Assembling Sustainable and Resilient Futures with Small Heritage Organisations: Social Purpose, Creativity and Practices of Care

Abstract

This collaborative doctoral research with Glasgow Building Preservation Trust (GBPT) addresses a significant gap in our knowledge and understanding of how sustainability frameworks, policies, and everyday heritage practices intersect in small Scottish heritage organisations with social purpose. In the context of reduced funding and resources, such organisations are exploring how they can re-orientate to fulfil a wider range of public and social benefit agendas in addition to economic and urban regeneration value. I explore GBPT’s everyday heritage practices ethnographically to reveal how small heritage organisations create sustainable and resilient futures while working with social purpose. I consider concepts of sustainability, resilience, creativity, common good, and participation as configured in practice in the context of Scottish policies, strategies and academic scholarship. Qualitative interviews were undertaken in the Scottish heritage sector for a wider perspective on these concepts. Social media research was undertaken during the COVID-19 pandemic as part of everyday heritage practices and adaption to the pandemic. Finally, short-term ethnography in Norway created a deeper, comparative understanding of the concepts explored. The research has important findings that can inform heritage policies and practice offering insights into processes of sustainable development, community resilience and organisational heritage practices. It contributes new knowledge in three key areas: 1) It gives insights into the role of small heritage organisations as curators and narrators of heritage operating at the intersection of national and local policies, funding strategies, and creative heritage practices with communities; 2) It makes visible the intense labour involved in heritage practices as practices of care that address societal challenges in the context of sustainable development and resilience agendas; 3) It contributes to a better understanding of the role of networks of relations as infrastructures of care within sustainable development as a transformative process and its relationship with resilience.