NEWTON: Plural Heritages of Istanbul's World Heritage Sites: the case of Land Walls

The project will develop new valorisations of the Istanbul Land (Theodosian) Walls, working with communities to: 1) inform heritage planning through 'bottom-up' perspectives; 2) relate the Walls to intangible cultural heritages; 3) co-produce both situated and web-based, public-facing digital heritage interpretation resources that reflect non-official, hitherto unauthorised understandings of the Walls and their environs; and 4) build capacity through modelling heritage management/interpretation practice, digital technologies and community engagement within the heritage sector.

The Walls are an extensive part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. They are an ancient structure, much modified in history, famously breached in the 1453 Conquest of Constantinople and now situated in a rapidly modernizing megacity. They have witnessed intercultural contact and conflict, from war to 'gentrification', sometimes involving involuntary displacements of communities. The Walls are officially valorized as tangible heritage, and the UNESCO statement of Outstanding Universal Value is based upon the 'unique integration of architectural masterpieces that reflect the meeting of Europe and Asia over many centuries'. This has shortcomings related to scant engagement with, and involvement of, diverse stakeholder communities, and we contend that the Walls are not well valorized by people who live in their vicinity, and are not meaningfully integrated into such people's lives as heritage. To counter this, we will research and develop multi-perspectival narratives revalorizing the Walls in relation to different identities, experiences and attitudes to the past, proposing models for in-country urban heritage management/interpretation. This involves three interrelated uses of qualitative research into the lives, attitudes and understandings of heritage of community stakeholders: 1) to inform more responsive, 'bottom-up' heritage management; 2) to engage stakeholders as co-producers of public-facing heritage interpretation, in particular to produce in situ and online digital resources that valorize and present multiple stories; and 3) to rethink the Walls beyond the paradigm of tangible heritage, based on people's 'sense of place'. The research is structured in interconnected work packages to achieve this and we adopt a multi-modal qualitative research methodology including both surveying (e.g. semi-structured interviews and focus groups, walking ethnographies); and co-production of heritage resources (e.g. digital stories accessible online or remotely through QR codes), which functions both as resource development and as a form of reflexive enquiry into people's identities and attitudes to heritage.

One key concern is the need to reconceptualise the Walls as 'heritage' not merely as a physical part of the historic built environment, but as part of the story of people's lives and as one locus of people's complex relations with the past. This aligns with recent appeals for alternative perspectives on the past: with the notion that there exist multiple, rather than singular, 'heritages' - even when constellated in one place; and that the 'ordinary' stories of people's lives may have as much to tell us as official representations of national history. A second key concern is the need to introduce more sophisticated heritage community engagement practices, including co-production, not just to ensure the social value of the Walls, but also to share the benefits to society and to heritage interpretation that such approaches have produced in other countries, notably in the PI's AHRC-funded work in the UK. As part of this, the project provides Official Development Assistance (ODA) through: enabling cultural development and sector 'upskilling' through community interpretation training toolkits (CITTs); 'consolidating cultural heritage'; and supporting heritage tourism as a 'key economic sector'.

The research has direct relevance to sites of heritage, heritage tourism and the heritage sector, to cultural and social policy and to community development. A full Work Package (WP) within the project is dedicated to 'Valorization of the research: scholarship, impact and development', and this WP is the instrument through which impacts will be realized. The main impacts are on: the site of the Land Walls itself and the neighborhoods in which it figures; the communities to be involved in the participatory elements of the research; the training and development of heritage professionals; and the heritage tourism infrastructure and economy.

The research will involve new valorizations and interpretations of the Walls, including the development of both digital and physical interpretation resources. The qualitative research and community engagement will impact upon site management practice by building in a bottom-up process of consultation and participation, enabling heritage managers to understand the social value of the Walls and use this to develop new valorizations of the site and enable more democratic management of official heritage. We aim to involve around 200 individuals within the ethnographic research (WP3) and up to 70 for the co-production work (WP5). For both of these strands the research will have the effect of valorizing people's individual stories and perspectives, which alone will contribute to people's feelings of increased representation within heritage contexts. The co-production participants will be helped to gain empowering skills and abilities - e.g. technical skills relating to the use of digital technologies and reflexive skills relating to the production of narrative about themselves, history and heritage. Beyond the immediate participant groups the project will help to foster social interaction with heritage, contributing to increased senses of ownership of heritage, renewed identities and, potentially, improved and augmented intercultural engagement through understanding the viewpoints and lives of others. Communities around the Walls will be engaged through 'inreach' events in the neighbourhoods in which people live. Researchers will explain the project and the possibility of different understandings of the Walls, their history and the heritages that can be attached to them, inviting community members to participate in the project. We will also stage temporary exhibitions using low-cost pop-up exhibition materials to showcase the project and celebrate people's participation when the co-production phase is complete.

The research models ways of exploring places and histories from multiple perspectives, in order to demonstrate the different forms of attachment, relation and belonging experienced by different groups. An understanding of the social significance of particular places will lead to the development of more diverse and inclusive notions of the 'heritage site' that will in turn facilitate changes in convention, policy and public participation. The possible impacts of the research align closely with contemporary trends and missions within heritage and museum work to create inclusive societies able to reflect upon histories in order to construct progressive identities, senses of belonging and to encourage cohesion. These understandings will be built into Community Involvement Training Toolkits (CITTs) to be produced as online and hardcopy (PDF) resources. CITTs will be distributed to heritage professionals across the sector through official agencies. This is intended to improve and modernize practice within the sector and to provide professionals with inspiration, insight, skill and sensibilities required to undertake inclusive community participation, both with a view to social benefits and standing within the international heritage community (e.g. compliance with state-of-the-art practice and international conventions such as Faro (2005)).