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1/15 Hi! I’ve really enjoyed all the papers this morning, and feel a bit nervous because I’m just beginning my work on this, so I’ve more questions than answers. I’m not looking at the industries that others are, but at the industry that replaced them #SWOS20
2/15 In 1987 Robert Hewison argued that Heritage was being used as a replacement for industry, providing jobs for an economy in decline (no link but you can buy it second hand) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Heritage-Industry-Britain-Climate-Decline/dp/0413161102 #SWOS20
3/15 One of the reasons heritage was used this way is to maintain social cohesion and a sense of pride. This article highlights the need of community participation for sustainability in industrial heritage https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13527250903210795 #SWOS20
4/15 Industrial heritage sites have a range of tropes that draw on and build pride – such as the scale of the operations, the technical skill involved. Many of the papers this morning have used these to great effect & also presented the dangers #SWOS20
5/15 Danger & death can be seen as sacrifice these communities endured ‘to make the modern world’. This video from the Rhondda Heritage Park shows a former miner sharing this pride with his grandchildren https://www.rctcbc.gov.uk/EN/Tourism/RhonddaHeritagePark/Home.aspx #SWOS20
6/15 Sometimes pride is not enough. Here is the Aberfan disaster as “an upsetting reminder of perhaps why and how much our society changed so much in little over a generation” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-150d11df-c541-44a9-9332-560a19828c47 #SWOS20
7/15 Disasters are seen as burden this community bears for progress, to bring changes like wealth, or health & safety legislation that we all benefit from. But what if these communities endured hardship, suffering & death for something that also damaged the whole world? #SWOS20
8/15 What happens when we start to question the value of the Industrial Revolution? Here the National Trust introduces the idea of the Anthropocene and some of their sites that can be associated with it. https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/what-is-the-anthropocene #SWOS20
9/15 But why should mining sites be selected? Aren’t the National Trust’s gardens and glass houses as good a representation of the Anthropocene as its industrial sites? https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/a-history-of-glasshouses-orangeries-and-potting-sheds #SWOS20
10/15 Many heritage studies of the Anthropocene emphasise the dispersed and entangled nature of this heritage (eg see https://unrulyheritage.com/ ). How can we localise such a pervasive experience? #SWOS20
11/15 Climate change creates disasters of displacement. Sara Penryn Jones makes connections between time and space in this short film https://screenworks.org.uk/archive/baftss-practice-research-award-2017/timeline Where should we commemorate the Anthropocene? #SWOS20
12/15 As so many papers today have made clear, these communities suffered during the ‘hey day’ of their industries and they suffered again when those industries closed. Why should they bear the weight of commemorating the Anthropocene? #SWOS20
13/15 Currently a visit to an industrial heritage site is presented as a fun day out, even romantic. This blog post is full of happy selfies https://planetfulloflove.com/amazing-days-big-pit-national-coal-museum-wales/ #SWOS20
14/15 As @Coralfrog has shown, visitors come for a ‘rural idyll’ https://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/8792/ What if visitors come to view industrial sites as dark heritage – can we resist? Should we resist? How would it impact the community whose heritage it is? #SWOS20
15/15 The heritage industry was intended to replace manufacturing jobs with tourism jobs. Will industrial communities be asked to sacrifice pride for those jobs? Is heritage a sustainable industry, or are we facing the spectre of the ruin once again? #SWOS20
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