers involved in the application.
The City of Leicester provides a unique opportunity for researchers to build upon their existing public engagement work to include more diverse, hidden, and remote communities. The overarching heritage of Leicester's past fifty years is one of cultural diversity, marginality and exclusion. However, within this are questions over what constitutes valid objects of heritage, whose heritage they represent and how can multiple community heritage(s) exist around single instances of the built or natural environment without conflict; and the more timely question of who manages, maintains, and funds heritage in the community?
These questions will be explored over the course of the award through continued public engagement with local groups and community associations seeking to voice their ownership of local heritage and history. The award will enable researchers to coordinate community associations to identify common themes and concerns that can be mapped across existing networks of researchers and practitioners. This will facilitate a greater civic association between disconnected, marginalised, and remote community interests. The networking activity will be fermented by two open days to showcase research knowledge and skills, practitioner experience, governance expertise, and community heritage interests. In doing so the award will enable the University to diversify the user groups of its research base and impact upon their abilities to demonstrate an appreciation and governance of their heritage(s) and local histories.
One outcome of these open days will be to develop applications by the community associations for Heritage Lottery Funds. The open days and the ensuing networked collaboration will be structured by the three core themes of the HLF 'Your Heritage' programme; learning, conservation, and participation. These themes are embedded into the framework of the open days and continued engagement plans and are directed by the skills, knowledge, and expertise of the researchers involved and our partnership organisations, such as Leicester City Council, Groundwork UK, and English Heritage.
In addition to empowering community groups to apply to the HLF programme, the networks will enable researchers to develop innovative methodologies that can explore and conceptualise the specific, multiple, and intangible aspects of community heritage(s). This will lead to future research bids premised upon new partnerships that benefit from knowledge exchange and co-discovery. Ultimately, the award will enable the University of Leicester to take a lead role in promoting community heritage in our locality by strengthening its partnerships, research tradition, and impact in ways that benefit the public good - values that are at the core of the University's commitment to public engagement.

The aims of the project are to enhance the university's public engagement capacities and to develop networks amongst local history and community heritage groups. Naturally, we regard impact as central to these aims, and will be explored through the four objectives. The impact of each of these objectives will be demonstrated through the following short, medium, and long-term activities:
Short-Term: The award period will begin with the consolidation of existing researchers' activities working with a public engagement remit into an organised research network. These activities will enhance the legitimacy and visibility of public engagement in the university, where the impact will be felt within the research culture through the promotion of the aims of the NCCPE. The pathway to this impact will be through training opportunities provided by the Academic Development Unit, and through research networking at the College of Arts & Humanities Research Seminars. The consolidation of an organised research network will enhance the capacity for impact not only in the short term, but also the medium to long-term. This will be due to the enhanced capacity at the university to engage with a greater diversity of community heritage groups, through the incorporation of a wide array of researcher interests. The capacity of this network will be demonstrated through the proposed initial outreach visits to four geographic locations in Leicester. This short-term impact will further be demonstrated in an online capacity through the establishment of a website linked to My Leicestershire and EMOHA websites. This will showcase promotional opportunities to further outreach beyond those groups already supporting this application.
Medium-Term: the medium term impacts will occur across the award period, with the major pathways to impact being the two planned open days. This will lead to the creation of networks between associated community heritage groups, with the university in a bridging role between these and governance organisations such as Groundwork UK, English Heritage, and Leicester City Council. The impact of the open days will be guided by the HLF's themes of learn, conserve, and participate. These themes will provide the framework through which associative networking to disconnected individuals and groups will be achieved. The organisations and associations already supporting the bid have agreed to act as 'gatekeepers' to enable these opportunities. In short, the open days provide the major pathway to impact, as they will diversify access to university resources and heritage governance support for a range of marginalised and diverse community heritage groups. These activities will consolidate the links between the university, governance organisations, and community heritage groups through the development of HLF applications, which will not only fulfil one of the major aims of the award, but will provide the platform for continued engagement activities throughout the remainder of the award period.
Long-Term: The longer term impacts will occur through the development of HLF bids by community heritage groups and will be facilitated by a range of online and offline activities. These include a continued engagement through the dedicated website set up early in the award period. This will enable guidance and further networking and broadcast opportunities for all the groups involved. A major academic impact as part of these activities will be the development of diversity issues within heritage studies. There will be long term impacts within the research culture at the University of Leicester, with researchers being able to apply for research council funding on the basis of co-discovery and knowledge exchange links demonstrated over the course of the award period. This will enable future research to develop academic and intellectual pursuits firmly grounded in public engagement with the importance of community heritage at centre-stage.