Local History in the Community: whose
agenda?
John Hunt.
University of Birmingham.
On
the basis that all historians bring their own bias, prejudices and experiences
to their subjects, let me begin by freely declaring mine. I am a medievalist, a
period which I attempt to approach in a holistic way, working through
documentary sources, archaeology, architecture and art history. Perhaps
inevitably, I have considerable sympathy for the approaches developed on the
Continent between the two World Wars, generally referred to as the Annales
School, and championed by luminaries such as Marc Bloch and Georges Duby.
The
great majority of my professional life, from the late 1970s, has been spent in
the world that is now fast disappearing, that of adult and continuing
education; this together with a ‘parallel’ existence in the world of Higher
Education. Like those two great scholars of English history, Sellars and
Yeatman, the authors of ‘1066 and All That’, I have some attraction to the
notion of ‘good things’ and ‘bad things’, certain values that have followed me
throughout my career, and indeed, have helped to shape it, in so far as any
‘shape’ can be discerned.
Above
all else, I have a commitment to my academic disciplines which I just seem to
have been born with, as a part of my genetic make-up – to maintain its
integrity; further understanding of it through my teaching and research; and to
promote it not only with my students, but also further afield, within
communities and society as a whole – the result of the infectious enjoyment,
enthusiasm and interest that all historians feel for their subject. But beyond
this, I also have an innate belief that this is a ‘good thing’ for wider
society.
Similarly
established among my personal core values is an immutable belief in the value
of ‘traditional adult education’, a view that is not popular in wider
educational circles at present. However, it is an area that is underpinned by a
study of the humanities, and the skills and values arising from this.
In
many respects the humanities have been under attack since the 1980s, following
the launch of the ‘Great Debate’ by Prime Minister James Callaghan in the mid
to late 1970s; the more recent comment of a former Secretary of State that
medieval historians are primarily for ‘ornamental’ purposes stands in that
tradition. In the 1980s, Professor Bernard Williams came to the defence of the
humanities in the debate of the moment, cogently arguing a case, still
pertinent, that underscored the role and the potential that study of the
humanities brings. He wrote,
‘The humanities are concerned with a truthful
understanding of what we are and where we come from, and they, above all,
demand a truthful understanding of themselves . . . society itself and those
who are trying to run it also need those understandings’.
Inherent
within such study the individual engages with the values, and skills, of
sensibility, honesty, truthfulness, maturity of outlook, and critical
awareness, all of which are entirely consistent with the belief in student-focussed
teaching and learning which underpins adult education.
Local
history stands full-square within these themes, or trends. It is one of the
fundamental foundations upon which the discipline of history has been built in
Great Britain, and which may, in a very honourable way, trace its roots back to
the antiquarian studies of the 18th and 19th centuries,
and even earlier with ‘gentleman scholars’ such as Rous, Dugdale, Stebbing Shaw
and many others, even though we would generally look to Hoskins and his
generation as defining the discipline of local history for the modern age.
Local history, and its various related studies, remains one of the principal
mechanisms for engaging individuals, and communities, with their heritage and
identity, and with the subject of history itself. As a teacher and programme
organiser over three decades, I have ample evidence that local history has been
one of the great staples in the adult education diet, and a programme area that
might also be thought of these days as ‘value-added’, because it brought with
it, alongside historical knowledge and understanding, all those skills and
values that Bernard Williams articulated, together with very significant
potential around capacity building within communities, the development of
sustainable communities, the fostering of a sense of identity, and a potential
entrée for addressing wider educational issues and needs; in some cases, by the
late 1990s, local history was perceived by some as potentially addressing
social and economic issues that would rarely have been associated with it some
two decades or so earlier. While reflecting the adaptability of which local
history is possible, it also reveals the impact upon the discipline of agendas
that developed elsewhere, but to which a response was expected. In part this
was born out of social conscience or awareness, but also out of a need to
survive. One of the ‘holy grails’ of history teachers for many generations has
been that of ‘relevance’. I well recall when I did my post-graduate education
training in the mid-1970s, one of the debates of the moment was the relevance
of history. Rather than discuss the skills sets required, those shaping the
debate in those days chose to argue their case on the basis that the content of
history had to be made relevant if it was to survive on school timetables; thus
the Second World War was relevant whereas the Hundred Years War was not. As a
student engaging in this debate, I articulated the view that what we were
actually standing by and watching was the ‘sacrifice of history on the altar of
relevance!’ My reward for such dissension was that I was one of the few to be
‘landed’ with a viva as a part of the final examinations. However, to this day
I stand by my views on this matter; certainly it demonstrates that historians
are by their nature self-evaluative and prone to view the place of our
discipline within society at large. In the same way, local history has sought
to either reinterpret, or perhaps further develop, its potential role. Local
history has adapted to various agendas, not generally of its own making, to the
extent that to overtly study local history because it is an enjoyable and
intellectually satisfying thing to do is now too often the secondary objective,
if it is articulated at all, particularly if financial support is being sought.
So,
while local history has the capacity to adjust to modern agendas, we might ask
ourselves, ‘What is local history for?’ What agendas are shaping local history
now, and how should we respond? What has happened to the notion that learning
for its own sake is of value, and worthy of public funding? How do we counter
those individuals who insist upon treating such learning as if it is elitist
and irrelevant – often, I find, people who have benefited from such studies
themselves, but who then apply their moral judgements to deny others access to
it. Local history, like other areas of the humanities these days, has to fight
for survival within the context of uninformed thinking, prejudice, damaging
public policies and competing agendas. So, let us turn at this point to look at
aspects of this current environment and some of the agendas that define it; and
the implications that these have for local history and the possibilities for
its future development and prosperity.
I
suppose we tend to perceive matters particularly through the eyes of our own
interests. Personally, I work primarily in the English west midlands and in
western France, working through documentary, archaeological and art-historical
material. My research engages with landscape history, with the dynamics of
local society and how communities worked, and with power in local communities.
While these all lead into other things, they all emphasise the importance of
locality. At the University of Birmingham, where my research is based, we have
recently formed a Centre for Birmingham and Midland History, which officially
opened in March 2006 and offers an MA programme in ‘West Midlands History’.
This serves to remind us of the importance of locality in understanding the
growth of, and development of our society; how communities worked, and the
dynamics between communities and between factions within them. It is a
framework for engaging with political, social, economic, cultural and landscape
history, and helps to reveal the linkages between them. So, the focus on
locality is key, and as a research agenda, it has implications far beyond the
locality in question.
My
time as a teacher and programme organiser, particularly in adult and continuing
education, confirms to my mind what seems to be an almost insatiable interest
of people in the history of their own locality or community. This has long been
so, but if anything, it is perhaps becoming more emphatic. It is fostered by
television programmes, fact and fiction, and by the support that Lottery
schemes might offer; also, the increase in the numbers of people with the time
and opportunity to undertake such study – and here I would suggest that it is
often a natural accompaniment to the burgeoning of interest in family history,
and the pursuit of family genealogy. Any visitor to a Record Office will be
aware that this is now their biggest constituency.
The
focus on locality, however it manifests itself, is as old as the communities
themselves. Now, I raise this as it has a relevance that goes beyond historical
musings! It is now having a direct impact on public policy matters where they
relate to our historic environment – perhaps heritage is a better, more
embracing term. However, these trends are effectively a strand within one of
the government’s principal projects. ‘Civil Renewal’ is, in fact, the ‘grande
projet’.
Since
‘civil renewal’ is built around a sense of identity with community and place,
there is inevitably a role for heritage and one that is perceived by government
as well as among specialists. Government potentially has an interest in what
might be termed ‘applied history’ where it can be used to build cohesion and
sustainability within communities, and perhaps play a role in economic regeneration
or diversification. Furthermore, it sits with an agenda that more broadly
places emphasis, responsibilities and obligations at the level of the locality.
The
tendency for people to express loyalty or attachment to place, and to have an
identity with place, is arguably no less strong now than it was for such as
gentry families in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. As for them, it
offers a tangible link with history, contributing to a sense of where they come
from! Even those moving into an area from elsewhere often express a desire to
find out about the area they have come to. And, as already noted, family
history researches prompt a wider understanding, the impact of which must be to
strengthen still further the associations with place. Of course, we are not
necessarily talking about ‘distant’ history of the kind that my medieval
interests might imply. I had the great pleasure of serving some years ago as
the founding Chairman of the Wolverhampton History and Heritage Society. We
took the view that building a new local society needed a project to work on –
to be a ‘doing’ society. What emerged from this was a very successful project
investigating the history and development of one of Wolverhampton’s suburban
housing estates. Similarly, we might recall the likes of the Windrush Project
that focussed on the post-war black immigrant experience in Britain. Visitor
numbers to country houses and estates also continue to grow, although many
would argue that these visitors are now making different demands of such
places. They are now much less satisfied with such places as repositories of
Britain’s art treasures, but would prefer rather to engage with the social
history of these places – how they worked, and the impact that they had on the
lives of ordinary people, the community and the landscape.
Naturally,
as a governmental agency with responsibility for the historic environment, such
themes have entered into the thinking and approaches of English Heritage,
within which there has been some refocusing of policy and approach as an
accompaniment to the recent process of restructuring. However, it is not that
new! At its heart there is what English Heritage have always referred to as the
‘Power of Place’, a concept that has underpinned its research strategy since
1999, but now also translated into its approaches to community engagement.
There are analogous developments within local government, as the role and
activity of the Historic Environment Record, formerly the Sites and Monuments
Record, has been redefined, to be more ‘outward’ looking, engaging with
communities directly. For instance, in Worcestershire, at Wichenford, a recent
Lottery funded project focussed upon a village based heritage group –
effectively a local society – directly supported by HER staff, by me and a team
of tutors that I brought together. The immense levels of community interest
that are raised are almost awesome, reflected in an almost insatiable appetite
for publications and public meetings. Another example that springs to mind with
which I was involved is that focussed on Weobley Castle in Herefordshire, where
work continues, and whose publications have already made an impressive
contribution to our knowledge of the history and archaeology of medieval
Herefordshire. Similarly the Victoria County History has moved towards
developing local projects based on groups of volunteers, producing a new series
of VCH publications that are thought to be more easily accessible to the wider
public. What these publications reflect, as do the more recent ‘big red
volumes’, is the breadth of material and historical skills that are required to
research and write local history – archaeology, landscape, architecture,
place-names, cartography and documentary sources, all of which must be
understood and interpreted in a national context as well as the local one.
Many
of us will recall the days when the study of local history was predominantly in
the hands of adult education groups, organised and supported through university
extra-mural departments (as they were then described), local authority Adult
Education departments, and the WEA. Often organised as research groups, such
groups could run for several years building up an understanding of their
community and its history, sometimes culminating in an exhibition or a
publication. Such groups are very much rarer these days, particularly in the
west midlands. Those that have taken place have often been at the Herculean
efforts of the tutor or of a handful of volunteers, and I have had the pleasure
of working with many such enterprises. Village studies in Worcestershire,
market town research in Herefordshire, and in Staffordshire projects which has
included the transcription, cataloguing and analysis of Elizabethan and
Jacobean wills and inventories; this latter project actually passed through the
hands of several providers, until in its final phases it had to become
self-supporting and self-directed. Each year became more difficult to maintain
because of the changing environment, including student targets, fee income and
required learner outcomes. Although now completed, this group still has issues
on how best to disseminate the work, much of the group having now evaporated
and the tutor moved to live in France. In this case, it is likely that future
support on this matter will be provided through the Staffordshire
Archaeological and Historical Society, a point to which I shall return.
So,
what has happened? Again I will be
informed by my experience in the west midlands, although this certainly
reflects wider trends. I would suggest that adult educators have questions to
answer, not all of whom have been the ‘victims’ in this process. We have to ask
if the sector is still addressing the responsibilities and obligations that its
professional managers and tutors have in the past generally accepted as a part
of their role to both the individual and the communities in which they are
working? The trends that have now
become more explicit have long been recognised and acknowledged by many
historians and archaeologists working in adult education. One consequence of
this has been the fact that adult education has traditionally been seen as one
of the pillars upon which community awareness, and the protection and
interpretation of the historic environment was built; it was inevitably
promoted through the great popularity of historical studies within adult and
continuing studies programmes, and it is a perspective that in the west
midlands may certainly be traced back to the 1970s at least. Most of us working
as staff tutors and programme organisers at this time certainly worked for the
well-being of our students, but also for the well-being of our disciplines. One
small illustration, but by no means unique! I organised a day conference in
Halesowen on the theme of ‘Medieval Monasteries’, part of which highlighted
Halesowen’s own heritage in this regard, with its Premonstratensian Abbey
founded early in the thirteenth century. At the time however, this heritage was
not widely appreciated, and efforts were in hand to undertake the consolidation
and restoration of the surviving fabric. The awareness that the event created
was subsequently articulated in correspondence published in the local press,
which saw residents raising issues around future planning proposals and the
importance of Halesowen’s monastic site – one that now has been consolidated
and made accessible to the public, and is supported by an association of
‘Friends’.
In
the early 1990s what has been described as a ‘culture of formal accreditation’
emerged. This impacted upon recruitment, and led in some cases for students to
move from university provision to the WEA and others. As some feared at the
time, this has effectively become a point from which traditional or liberal
adult education went into decline, to the extent that we are now in a world
where departments with long and distinguished records are now either closed or
mere shadows of their former selves.
Unfortunately,
the sector more widely has been adversely affected by other changes as well. I
am sometimes prompted to think that what successive governments have developed
is not so much an education policy as a training policy in which the value of
learning and study for its own sake has been overshadowed by vocational
approaches, driven by funding mechanisms that serves the latter. What matters
now is provision that builds skills in direct relationship to employability.
None the less, there have been opportunities to maintain strands of provision
in these earlier traditions, but here, in some ways rather surprisingly, yet
another barrier has arisen. In both local authorities and the WEA the agenda
taken up has been to focus on socially and economically deprived communities,
but in doing so there has come a narrowing of the curriculum that is offered.
This has been the outcome of both funding constraints and moral judgements. In
some local authorities, such as Warwickshire, the focus is again broadening,
but it is not so everywhere. For instance, the WEA in the west midlands is no
longer the major provider that once it was as this kind of provision has
dropped out of favour, partly because of a particular interpretation of the
funding regime, but one that was driven by a consideration that such provision
was ‘elitist’ and effectively should not receive the same level of resource
provided to other areas of the curriculum offer. This is all the more
regrettable as it overlooks where the WEA came from, and what its programmes
were in the early 20th century. Of course, in all of this, both
providers and their funders have consistently ignored the ‘voice of the
learner’, although this is often so when the message sent is an inconvenient
one! The upshot of such trends therefore has been the erosion of the supportive
infrastructure that maintained this provision and which oversaw its quality and
continued development.
Government
has allowed this to happen, in the sense that it has generally overseen a
‘decay’ in adult education in England, but in doing so it has failed to
recognise how this effectively undermines some of its own objectives. I shall
briefly pick up on some of these points, and the direction in which it appears
that we are now travelling.
Let
me start with the world of Higher Education. One of the most significant
developments over the last two decades has been the extent to which local and
regional history has become established in Higher Education programmes,
particularly at postgraduate level. One suspects that it not only reflects
demand, but that the study of locality has now emerged free of its antiquarian
associations. This is, of course, a ‘good thing’, but in my experience it is
not without its problems. Notwithstanding the commitment of teaching staff and
the enthusiasm of their students, inevitably these MA programmes are driven by
student intake and fee income rather than the promotion of local history;
furthermore, it would seem that in some cases these have become referral points
for students who in the past would have joined ‘traditional’ local courses. In
reality, not all students wanting to pursue local history are best advised to
do so via the postgraduate route, but their options are often limited.
Unsurprisingly, the dominant agenda here is that of the institution rather than
that of the discipline or the student. I suppose that this was always the case,
but it used to be easier for teachers to utilise this agenda for the benefit of
their academic disciplines as well.
Opportunities
can still present themselves within the world of adult and community learning,
in what is now known as PCDL – Personal and Community Development Learning,
part of a category of work known as safeguarded learning with a funding
commitment of £210 million over the next two years. In reality this is an
inadequate sum of money, but none the less it holds out a possibility that some
Adult and Community Learning providers might still grasp, and indeed are.
However, this comes nowhere near to replacing what has been lost, not least
because the organising and academic expertise has often been lost and what may
now be developed in this area is contrary to what such providers have become
familiar with.
There
are some specific opportunities. We are well aware of the impact that
Information Technologies have had on the world, including education and
academic pursuits. Oxford has utilised this to good effect, offering local
history online. Local authority providers can respond to this trend as well, as
in Warwickshire, where both Family History and Local History courses have been
developed to link with the Internet and the research skills required. However,
we know the dangers inherent in this. The internet is not always trustworthy,
and often tutors have more expertise in IT than they do in local history. Nor
does it properly reflect the skills mix needed for local history studies that
we discussed earlier. It represents a ‘foothold’, but it again reflects the
weakened infrastructure that adult education has been left with. Unfortunately,
this is now being further weakened by the so-called ‘professionalisation’ of
the sector, the impact of which is to often exclude ‘experts’ from the teaching
of their academic specialisms.
Opportunities
have not entirely disappeared, but if they are to be built up it needs pressure
to be applied by the public, through local societies, and as users of your
local adult and community learning service. As in universities and parts of the
WEA, there no longer may be found specialist staff dedicated to the development
of the discipline, but they are dedicated to meeting the needs of their local
communities. It is therefore important that the local community puts its case,
and to do so with persistence. One has to be pragmatic however. The agenda that
will drive any development here will be one that relates to the achievement of
learner numbers, retention rates and fee income, rather than the development of
the discipline.
It
seems to emphasise for me therefore how particularly significant has been the
development of the Heritage Lottery Fund, with its vast range of projects and
its various offshoots. In the west midlands, since 1994 there have been more
than 1,220 grants made, amounting to some £200 million; within this
£3
million has been spent on projects involving oral history, cultural traditions
and community history, and £13 million has been granted to volunteer-led
community heritage projects. It is difficult to disaggregate from such figures
what proportion of this work might be recognised as local history, but one must
presume that this represents a substantial element. I guess that like me, many
of you have spent hours musing over lottery funding application forms, perhaps
wondering at times which would be the worst outcome – not to get the money, or
to actually receive it! A curious comment perhaps, but it is born out of the
frustration of attempting to work with someone else’s agenda, and one that is
not driven by either educational or academic concerns. It seems that over the
years the agenda that underlies LHF supported work has changed, or perhaps
developed and become more emphatic. Academic excellence and methodological
rigour, the nature of the enquiry and its intellectual context, take second
place to the social and economic agendas that the LHF sees as its primary
concern. Questions and monitoring are often more concerned about meeting
requirements related to skills outcomes, community participation, engagement,
dissemination, community resources and so on. Of course, it is not that local
history cannot meet these requirements. Some of you may recall Kate Tiller’s
article of 2006, ‘Local History brought up to date’, in which she highlighted a
project focussed on the 1930s Marsh council estate in Lancaster, and I
mentioned myself earlier a project in Wolverhampton that studied a suburban
housing estate. These and many other projects readily do so! But I would
suggest that what is revealed here is that the pursuit of local history is
being followed in the train of another agenda. Local historians have had to
learn to play a certain kind of game to get what they need, which can at times
leave one frustrated, as in such instances the pursuit of a local history
project is itself almost incidental, a mechanism that produces social outcomes
rather than educational or academic ones. On the one hand it is fortunate that
we are able to respond to such opportunities, and one cannot doubt the
importance of these inclusive agendas, but here I am speaking for the needs of
local history alone. Rather than having to twist and turn to tick various
boxes, we would benefit from a relationship that was more of a transparent
partnership where the benefits of local history are recognised for themselves,
rather than as a means of delivering on another set of priorities. Then we
might get past the situation where LHF funding is seen as the last resort, as
is sometimes the case in discussions that I have been party to.
Such
reservations and comments aside, in the real world that we must currently work
in, lottery funded projects will continue to have a prominent role. I think
that this has some further implications, linked to other trends that have
become manifest.
Outside
of academic departments (and even within some) it is difficult for ‘local
history’ to maintain the distinctiveness that once defined the discipline. This
is part of a popularisation process which has tended to break down the barriers
between various disciplines, driven in part by televisions approach to such
matters, but also a trend that some academics have sympathy with. The
cross-disciplinary nature of local history means that this is not necessarily a
difficult thing to address, but the point I want to make in this context is
also relevant to other distinct disciplines as well, such as archaeology. That
is, that we are all now widely regarded as a part of the ‘heritage’ scene, a
notion that has gained much ground in the last ten years or so, and this once
again brings its own complex set of agendas.
We
don’t have the time to review these here but some cursory observations might be
offered. Heritage generally has sought to interface with the social and economic
agendas that attract the interest of both local and national government. A key
theme in heritage is ‘identity’, and ‘sense of identity’, a theme which may
have major political overtones and operate on a national stage. It is not
difficult to see how local history might contribute to such matters. In the
United Kingdom, this theme more generally manifests itself at the level of
locality, and particularly in the building of sustainable communities. On the
assumption that people feel excluded from decision making about ‘their place’,
it is argued that community capacity can be developed through a sense of
community identity, perhaps not so much through knowing about the history and
development of a place, but by having worked communally to undertake a piece of
work.
Mention
should also be made here of another development that has been gaining ground in
recent years, particularly in heritage circles; that is, the rise of interest
in ‘public history’, very popular in America and Australia. This has been defined
as representations of the past shaped by the demands of the present, arguing
that knowledge is a social construction, the product of many rather than the
result of the trained mind of a specialist called a historian. The collective
and collaborative ethos of public history suggests that it will make increasing
inroads on our approaches to the study and interpretation of local history.
Linked
to these agendas is that of fostering responsibility and local accountability.
But there are issues here in that it presupposes a need for relatively
well-informed local communities, and appropriate fora within which to engage
and to respond. It is surely right that local people should have more of a
direct say in their locality – in the hope, by the likes of me, that
politicians and local government managers will be held more to account for the
decisions they make. However, if this is not facilitated, the opportunity will
be lost, and the perception of the historic environment as the preserve of the
elite will simply be reinforced. If that happens, particularly in the world of
Local Area Agreements, the historic environment will be the loser, as will be
the communities themselves.
Heritage
also tends, understandably, to position itself in relation to the local economic
agenda and the visitor economy. The tourism, heritage and culture industries
have been variously estimated to directly contribute between £50 and £75
billion to the economy, employing over 2 million people – that is, around 8% of
the total UK workforce. In Staffordshire, for instance, in 2001 the visitor
economy contributed some £678 million. Regionally, such figures can be
translated into 28,000 businesses with some 305,000 employees – around 12% of
the regional employment, and it is a sector that continues to grow. With a
contribution in the order of £4.3 billion in the regional economy, we can
estimate that at least 28% of this activity is heritage related. It is hoped,
of course, that realisation of this contribution will release money for maintaining
and studying our heritage.
So where does this leave us? We have observed
that the world which gave rise to academic local history within local projects
has passed, and as circumstances presently seem, there is little expectation of
recovering that world – if, indeed, we wanted to. Too much has changed.
However, what we have also seen is that local history is adaptable to the
circumstances in which it operates, capable of fashioning itself to reflect the
agendas of partner organisations and funding bodies. In this sense local
history survives and has reshaped itself for the modern world, but this does
not remove ones reservations about promoting the subject by riding on the coat
tails of others.
Of
course, it is not local history per se
that is at risk. It is strong in universities and elsewhere, and all academic
traditions are subject to change and development. More at risk is the ability
of people to engage with it; this has suffered with the demise of adult
education, partly as a result of government and funding agendas, and partly
because of policy decisions made by individual providers. One response has been
to look increasingly to lottery supported projects, now too important to
ignore, but where we might benefit from a national initiative to advance
partnership working with the LHF, seeking more coherent approaches and genuine
acceptance of the intrinsic value of local history studies, rather than seeing
it simply as a means of addressing objectives around social inclusion,
sustainable communities and community participation; not to disregard these
worthy objectives, but simply to reach a more equitable relationship with those
of historians, and the value of promoting academic research within communities
for its own sake, and for the values that Bernard Williams reminded us of. The
contribution made to the development of individuals is immense.
Nor
should the heritage agenda be ignored – this is also firmly a part of our
‘landscape’ in ways that it was not previously. Local history must be seen to
be a part of a sector of interests, and indeed it is one where the breadth of
our discipline facilitates natural alliances. Local groups need to nurture and
maintain links with other societies that have related interests, forging
alliances based on common interests and seeking to develop a united and
therefore louder voice on matters of shared concern. Local representation and
responsibility is, after all, what government says it wants to encourage. Such
confederations have the opportunity of developing wider strategies and entering
into discussions with statutory and other organisations. What is often needed
locally is the same as that nationally, a more effective mechanism for making
one’s voice heard. And not simply for lobbying, but for putting projects in
place around the country to demonstrate what is possible – projects that
recognise the legitimate priorities of other partner organisations, but not
where those of local historians are subordinated to them. While it is something
of a caricature to suggest that it was not always the case to some extent, it
is clear today that the initiative for local history must come from the
community rather than being generated by educational providers. However, we
miss the catalyst and facilitation that educational providers generally
offered, most acutely that provided through adult education. How do we fill
that gap?
I
sometimes wonder, at least as far as historical studies are concerned, if we
have to ‘re-invent’ adult education and deliver it in other ways, with leadership
coming from the specialist societies and associations at national and local
level. The local dimension is vital, as it is here that impact is required to
compensate for the deficiencies now emerging - to develop community awareness
and to look to the interests of history and heritage at the level of the
locality. Surely here the role of local societies, community groups and
regional groups is of the utmost importance, as the ‘communities of interest’
most likely to effect change at a local level.
Most
counties are well served by many active historical and archaeological groups,
many with long and honourable traditions, whose activities generally comprise a
combination of a lecture programme for members, and a series of publications.
In many respects such publications are the backbone of our discipline across
the country, and to describe them as invaluable contributors is no
over-estimation. But perhaps we now have to ask if this is sufficient? To what
extent are we engaging beyond our core memberships? And do we want to? Many
organisations in recent years have turned to developing ‘outreach workers’,
even such prestigious bodies as the British Library. In the past, this role was
effectively performed for us by a vibrant adult education sector. But as this
declines, can local societies take up this role?
I
would suggest that we have no choice in the matter, and that we are already
trying to respond. I turn to the Society of which I have the honour of serving
as its President. The Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society has
always been an active society, concerned to represent the wider interests of
history and archaeology in the area. Traditionally it has been a ‘doing’
society, with an active programme of fieldwork. From 1959 until fairly recently
it was engaged with excavations at the Wall Roman site, and with a survey of a
number of Staffordshire’s parish churches, partly with the intent of seeking
indications of Anglo-Saxon origins in the proportions of the extant buildings.
Most recently, with support from the Lottery’s Local Heritage Initiative, we
have embarked upon a survey of the Staffordshire parish of Shenstone. This work
is being undertaken with two sets of objectives in mind. Firstly, the academic
drivers of what it will add to our knowledge of landscape history in this part
of Staffordshire that might be compared particularly with work done in
Worcestershire parishes, and parts of the east midlands. But secondly, there is
an explicit aim of raising the awareness of the local community to the historic
environment in which it lives. More specifically, we hope to –
Thus,
as a society, we are trying to pick up some of the pieces that have been left
following the demise of adult education, although when we first started
planning this we thought that we might be complementing the efforts of adult
education and others rather than compensating for the lack of them.
I
should add that CBA West Midlands, which I currently Chair, are also in the
process of considering this agenda, in the hope that as a regional group a
structured contribution to the problem might be developed. But it is the case
that no local society, however enthusiastic, has the resources, time or
infrastructure to work in the way that an educational provider did.
So
where does this leave us? At the very least societies who wish to address this
agenda – and not all will - need to explore the ways in which they might work
more closely together. Important as they are, we need to be looking beyond the
notion of an annual local history fair or archaeology forum. As an
educationalist and medievalist, I would like to see again properly planned and
co-ordinated, accessible quality assured programmes that are capable of making
an impact. But perhaps those days are gone? Perhaps other more innovative
responses are called for?
I
am convinced that there is an important role to be played here by local
societies, working in partnership with others, such as regional groups, the
universities that are still committed to local history and heritage agendas in
the community, and perhaps the media. Let us work with the likes of Time Team
rather than abdicate responsibility to them. Although the nature of the
engagement is changing, I would suggest that local and national societies have
never been needed more than they are now!