Inclusive Thinking, Policy and Practice in Planning and Heritage for Communities

The virtual event (to be hosted via Zoom) is being organised as part of the AHRC Heritage Priority Area follow-on-funding dedicated to opening New Pathways to Impact across Heritage Research, Policy and Practice.

The event is timely as it coincides with the UK Government’s launch of the Planning White Paper consultation, Planning for the future, which aims to ‘fix’ the ‘broken’ planning system through a series of 24 proposals outlined in the document. The White Paper follows other relevant reports that came out earlier this year, such as the Living with beauty report of the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, and two reports – Rethinking the Planning System for the 21st Century and Planning Anew – published by Policy Exchange, also relevant for many of the proposals outlined.

This half-day conference will contribute to the impressive range of discussion and debate seen over the past months which have focused on key concepts underpinned in the planning reform, which include: planning for development, planning for beautiful and sustainable places, and planning for infrastructure and connected places, through three categories identified to simplify planning (Growth, Renewal and Protected Areas). Communities are at the core of this, and heritage studies is well placed to think about the current shift towards politics of rootedness and belongingness, as well as enabling placemaking and inclusivity.

The areas being focusing on specifically are:

• How does the understanding, design and governance of placemaking affect wellbeing and social sustainability?
• What does it mean to put resources into the hands of communities, and how can understanding nature, culture or heritage studies provide people with opportunities for choice and control?
•  What can heritage research and practice offer this new politics of identity, rootedness and belongingness.

Provisional programme

• 10.00-10.10: Chair’s opening remarks - Hana Morel, Research Associate, AHRC Heritage, UCL
• 10.10-10.30: The role of land use in thinking about placemaking, wellbeing or community empowerment? - Rachel Fisher, Defra
• 10.35-10.55: Presentation: Protecting the Environment/Heritage through Planning and Land Use - Nikoleta Jones, Cambridge University
• 10.55-11:00: Break
   
• 11:00-12:05: Panel Discussion: Repairing the Social Fabric  - Chair: Lucy Natarajan, The Bartlett
  Helen Fadipe, Planning Consultant
  Olafiyin Taiwo, Planning Consultant
  David Bryan, XTend 
  Claire Smith, Joined Up Heritage
   
• 12:05-12:15: Break
   
• 12:15-12:30: Heritage and a Deliberative Systems approach to Local Democracy - Helen Graham, Leeds University & Phil Bixby, My Future York
   
• 12:30-12:35:  Q&A
   
• 12:35-13:30: Panel Discussion: Opportunities and Concerns outlined in the PWP for the heritage sector - Chair: Stephanie Evans, National Trust
  Yves Blais, Creative Land Trust
  Rob Lennox, CIfA
  Stephanie Wray, CIEEM
   
• 13:30: Close

Further details

• Further details about the event are available here

The AHRC Heritage Priority Area team – led by Rodney Harrison at the UCL Institute of Archaeology– works with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the heritage research community, and heritage partner organisations, to draw together and stimulate the development of a wide range of research across the arts and humanities that make an important contribution to understanding heritage.