Social values and community participation are embedded in the 2019 Historic Environment Policy for Scotland (HEPS), which informs heritage management decisions. These are some of the opportunities and questions raised in incorporating social values into this area of practice.
Understanding social values offer new ways of thinking and talking about the significance of a place. These can be useful in managing properties and local recognition schemes (i.e. local place plans).
- Strategies are needed for working with multiple social values and those that contradict or diverge.
- Social value has been anecdotal in the past – need to move towards formal incorporation into processes.
Questions:
- Could social values be incorporated into designations assessment or other processes?
- What changes would be required to move from consultation to collaboration?
- How to keep up to date when context changes? Could social values be recorded at the same time as other activities monitoring physical changes over time, linking processes through inter-disciplinary teams?
A summary of the Historic Environment Scotland and Panorama project ‘Enhancing community and stakeholder participation for the management and conservation of the Heart of Neolithic Orkney and its wider landscape’ is available here. The cultural and social impacts identified include:
the importance of local communities, stakeholders and businesses in the management and conservation of the site. The Heart of Neolithic Orkney is important to the local community not only because of its World Heritage status but also due to its role as a key element of Orcadian cultural identity; communities are willing to engage with the site and its management and they are interested in participating in a dialogue, not only in receiving information. Strengthening the channels of communication between the site management and local stakeholders and communities has benefits for management of the site and understanding of its value(s) on both sides