Lauren Campbell

About the researcher

I am a participatory practitioner and researcher with a background in community and public engagement. I have worked in the heritage and cultural sector for 9 years, mostly in south west England and Scotland. My experience is in participatory public and community programming, interpretation and exhibitions, as well as health and wellbeing heritage programmes in museums and arts organisations including Cornwall Museum and Art Gallery, the Poly and Deveron Projects.  

My creative practice often involves clay, and explores multi-sensory, informal engagement as an inclusive listening tool. 

Research interests

  • Participatory and socially engaged practice  
  • Inclusive heritage and museum practices 
  • Identity, belonging and connection within heritage contexts 
  • Intangible and everyday heritage practices 
  • The historic environment and place-based heritage 
  • Multi-sensory and expanded clay-based practice 

RKE

PhD abstract

Thesis title

How can participatory practice support the historic environment sector to identify and safeguard both everyday and authorised heritage values? 

Abstract

In 2006, Laura Jane Smith coined the term Authorised Heritage Discourse (Smith 2006) describing a dominant approach to heritage management rooted in enlightenment ideals, privileging established, universal values within the western canon (Smith 2006; Smith & Waterton, 2008, Waterton 2010; Hall 1999). England's historic environment sector perpetuates aspects of this discourse through systems and expert-led frameworks that identify and protect heritage. 

Although critical heritage theory and participatory approaches have advanced understandings of person-centred heritage management over the past four decades, in practice, challenges remain in creating space for a plurality of everyday and authorised heritage values when identifying and safeguarding England's historic environment.  

As part of a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership with Historic England, I am exploring how participation can support identification and safeguarding of heritage from a plurality of perspectives to enable both authorised and everyday heritage values to coexist. My practice reimagines historic buildings as participants, with whom human-participants live side by side. This framework challenges human ownership of singular, homogenous heritage values. 

My research does not aim to displace expert-led understandings of value, but draws on Haraway's concept of situated knowledge; that objective knowing requires understanding of the contexts in which knowledge is produced (Haraway 1988). My practice research engages with everyday heritage, material agency, affect theory, including Ahmed’s concept of ‘stickiness’, through which emotions circulate between objects and people (Ahmed 2004), and Ingold's perspectives of materiality and 'dwelling' as knowing and making a world through lived engagement rather than observation (Ingold 2000).  

I am using clay and audio as multi-sensory listening tools that support dwelling with building-participants and people-participants who hold everyday and expert knowledge of historic buildings. These methods build on embodied participatory practices in heritage and arts such as walking, audio and object handling. 

Through three case studies three questions shape my enquiry; RQ1: What are the challenges and successes of participation to identify and protect both everyday and authorised heritage values? RQ2: How can participation be used to identify and protect everyday and authorised heritage values? RQ3: What can be learnt from this to inform Historic England’s practice and policy and support the recognition of plural and diverse heritage values? I hope that my original contribution of knowledge might inform future professional practice and policy.