Introduction
So far in HST209, we have looked for public history in the realm of private and public memory, within the messages borne by objects and within the public presentations of history museums. In this topic, we will consider the public history of place and also introduce ourselves to the very broad subject of heritage conservation.
This topic will involve you in a field activity - making an "off the cuff" heritage assessment of an historic place in your community as a public historian. As you will appreciate, a "proper" statement of heritage (or cultural) significance would be the result of a careful process of research and consideration involving a team of experts - and community consultation. Assessing the heritage value or significance of a site is a very necessary step in making important decisions about conservation and interpretation, or even deciding on whether to save or to demolish a place. Our activity here can but give a taste of the process and introduce you to some basic concepts and tools.
A
definition
Let's begin with a definition of "Heritage" in the context of historic buildings and sites (but not excluding objects). - "Heritage comprises those things which we value and want to pass from one generation to the next - our inheritance."
This is a well-accepted definition in the cultural heritage industry. It will be found, for example, in the NSW Heritage Manual, published in 1996 by the NSW Heritage Office and Department of Urban Affairs and Planning. If you would like to find out more about heritage management procedures, you must take a look at this very comprehensive guide. (Similar guides are available from other state heritage offices.) We will make use of the NSW Manual later in this study topic.
Preparing a Heritage Assessment involves determining the nature and degree of heritage value in a methodical way according to recognised criteria.
The Burra Charter - The Australia ICOMOS Charter for the Conservation of Places of Cultural Significance, more commonly known as the Burra Charter, was developed in the 1970s as a guide "for making good decisions about the care of important places". The Charter, consisting of 29 articles, is based on the earlier Venice Charter, but with amendments reflecting Australian considerations. It has been supplemented since with further guidelines, on Cultural Significance for example.
Most government heritage agencies, as well as private organisations such as the National Trust, now have their own heritage management guidelines. But all are indebted to the Burra Charter, which remains a common reference point for all. It is a document with which all public historians interested in the conservation and interpretation of historic building and sites should be familiar.
The Illustrated Burra Charter (1992) prepared by Peter Marquis-Kyle and Meredith Walker is especially recommended for purchase. Their edition takes the reader through the process of using the Charter, step by step, explaining terms and concepts in plain English and providing ample examples. It contains, as well, additional guidelines up to the late 1980s. It is arguably the most sensible and useful heritage conservation book ever published in Australia.
A copy of the Burra Charter can also be found on the ICOMOS web-site. Spend some time browsing their website. You might also visit the Australian Heritage Commission's website to see their heritage site listings and to find out about their procedures for putting sites on their heritage registers. Take a look as well at your state's heritage authority website. In New South Wales, it is the Heritage Office. A visit to Robin's Bookmarks will provide links to other heritage bodies, such as the National Trust (or, National Rust and Dust as some wicked people call it).
We will use The Illustrated Burra Charter as our guide in preparing our Heritage Assessment. (The Burra Charter calls it a Statement of Cultural Significance. For our purposes, cultural = heritage.) You will find it helpful to borrow or buy a copy of this book. It is recommended you read, or at least skim through, the book in the course of this study topic.
Why
make assessments?
The Burra Charter 1.4 defines conservation as all the processes of looking after a place so as to retain its cultural significance. To manage this successfully, three logical steps are required:
Assessing significance, therefore, is the first necessary step in preparing the ground for any further decisions and action about the conservation of a place. (Or object, for that matter.) "Before deciding how to care for a place it is necessary to understand what makes it important, " to quote Marquis-Kyle and Walker. An assessment of cultural significance aids in achieving that understanding. (According to the Burra Charter 1.2, Cultural (heritage) significance means aesthetic, historic, scientific or social value for past, present or future generations.)
Finding
your place
For the purposes of our exercise, identify an historic place in your local community that you think might qualify as "heritage", according to our definition above. Or, to refer again to the Burra Charter, it might have qualities of "cultural significance" in helping us to understand the past, enriching our lives today and being of likely value to future generations.
"Place", by the Burra Charter's understanding, can be just about any place anywhere - a building or the ruin of a building, a park or a cemetery, a streetscape or a back alley. ("Place means site, area, building or other work, group of buildings, or other works together with associated contents and surrounds." Burra Charter 1.1)
Given your time and resource limitations, you might want to select a place that has some fairly obvious heritage value and also has some available history written about it. It should though be important as a place. That is, the place itself may be able to give us special insights into the past; or, it may have been the venue for an important event; or, it may have special symbolic value. (Architectural significance is important of course, but in the context of this subject, you can evaluate architectural significance in public history terms.)
Having chosen a place, find out something about its history from available sources, both published and oral. You should make some brief notes or photocopies to assist in drawing up your heritage assessment.
Preparing
your heritage assessment
Keeping in mind the concepts and definitions discussed above, and with The Illustrated Burra Charter at hand if possible, prepare a brief assessment of your place according to the following values, as you think appropriate. Not all of the four values may be appropriate to your place and/or your assessment of heritage value from a public history perspective.
1) Aesthetic value: The place has "positive visual or sensory appeal, landmark qualities and/or creative or technical excellence." (From the NSW Heritage Manual)
2) Historic value: "A place may have historic value because it has influenced, or has been influenced by, an historic figure, event, phase, or activity. It may also have historic value as the site of an important event." (Guidelines to the Burra Charter: Cultural Significance, 2.3) Historic value need not only be defined in terms of the "famous and important". As a good public historian, you ought to appreciate the value of the everyday and ordinary.
3) Scientific value: This value is often more appropriate to places of natural or environmental significance. The NSW Heritage Manual defines "scientific" as "technical/research" and refers as well to archaeological and industrial places. "Items having this value are significant because of their contribution … to an understanding of our cultural history …."
4) Social value: "Social value embraces the qualities for which a place has become a focus of spiritual, political, national or other cultural sentiment to a majority or minority group." (Guidelines to the Burra charter: Cultural Significance, 2.5) The NSW Heritage Manual suggests that this social value should be an expression of contemporary community esteem.
Working with the above criteria, draw up a Heritage Assessment of your place. It need only be a few sentences in length.
If you are uncertain about what to do, it might help to look at some examples of heritage assessments (aka Statements of Cultural or Heritage Significance) prepared for other places. Your local library or council office may have some examples. A heritage assessment of the Chifley home prepared for Bathurst City Council is available on-line.
Refining
your heritage assessment
Having prepared your heritage assessment, you might now go back over it and apply the following refinements, all borrowed from the NSW Heritage Office's procedures for preparing an assessment. (These further considerations also illustrate how the Burra Charter's original assessment procedure has been refined over time.) "Heritage Assessments" booklet in the NSW Heritage Manual.
1) The NSW Heritage Office offers two criteria to qualify the nature of significance:
Representativeness means that an item (place) may have significant value because it is a fine representative example of an important class of significant items or environments. In other words, it offers a good example of such places of some importance in Australian history. (For example, a well cared for timber and corrugated iron woolshed way outback or an inner Sydney intact terrace house before some dreadful Sydney Yuppie modernised it.)
Rarity means that an item (place) may be significant because it represents a rare, endangered or unusual aspect of our history or cultural environment. The Sydney Harbour Bridge would qualify as rare, as might Fitzroy Bar on Ophir Creek (site of the 1851 gold discovery).
These criterion are not mutually exclusive. A place can in its heritage significance contain aspects that are representative and other aspects that are rare. A good example of this is Bathurst's Chifley Home and collection, rare in being a Prime Ministerial home and representative at the same time of a country-town home of the mid-20th century.
2) The NSW Heritage Office also classifies places according to whether they are local, regional or state. These terms relate to the geographical and social context of an item's (place's) significance. To quote from the Manual, "an item of local significance will be of historical, aesthetic or technical/research significance in a local geographic context; an item of regional social heritage significance will be important to an identifiable, contemporary, regional community." A state level of significance might also encompass a national level of significance, but national classifications are not strictly within the Heritage Office's brief.
Again, the levels are not mutually exclusive, as can be seen with the example of the Chifley home.
Apply these two classifications to your heritage assessment. Do they give cause for you to reconsider or to refine your original assessment? How do they strengthen your argument?
Tutorial
activity
Prepare a final draft of your heritage assessment. It should be a brief and succinct document. Reflect critically on what you have written as a public historian. Consider posting your heritage assessment - and your reflections - on the forum for some feedback from others in the subject and from your lecturer. You may want to include a brief description of the place as well. If there is something on the web about this place, give the URL in your forum posting.
Comment on similar postings from others in the subject.
Finally, go back to our definition of heritage at the start of this study topic. Consider the words underlined. Note the pronouns. There is an assumption in this definition of Heritage of an inclusive community and of common heritage. As a public historian, you might like to reflect and to comment on this in the context of your heritage assessment of your place.
Heritage and Place. Whose heritage and whose place?
Recommended Reading (for further study on heritage site management):
James Semple Kerr, The Conservation Plan (1990)
Michael Pearson and Sharon Sullivan, Looking After Heritage Places (1995).
Just
for fun
A mega-wealthy businessperson, Roberta Packer-Gates, has offered the NSW State Government a deal they can't refuse. She will build in Sydney a world-class culture and entertainment centre that will not only bring thousands of tourists from around the world but will also be used by Australians, rich and poor. The architecture will be stunning. The income for the state will be stupendous. Not only that, Roberta will undertake to fund indefinitely a world-class medical centre which will be free to all Australians.
What's the catch? Roberta wants to build her mega-complex on Sydney harbour - on the site of the Sydney Opera house.
She says, "Let's get real here. Most Australians don't even set foot in the place, let alone go there for the opera. In fact, if you know anything about opera houses you will know it's a pretty poor example of one. Okay, so it looks nice. The Danes do have a nice sense of style, don't they? I promise we will incorporate the skyline look of the place in our new complex. Most of you won't even know the Opera House is no longer there. But you will use the culture centre - because it will be about your culture. And the entertainment centre will offer your sort of entertainment. And, I haven't even mentioned the benefits of the jobs, the medical centre, and so on."
What should we do? Save the Opera House? Why and for whom? Or should we trade it in for something more tangible, arguably more popular and definitely more useful?
Post your thoughts on the forum. What price heritage? Whose heritage?
Where
to now?Up to this point in our studies, we have been concentrating on building some theoretical foundations for a better understanding of Public History. You have now reached the stage where you should be able to look critically at presentations of Public History and be able to make critical evaluations about the history that is being represented - or not represented, as may be the case.
The classwork for the remainder of the semester will be taken up with looking at some specific forms of Public History, together with consideration of some important issues in the field.
Topics will vary from semester to semester but are likely to include, in the context of public history, such topics as family and local history, national museums and commemorations, cultural tourism, film and video, monuments and memorials and so forth. It is really quite impossible to cover all possible topics in a one semester subject. Reference to the "Forms" and "Issues" lists provided at the beginning of the subject will offer some idea as to the parameters within which we can work.
If something of special interest to you is not covered this semester, there is no need to be disappointed. Remember you may be able to do your final essay on a topic that we have not included in this semester’s essay topic list. Such an arrangement should be discussed as early as possible with the lecturer.
Our second last topic, Number 13, has been left open to enable us to consider a contemporary issue or development in public history. Suggestions for Topic 13 are welcome. Your Mediawatch work should offer some likely topics. Email or post suggestions to your lecturer ASAP if a distance education student; if an internal student please raise suggestions in class. We will need to decide on a topic and arrange for readings by week 10.
Our last class, topic 14, will be an open session with opportunities for reviewing what we have covered and/or the impromptu discussion of new ideas and possibilities concerning Public History.
Our last topic (Topic 14) may also be the occasion for a class debate on a set topic. This will depend entirely on student interest. It is a non-assessable activity.
If we are to have a debate we will need to decide upon a debate motion and then organize ourselves into teams. This must be done by Week 11.
Check the forum for further discussion.
(A very successful on-line debate with adjudicators from Australia and the USA was undertaken in 1998. Click here to read more.)
Public History
Definition| Access the forum through the Communicate link, see panel on left |
Media Watch| Access the forum through the Communicate link, see panel on left |
CLICK HERE FOR ROBIN'S BOOKMARKS - This page provides links to websites of special interest to Public Historians. Get in the habit of checking it for new listings. You can provide URLs for this page as well.
