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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 January 2020
Using Leicester's de-industrialized St George's area as a case-study, this article discusses three projects, all of which involved an academic team, including urban historians, working with a range of non-academic partners, in order to uncover the history and heritage of this part of the city in order to support the regeneration of the area. The first two of these projects leveraged digital media to engage public audiences, while the third used a more ‘traditional’ set of interpretation panels, removing the requirement for specific technology in order to access information as they passed along the street.
Two of the projects discussed were funded by Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) – AHRC Creative Economy Knowledge Exchange project, Archives, Assets and Audiences: New Modes to Engage Audiences with Archival Content and Heritage Sites in 2013 and Affective Digital Histories: Recreating De-Industrialised Places, 1970s – Present in 2013/14. Thanks to Rebecca Madgin and Tom Hulme for their support during the project and to Shane Ewen, Tosh Warwick and the participants of the Beyond the Academy event for their comments and feedback. Thanks also to Justin Webber and Sally Coleman of Leicester City Council for the supply of images included in the article.
1 Durose, C., Beebeejaun, Y., Rees, J., Richardson, J. and Richardson, E., ‘Public harm or public value? Towards co-production in research with communities’, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 33 (2015), 552–65Google Scholar, and the AHRC Connected Communities Programme.
2 I worked as a researcher as part of a larger collaborative team on two AHRC funded projects – AHRC Creative Economy Knowledge Exchange project, Archives, Assets and Audiences: New Modes to Engage Audiences with Archival Content and Heritage Sites in 2013 and Affective Digital Histories: Recreating De-Industrialised Places, 1970s – Present in 2013/14. I was one of a team of researchers commissioned by Leicester City Council to research sites for the Story of Leicester Heritage Interpretation Panels.
3 N. Falk, ‘Our industrial heritage – a resource for the future?’, The Planner, Oct. 1985, 13.
4 ‘Preserve some of industrial past – call’, Leicester Mercury, 12 Dec. 1970.
5 Gunn, S. and Hyde, C., ‘Post-industrial place, multicultural space: the transformation of Leicester, c. 1970–1990’, International Journal of Regional and Local History, 8 (2013), 95CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Nash, D. and Reeder, D. (eds.), Leicester in the Twentieth Century (Stroud, 1993), 57–89Google Scholar, for more detail on Leicester's economy from the 1960s to the 1980s.
6 Rodger, R., ‘Reinventing the city after 1945’, in Rodger, R. and Madgin, R. (eds.), Leicester: A Modern History (Lancaster, 2016), 211Google Scholar.
7 Leicester City Council, St George's Conservation Area Character Appraisal and Confirmation of Special Interest, Jan. 2010.
8 In England between November 1994 and 31 October 1998, 28 projects each received lottery awards of over £5 million. For more detail, see UK Parliamentary Papers: HC 404 Session 1998–99, Arts Council of England: Monitoring Major Capital Projects Funded by the National Lottery. Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, 14 May 1999.
9 For the policy decisions behind the designation, see Shorthose, J., ‘The engineered and the vernacular in cultural quarter development’, Capital and Class, 28 (2004), 159–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For more detail on culture-led regeneration, see Bianchini, F. and Parkinson, M. (eds.), Cultural Policy and Urban Regeneration: The West European Experience (Manchester, 1993)Google Scholar; and Montgomery, J., ‘Cultural quarters as mechanisms for urban regeneration. Part 1: Conceptualizing cultural quarters’, Planning Practice and Research, 18 (2003), 293–306CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 £90 million was invested in the arts and cultural facilities in the cultural quarter from sources including the European Regional Development Fund (Objective 2 Programme), East Midlands Development Agency, Leicestershire Economic Partnership, the National Lottery, Arts Council England, Em Media, Leicester City Council and private sources. See Audit Commission, The Curve Project, June 2009, and Leicester City Council, Review of Grants to Major City Arts Venues: A Report of the Economic Development, Culture and Tourism Scrutiny Commission, Dec. 2012.
11 The project was led by the universities of Nottingham, Nottingham Trent and Leicester, which also matched the funding.
12 Owens, T., ‘Digital cultural heritage and the crowd’, Curator: The Museum Journal, 56 (2003), 121–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Matthews, P., ‘Social media, community development and social capital’, Community Development Journal, 51 (2015), 419–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 For images of the building and map of the area, see http://munroelizabeth.wixsite.com/c-q-heritagecluster/the-cluster, accessed 29 Jan. 2019.
14 Pevsner, N. and Williamson, E., The Buildings of England, Leicestershire and Rutland, 2nd edn (Harmondsworth, 1984), 239Google Scholar.
15 For photographs of the event showing the attenders in a familiar and comfortable environment, see http://munroelizabeth.wixsite.com/c-q-heritagecluster/news, accessed 5 Feb. 2019.
16 Details of the themes and some images used can be seen at http://munroelizabeth.wixsite.com/c-q-heritagecluster/the-themes, accessed 5 Feb. 2019.
17 Munro + Whitten are a landscape architecture, urban design and masterplanning practice. Makers’ Yard is a workspace with 10 studios for designer-makers which can be viewed at www.makersyard.com/about-us-makers-yard, accessed 5 Feb. 2019.
18 Images from the launch event can be seen at www.makersyard.com/image-gallery-makers-yard, accessed 5 Feb. 2019.
19 ‘Meeting the Presser’, which can be viewed as a stand-alone film or as an expanded experience by following the prompts, can be viewed at http://mtp.ekit.co.uk/, accessed 5 Feb. 2019.
20 Details of the project and a demonstration of the app can be seen on the project website: http://leicesterstgeorges.co.uk/, accessed 5 Feb. 2019.
21 The oral history interviews along with photographs and press cuttings can be accessed via the Explorer on the app or through the University of Leicester's Special Collections Online: http://specialcollections.le.ac.uk/digital/collection/p16445coll8, accessed 5 Feb. 2019.
22 Darley, G., ‘Conservation in the inner city: old buildings, new jobs?’, Built Environment, 4 (1978), 215Google Scholar.
23 See Twells, A., ‘Iron dukes and naked races: Edward Carpenter's Sheffield and LGBTQ public history’, International Journal of Regional and Local History, 13 (2018), 47–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for discussion of a project which looked beyond traditional historical narratives of an area to uncover its marginalized history.
24 This project brought together academics from the departments of management, geography, museum studies, urban history, the East Midlands Oral History Archive and the Centre for New Writing at the University of Leicester and academics from the departments of design and architecture at De Montfort University.
25 Owens, ‘Digital cultural heritage’, 121–30.
26 The Leicester Mercury Archive and the Joan Skinner Archive are housed in Special Collections at the University of Leicester Library: www2.le.ac.uk/library/find/specialcollections, accessed 5 Feb. 2019.
27 See the project website for more detail on the apps: http://affectivedigitalhistories.org.uk/apps, accessed 29 Jan. 2019.
28 BBC East Midlands Today Programme 30 Jul. 2014. For images, see www.flickr.com/photos/amyjaneb/sets/72157647181435104/with/15637130779/. The sound recordings were also discussed on the Radio 4 PM programme on 5 Jan. 2015; see www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02gbs48, accessed 29 Jan. 2019.
29 All material can be accessed via the Explorer on the app or through the University of Leicester's Special Collections Online at http://specialcollections.le.ac.uk/digital/collection/p16445coll8, accessed 6 Feb. 2019.
30 For details, see de Souza Santos, A. and Hulme, T., ‘Cultural marginality and urban place making: the case of Leicester and Ouro Preto’, in Cupples, J. and Slater, T. (eds.), Producing and Contesting Urban Marginality: Comparative and Interdisciplinary Dialogues (London, 2019)Google Scholar.
31 More information relating to all panels located in the cultural quarter can be found on the Leicester City Council's Story of Leicester website www.storyofleicester.info/, accessed 6 Mar. 2019.
32 The archive can be accessed via the Explorer on the app or through the University of Leicester's Special Collections Online: http://specialcollections.le.ac.uk/digital/collection/p16445coll8, accessed 6 Feb. 2019.
33 For a comprehensive list of learning points for all parties, see Matthews, P. et al. , Doing and Evaluating Community Research: A Process and Outcomes Approach for Communities and Researchers (AHRC, 2015)Google Scholar.
34 J. Goddard, ‘Were you one of the Imperial Typewriters' strikers in 1974?’, Leicester Mercury, 17 Nov. 2018, www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/history/were-you-one-imperial-typewriters-2227196, accessed 6 Feb. 2019. Exhibition images: www.visitleicester.info/whats-on/the-strike-at-imperial-typewriters-p771991, accessed 16 Aug. 2019.