Discovering the 'old East End': heritage organisations and public memory in East London, c.1971- the present
Lead Research Organisation:
University College London
Department Name: History
Abstract
This project will research heritage organisations' representation of urban change in East London c.1971 - the present. It will advance prior scholarship on local history as a form of activism during a period of socioeconomic upheaval by exploring how far heritage organisations propagated nostalgia for a cohesive, communal past. It will also explore how far East London was emblematic of the nation, considering these groups' significance to the growing scholarship on heritage nationally.
Community history organisations proliferated locally in the period through Centerprise (est.1971), the Island History Trust (est.1981) and Eastside Community Heritage (ECH) (est.1993). A professional museum sector grew contemporarily, through the Museum of London (MoL) (est.1976), the Hackney Museum (est.1985), the MoL Docklands (est.2003), and the East End Women's Museum (est.2015). A growing desire to explore the area's history was thus demonstrable, coinciding with the disappearance of what the groups sought to commemorate. My preliminary research suggests three central narratives in the articulation of change: housing redevelopments constituting suburbanisation and gentrification, the loss of accessible facilities/institutions, and the erosion of a broader sense of 'community' rooted in shared experience. I plan to organise my research around project case studies which explored these larger themes, thus examining the actions and interactions of these groups as they sought to comprehend, narrate, and therein commemorate, the past.
This work will advance existing historiography on both East London and the heritage industry. Paul Newland and Bill Schwarz have studied competing representations of East London in connection to the area's redevelopment. While Newland argues redevelopers used narratives of 'sickness' and 'underdevelopment', Schwarz argues that local residents constructed 'mythic' communities to protest displacement during the 1980s Docklands redevelopments. Neither consider heritage organisations, who in response to urban change have produced and widely shared historical narratives for public consumption. Yet historians have increasingly studied heritage groups elsewhere, demonstrating their efforts to critique contemporary developments. Laura Carter has identified a national resurgence in 'folk' history after the 1960s, much of which sought to commemorate fading patterns of work and habitation and aid adjustment to deindustrialisation and social change. I will study organisations' different research, collection, and interview processes through archives such as the MoL's, ECH's, and Shevey's. This will be supplemented through original interviews with heritage actors, considering the social/political outlook of their work. I will thus test Laura Carter's thesis by applying it to a specific geographic area which both epitomised the urban changes of post-war Britain, and hosted a rich and varied heritage industry.
Community history organisations proliferated locally in the period through Centerprise (est.1971), the Island History Trust (est.1981) and Eastside Community Heritage (ECH) (est.1993). A professional museum sector grew contemporarily, through the Museum of London (MoL) (est.1976), the Hackney Museum (est.1985), the MoL Docklands (est.2003), and the East End Women's Museum (est.2015). A growing desire to explore the area's history was thus demonstrable, coinciding with the disappearance of what the groups sought to commemorate. My preliminary research suggests three central narratives in the articulation of change: housing redevelopments constituting suburbanisation and gentrification, the loss of accessible facilities/institutions, and the erosion of a broader sense of 'community' rooted in shared experience. I plan to organise my research around project case studies which explored these larger themes, thus examining the actions and interactions of these groups as they sought to comprehend, narrate, and therein commemorate, the past.
This work will advance existing historiography on both East London and the heritage industry. Paul Newland and Bill Schwarz have studied competing representations of East London in connection to the area's redevelopment. While Newland argues redevelopers used narratives of 'sickness' and 'underdevelopment', Schwarz argues that local residents constructed 'mythic' communities to protest displacement during the 1980s Docklands redevelopments. Neither consider heritage organisations, who in response to urban change have produced and widely shared historical narratives for public consumption. Yet historians have increasingly studied heritage groups elsewhere, demonstrating their efforts to critique contemporary developments. Laura Carter has identified a national resurgence in 'folk' history after the 1960s, much of which sought to commemorate fading patterns of work and habitation and aid adjustment to deindustrialisation and social change. I will study organisations' different research, collection, and interview processes through archives such as the MoL's, ECH's, and Shevey's. This will be supplemented through original interviews with heritage actors, considering the social/political outlook of their work. I will thus test Laura Carter's thesis by applying it to a specific geographic area which both epitomised the urban changes of post-war Britain, and hosted a rich and varied heritage industry.