People, Places and Stories

Whether we feel we are included, have a sense of belonging, and a shared identity often results from the way we relate to our surroundings, both as individuals and groups.

Heritage plays a crucial role in this; it can be used to revive nationalistic narratives and to sustain barriers or to revive inclusive narratives by focussing on participation in a contemporary meaning making processes.

The way groups build inclusive narratives is at the core of this the People Places Stories (PPS) project, an Erasmus + Strategic Partnership, which focuses on the capacity of heritage communities to build socio-cultural space for creativity, learning, participation and inclusion. The project aims to increase civil society’s capacity to exploit heritage as an environment and resource for sustainable development.

UCL is helping the partnership to analyse what competences are most important for heritage community capacity building through a brief survey and in-depth interviews with heritage and community practitioners. The results will be used in the next phase of the project to help develop a training curriculum able to improve the number, quality and impact of such community-led activities on society as foreseen in the Council of Europe’s Faro Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society.

The project targets heritage professionals, community mediators, participatory planning facilitators, adult educators, policy makers, citizens and communities. So please answer the survey and get in touch with Sarah Wolferstan at the CAA if you are interested in finding out more about the opportunities that the project or the Faro Convention can provide to your community or organisation. Find out more about the project on the CAA website - and you can listen to a podcast on the DELPHI project which laid the foundations for the PPS project.

Take the Survey!

Cover image is from a Prehistoric Archaeology Day at Whitehawk Hill in Brighton.