Evidence and Storytelling
I wrote a blog inspired by Don Rypkema’s presentation at the Living Heritage Symposium in September. Here is one inspired by Donna Graves at the same event, who urged the audience to embrace storytelling. This is why we save places, because of the stories they tell.
Transforming the Heritage Field
Lockport, Illinois, part of the I & M Canal National Heritage Corridor
The first of two blogs on my plan to transform the statutory and philanthropic foundations of heritage conservation. Today we deal with the statutory in the United States…
As I prepare to move on from Global Heritage Fund after three years, I am committed more than ever to the transformation of the field of heritage conservation. In the distant past, heritage conservation was a curatorial activity that sanctioned and even encouraged the removal of physical – and intangible – artifacts from our economic everyday in order to conserve them as if under a bell jar. But, as I demonstrated in my dissertation, that approach began to die as historic preservation (in the U.S.) and heritage conservation (everywhere else) were infused with community-based activism and organization in the 1960s. I had the good fortune of coming into the field during the creation of the first heritage area in the U.S. 32 years ago. Continue Reading