Heritage and Naming Rights: What's in a Name?

Is the name of a building part of its heritage? The Guildhall in Southampton, a grade II listed building, has been renamed the O2 Guildhall Southampton, to the consternation of some local residents. The focus of historical building conservation and listing is (unsurprisingly) on the material fabric of the structure. Yet the name can have special significance for the local community. We see this most starkly in sports stadia. In 2011, Newcastle United renamed their stadium the Sports Direct Arena, in a sponsorship deal with the sports clothing company, a move which some supporters described as "abysmal" and "a nightmare".

Names are, after all, a vital part of our heritage and identity as individuals, families, communities. We define ourselves by our names and the move towards commercial sponsorship of sports arena and entertainment venues, while making perfect commercial sense, sits uneasily with our innate need to define ourselves according to who we are rather than who funds us. And at its worst, renaming can just make us look silly...Spare a thought for the supporters of Merthyr Town.

Demolition of Chartist Mural in Wales Angers Local Community

A 1970s underpass mural celebrating the 1839 Chartist uprising in Newport has been demolished to make way for a shopping centre, prompting an angry response from the local community.

Despite a vocal campaign by local pressure group "Save Our Mural", the Welsh heritage protection body, Cadw, decided that the mural did not have sufficient special architectural or historical interest to justify listing (the key criteria under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, a process that would have saved it from demolition. Cadw said: "The quality of the building to which the mosaic is attached is poor and the underpass itself has no intrinsic design merits. [T]here [is] no specific association between the location of the mural and the Chartist uprising." The decision illustrates some of the key controversies with the listing process. The focus of the decision-maker is on the material rather than social value of the structure at hand. Here, Cadw seems to have looked through or past the mural itself and focused on the architectural quality of the structure to which the mosaic adheres rather than assessing the mosaic's significance on its own terms. Underpasses throughout Great Britain contain a large number of murals; they are, in a sense, a living part of our communities, at least prompting some sort of reaction from local people. The mural itself seems to have been overlooked. To say that there is no specific association between the location of the mural and the uprising seems disingenuous: the Westgate Hotel in Newport, where some Chartists had been imprisoned and to where the Chartist protesters marched to free them, is only about 200m from the underpass. The other interesting aspect here is the unresponsiveness of the local council to the feeling of the community about the mural. Economic development, in the form of a £100 million shopping centre development, has triumphed. Of course, not every mural, structure and building can be protected. Ossification is the danger of over-enthusiastic protection of everything from the past. Has the balance here been struck appropriately?

Skateboarders and Village Greens (continued)

The attempt to preserve the Southbank Skatepark (see earlier post) has hit a snag.  The attempt to achieve protection through ensuring the site is designated as a 'village green' has been rejected by the local council. 

The Council's legal basis for rejecting the claim is that the right to apply to have land designated as a 'village green' is excluded if it is the result of a 'trigger event', including planning applications.  That must surely be challengeable; the whole point of having these legal mechanisms in place is to provide for protection mechanisms when sites are under threat.  Has the law failed the skateboarders here or has the law been misapplied? 

Wandering Lonely Through A World Heritage Site?

Being a World Heritage Site is a prized status.  The Lake District national park authority and local councils have decided to push for the Lake District to be included on the list of World Heritage Sites.

This is as much a push for publicity and support as anything; the Lake District has been on the UK's Tentative List for Inclusion on UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites since 2001.   It is a fascinating example of a 'cultural landscape' though.  The claim that it has 'Outstanding Universal Value' (the key criterion for designation) rests on four themes: its rural landscapes and farming traditions; the prominence of the Lakes in the development of the Picturesque aesthetic; it's claim to be the cradle of British Romanticism; and the landscape conservation movement.  

There's a long time until the 38th session of the World Heritage Committee, in June 2014, when the next inscriptions on the list will be made.  Plenty of time for publicity and lobbying.

Heritage in Syria: Endangered by War?

As the world waits for some sort of international response to the Syrian chemical weapons attack, UNESCO will no doubt be anxiously considering the implications for heritage in Syria, including six World Heritage Sites. 

The very nature of most material heritage is that it needs money, time and care to preserve it for future generations.  The Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, said earlier this year, that “destroying the inheritance of the past, which is the legacy for future generations, serves no purpose except that of deepening hatred and despair and it further weakens the foundations for cohesion of Syrian society.”  UNESCO, the Syrian population and everyone who cares about protecting heritage will be hoping that Syrian sites do not suffer the same fate as those in Iraq and Afghanistan.  In the UK, the Chilcott Inquiry (set up to examine the decision by the British Government to go to war in Iraq) has heard from heritage organisations about the catastrophic impact of war on Iraqi cultural heritage.   In terms of the legal framework of heritage protection, the UK is still not a signatory to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its two Protocols of 1954 and 1999.  There seems little prospect of the UK signing the Convention any time soon.  Let's hope that cultural heritage protection features as a factor in the response to the atrocities that have taken place in Syria.

The Moo Man

There's a great independent film on limited release at the moment called, The Moo Man.

The tender film is a documentary about an organic dairy farmer called Steve Hook, who produces and sells raw, unpasteurised milk from his farm in Sussex.  Although it's an observational documentary rather than an overtly political piece, the point that comes through is the impact of economic and legal developments on the lives of dairy farmers throughout the country.  The milk industry was deregulated by the British Government through the Agriculture Act 1993 (which broke the buying power of the Milk Marketing Board).  The impact on rural heritage of the re-introduction of free market forces to the milk industry has been massive, with the buying power of the supermarkets forcing farmers to leave the industry in droves, even from farms that have been passed down through many family generations.  Here's an interesting take on the changes to the dairy industry, written by a dairy farmer.  And here are some personal stories of those who worked for the Milk Marketing Board in Norwich.

Is this over-sentimentalising what is, in effect, simply economic development and change?  Maybe.  But we should see heritage not just in terms of the archetype of country houses and World Heritage Sites.  Heritage is about what each generation passes on to the next and how we, the current generation, value and protect what has been passed to us.  Not all of that heritage is formally protected by law; indeed, some of its destruction is faciliated by the law.  Are we really doing enough to protect the countryside, and those who live and work in it?  Long live all the Moo Men who have to battle to keep their industries alive.

How to Bypass a Community

The Government has announced that the A47 Norwich Northern Distributor Road is being fast-tracked so that it could be open in less than three years.

Two interesting points here, from a heritage perspective.  First, economic development has trumped community and environmental concerns about the impact of the dual-carriageway.  The case for the road rests on the boost to the region from an improved infrastructure supporting projects such as Norfolk's emerging offshore energy industry.  The case against stresses the environmental damage that will result, including, "The impacts on bats and barn owls [which] give rise to the summary assessment score of large adverse."

What impact on 'heritage'?  Well, the Council says that, "Listed buildings are likely to be subject to only minor adverse impact related to visual and aural impacts of road building and operation. The historic parklands will suffer a greater degree of adverse impact caused by severance and road operation."  Here's the link to the full report.  
However, the impact on less obvious (and less tangible) community heritage receives little consideration.  Most obviously, there seems to have been little account taken of how local people feel about the impact of such a development on their communities.  The Business Case for the road glosses over this, noting only that the road will run close to "urban fringes typically consisting of relatively modern residential suburbs of rather uniform visual character."  Reaction from some of the affected local communities and environmentalists has been anger and dismay at the way in which economic development has trumped natural heritage and local community feeling. 
The second point is about the process of consultation.  The Government has designated the scheme as a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP), under the Planning Act 2008.  Section 33 of that Act states that NSIPs can go ahead without needing to go through the normal procedures for obtaining planning permission.  This has caused great consternation amongst local people, who feel that the Government is riding roughshod over their opinions and concerns.  
What substance is there to the Government's much-vaunted localism agenda, including making the planning system more democratic, when local communities are so easily bypassed?
  
   

Skateboarders and Village Greens

London's South Bank is a cultural haven, home to the National Theatre, the British Film Institute, Tate Modern, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, the Royal Festival Hall, Hayward Gallery and so on.  Lurking in a darker corner of the area, in the undercroft of the Southbank Centre is a skatepark strewn with graffiti, used by skateboarders for over forty years.

The site is under threat.  In March, the SouthBank Centre unveiled £100 million development plans to transform the Brutalist building and relocate the Skatepark.  Jude Kelly, the centre's artistic director, proposed building a new skatepark nearby but this was opposed by skaters who say they value the improvised nature of the space under the arts centre's brutalist architecture.

The campaign to save the Skatepark has gathered pace, uniting the unlikely combination of the National Theatre, English Heritage and the skateboarding community.  One interesting part of the campaign is the application by the campaign group Long Live Southbank to have the site given protected "village green" status under section 15(2) of the Commons Act 2006.  Under this provision, anyone can apply to the commons registration authority to register land as a 'town or village green' if "a significant number of the inhabitants of any locality, or of any neighbourhood within a locality, have indulged as of right in lawful sports and pastimes on the land for a period of at least 20 years".  The site seems, at first glance, to be far outside the the archetypal village green, but the High Court in March 2012 held that a tidal beach was capable of being a 'village green'.  Ouseley J noted that section 15 is not limited to a "conceptually traditional green...The law has always been more concerned with the character of the use than with the physical characteristics of the land over which the usage occurred." (R (Newhaven Port and Properties Ltd) v East Sussex CC [2012] 3 WLR 709, 721).

In a separate legal development, Lambeth Council has approved the application  by the campaigners to have the site listed as an "Asset of Community Value" under Part Three of the Localism Act 2011, making it a 'material consideration' when the planning authority hears the application for planning permission.

This is a fascinating example of how the law can offer some protection to a heritage site that has acquired cultural meaning not through architectural significance but through folklore, energy, youth, sound and passion.  

[Interesting also to note the the Southbank site includes the Waterloo Sunset pavilion, named after song by the Kinks.  And here's a link to one of their fitting songs: The Kinks - "Village Green Preservation Society".]

Welsh Medieval Laws Back in Wales

Following on from my previous post about controls on the export of cultural artefacts, one of the first medieval manuscripts written in Welsh has returned to Wales having been in America since the 1700s.

Here's another aspect to the relationship between law and heritage: the ownership and protection of legal documents that are in themselves 'heritage'.  In this case, the long, private ownership of the document seems to have led to great deterioration of the manuscript's condition.  Fortunately, the National Library of Wales acquired the funds to buy it, meaning it will now be stored appropriately and preserved.  

Who Owns Jane Austen?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a piece of literary heritage that is headed for the USA must be in want of an export licence.  American Singer Kelly Clarkson has bought a ring owned by Jane Austen and wants to take it home, but the British Government has imposed a temporary export bar.

Here's another way in which the law plays an important role in the definition and ownership of material heritage.  In the case of the ring, the Government's decision to bar export is based on the centrality of the object as a piece of British literary history.  But there are interesting questions flowing from this: who decides what objects to bar from export?  In England and Wales the task falls to the Export Licencing Unit (ELU) of the Arts Council.

The ELU's work brings into sharp relief tensions between competing interests in the ownership of heritage objects, which the ELU's guidance for exporters makes clear:

The purpose of the export control is to give an opportunity for the retention in this country of cultural goods considered to be of outstanding national importance. The system is designed to strike a balance, as fairly as possible, between the various interests concerned in any application for an export licence: the protection of the national heritage; the rights of the owner selling the goods; the exporter or overseas purchaser; and the position and reputation of the UK as an international art market ("UK Export Licensing: Procedures and Guidance for Exporters of Works of Art and Other Cultural Goods", 2013)

This is not the only object to be barred from export.  The government has also issued three other export bars, including one on an archive of letters belonging to Major James Wolfe, who became a national hero after his death at the Battle of Quebec in 1759 which saw Britain drive the French out of large parts of Canada. The 232 letters are valued at £900,000. A bar was also placed on the export of a collection of paintings, writings, charts, photographs and drawings documenting a 19th century British exploration of northern Australia valued at £4.2m, and a £5m single-seater Bentley racing car that once belonged to pioneering racing driver Sir Henry Birkin.

But does the system of export regulation inevitably bow down before 'market forces'?   Do the rights of legal owners inevitably trump the heritage claim of the nation-state?

Norwich and Norfolk Heritage

The city in which I live, Norwich, has a wealth of interesting historical buildings.  Each September, the Heritage, Economic and Regeneration Trust (HEART) organises the Heritage Open Days for Norwich and beyond.  This year there will be 208 free events, including open buildings, guided tours and walks, exhibitions and performances across Norwich, Thetford, South Norfolk, Broadland, Great Yarmouth and further afield.  These are great ways of seeing some of Norfolk's hidden gems.  Really looking forward to finding out more about Norfolk heritage.  For more information, click on the link http://www.heritagecity.org/hods/index.htm

Team America Strikes Again - Bombing the Great Barrier Reef

In an incident worthy of Team America: World Police', the US has bombed the Great Barrier Reef, a World Heritage Site:

US jets dropped four dummy bombs into fifty feet of water.  The incident occurred during a joint US-Australia training exercise off the Queensland coast, during which a planned drop of bombs on to a range had to be aborted, leading the jets to conduct an "emergency jettison" of the dummy weapons.

The incident draws attention to the legal status of World Heritage Sites: what practical legal mechanisms are there in practice to protect such sites?

Designation as a WHS does not, of itself, ensure that a site is protected: that's obvious from destruction of other sites, most infamously the Bamayan Buddhas.   The site of the Australian training exercise is in Shoalwater Bay, the coast of which is part of the GBR WHS. In 2005 the Australian federal government signed a long-term agreement with the US over the use of the Bay for military training.  The fragility of WHSs, particularly those of nature, is starkly exposed by reckless militarism.  Here's an article by the Global Policy Forum, documenting the impact of the US military invasion and occupation of Iraq.  

Fracking Hell

The British Government is to give significant tax breaks to companies involved in the extraction of shale gas through the controversial 'fracking' process:

Much of the debate about 'fracking' focuses on the environmental impact of gas extraction: environmental groups argue that fracking causes water contamination and earth tremors, as well as diverting attention from the need to develop renewable energy sources.  Another key question is, "What impact does and could fracking have on heritage sites and community heritage?"  These questions are being asked at the international level: UNESCO's World Heritage Committee has expressed concerns about the impact of fracking on the Gros Morne National Park in Canada. 

The tensions between economic development and heritage protection runs through the complex relationship between law and heritage.  Is law an agent of economic development or a mechanism for protecting community cohesion and tradition?  Can law be both?

These issues are explored in two good films: Gus Van Sant's 'Promised Land' (starring Matt Damon as the friendly face of capitalism) and the documentary film Gasland.

Fly Me To The Moon

Plans are afoot in the USA to turn parts of the moon into a national park:

 

A Bill before Congress (The Apollo Lunar Landing Legacy Act) would ""endow the artifacts as a National Historic Park, thereby asserting unquestioned ownership rights over the Apollo lunar landing artifacts."  

Lots of issues arise from this:

- the motivation behind the Bill seems to be to protect US property left on the moon from future 'space tourists'.  Items left there by successive Apollo missions include moon buggies, parts of the Apollo 11 lunar lander and, of course, golf balls.

- However, the US is a signatory to the UN's 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which provides (amongst other things) that "outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claims of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means."

- We have then a familiar clash between national claims to heritage and international mechanisms for heritage protection.  Here, in most spectacular and celestial fashion, is the tension between notions of "the common heritage of mankind" and definitions by nation-states to have ownership and exclusive rights over property.

Fortunately, unlike so many heritage-protection issues back on Earth, this one seems not to be a conflict in need of urgent resolution...

Gorillas in Our Midst

In local news, a gorilla sculpture in Norwich painted as Freddie Mercury has been removed outside the Forum in the heart of the city: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-23226366

The sculpture was part of a public art trail consisting of 53 life-size gorillas, created by Go Go Gorillas.

Lawyers acting for the Freddie Mercury estate have advised that the depiction of the distinctive yellow 'suit' worn by the gorilla breaches copyright.

The heavy-handed approach of the copyright holders raises interesting issues about how communities celebrate and express both their own local heritage and national history.  Many local people and tourists are enjoying the sculpture trail in the glorious Norfolk sunshine, but the dead-weight of intellectual property law has prevented a humorous sculpture from being enjoyed by the local community: local reaction has been overwhelmingly one of bemusement as to why such a sculpture, enjoyed by so many, has to be removed from public view.  

The art trail is also part of an effort to raise money for two charities: Break and the Born Free Foundation.    

Let's hope that the other gorillas can stay in place and that we won't have to say, "Another One Bites The Dust..."

And let's hope the blog-puns improve...

Earl's Court Demolition: A Case for Listing?

The famous exhibition centre and venue for some of the 2012 Olympic events, Earl's Court Exhibition Centre, is going to be demolished.  A campaign group is arguing agains the move and wants the building listed.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-23175255

Is there a case for listing here?  English Heritage's criteria for listing are:

Grade I buildings are of exceptional interest, sometimes considered to be internationally important; only 2.5% of listed buildings are Grade I

Grade II* buildings are particularly important buildings of more than special interest; 5.5% of listed buildings are Grade II*

Grade II buildings are nationally important and of special interest; 92% of all listed buildings are in this class and it is the most likely grade of listing for a home owner.