In an assessment you can expect that:
- You will be working with people from across multiple communities.
- People will express different community identities at different times and depending on circumstances.
- Not everyone who values a place lives nearby or will be present on-site with any regularity.
Some communities are place-based but others may form around shared experiences or interests. The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 stipulates that communities may be based on common interest, identity or geography/location.
Community relationships and connections to place may be sustained through in-person or online activity, or a combination of both.
The Hood Stones case was chosen because of the opportunity it presented to trial research methods and approaches with a geographically dispersed community of interest (the H.M.S. Hood Association Facebook page having members from across the UK and around the world), many members of which have never visited the North coast of Scotland where the Stones are located.
The research found a significant aspect of how the site was valued, by both the community of interest and members of the community of location, depended upon the connection between them. The practice of local school children and other residents repainting the Hood Stones represented a valued opportunity for the community of interest to pass on the memory of the crew to younger generations. That experience had in turn led to some of the participants joining the online community of interest. This network of relationships between people, objects and places combined to create an authentic personal connection to, and (for those who visited) experience of, the site. The presence of the Hood Stones and other ships’ names on the hillside above Laid was also valued as a point of local distinctiveness, linking Loch Eriboll with events of national and global importance, counteracting dominant narratives of remoteness and establishing it as a place of significance.
In this case, the community of interest was more readily identifiable and easily engaged in the research than the community of location. The Hood Stones feature in a heritage trail, developed by the Laid Community and Grazings Committee, an organisation that has no online presence. Only when visiting the site, a trip scheduled to coincide with the anniversary of the sinking of H.M.S. Hood in anticipation of potential commemorative practices at the site by members of the community of interest, was it possible to understand how the site connected to wider landscapes of significance and belonging, including associations with place that were not directly related to the presence of the ships’ names.
Communities define themselves partly in relation to others, but also encompass internal diversity. This complexity – graduations of belonging, internal group dynamics, and the impact of external relationships – may not be apparent at the start of an assessment.
Complexity within communities was a feature in all the case studies. This was most clearly expressed during interviews and group activities. For example:
- Differentiation within a location: In the Cables Wynd House study, tenants tended to characterise the House according to their landing rather than as a whole and, in the Kinneil House and Estate study, respondents living in Bo’ness identified with particular neighbourhoods.
- Expressions of belonging that did not equate to, or went beyond, presently residing in a place: In several studies, there were respondents that lived in the local area, but who were considered by others or described themselves ‘incomers’. In other cases, membership of a community of location was maintained without a constant presence.
People also belong to multiple communities simultaneously and move between communities over time and depending on circumstances.
Multiple and connected identities were manifest by the research activities:
- This was seen within studies and expressed by individual participants, e.g.: “This is a special place for me… Joins two parts of me together [the Navy and home County]” (semi-structured interview, Respondent 6.2, Hood Stones study).
- It was also apparent between studies, for example, a resident of Bo’ness who was interviewed as part of the Kinneil House and Estate study also had family connections to H.M.S. Hood; and on Lewis there were people who were professionally engaged with one site but had personal connections to the other.
Try to avoid allocating participants to a single community, whether based on their location, profession, or any other aspect of their identity. This risks obscuring potentially productive points of connection and discussion.