The Maltings Boxing Club was abuzz last Tuesday after being packed out for the Your Place postcard project exhibition, filled with York locals who turned up to view the outcome of our heritage and arts community project. The purpose of the project was to explore and critique the current heritage-practice concept – the sense of place paradigm. This first post, in a two-part blog post reflecting on the project, will introduce how and why we set out to investigate this idea in York (sprinkled with pics from the event!).

Photo: Nicholas Mallinger
In scholarly thought, the study of individual/group identity and heritage, is inextricably linked to, and cannot be separated from the study of place. The idea of a sense or character of a place, describes the relationship between individuals or community groups and how they value their surrounding environment. These values are informed by a historic relationship inherited from previous generations, as well as a present relationship, a product of living and experiencing the world in the present day. As such, any attempt to characterise or judge a particular sense of place, requires both the study of past value/experience in the historic environment, as well as an appreciation of the places valued by present day society or living memory.
In current heritage practice, the idea of cultivating a greater sense of place, through exploring the historic value of place, underscores the fundamental way in which practitioners believe the past is made relevant to the present, and indeed constitutes the raison d’etre for why we study and preserve the material traces of the past at all. It is felt that through better understanding how and where values have been forged in a certain place over time, causes us to greater appreciate or find renewed meaning within our surrounding environment.
This link between a place, its history, how we value it, and our sense of well-being, is the bedrock of English Heritage governance:
What people think and feel about where they live, their sense of place, affects not only their own lives, but also the wider community. People who feel more positive about their area are likely to have greater self esteem and identity, this can bring wider social benefits such as stronger and welcoming communities, where individuals and groups are more likely to be actively involved in local decision making. New research, Heritage Counts, shows that living in historic areas, and perhaps more importantly, participation and interest in the historic environment has a positive impact with how people think, feel and identify with where they live, their ‘sense of place’.
Indeed over the past decade, this idea of ‘sense of place’ building, has reached the forefront of national policy in town-planning, (articulated through The National Planning Policy Framework, the most recent mandate for guiding future sustainable development in the UK), as an imperative for achieving sustainable social improvement and localism. It is under the banner of this cause, that local authorities have been embarking on development programmes centred around revealing or highlighting the value of local places, with aim to greater increase a sense of pride, belonging and community.
In some places, this mandate is having very obvious, intervening, visible effects on local communities, particularly in instances of urban regeneration, where there is a trend in selecting certain aspects of local history to re-brand areas in need of renewal. Take for example, the Royal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames, who as part of their Local Development Plan aim in 2008, to develop Kingston as a centre for ‘creativity, culture and tourism’, is choosing to focus on its royal connections, as the coronation seat for early Saxon Kings of England to build a new cultural quarter, in the area around its historic assets, such as the Kings coronation stone, and its Ancient Market Place (SEE: Ancient Market Place Enhancement Project ). Another example includes Egham’s current plans to revitalise its centre using the branding of “the gateway to Magna Carta country” (SEE: BBC NEWS, 2014).

Photo: Nicholas Mallinger
However, this incorporation of aspects of local history into the town aesthetic is only one of many ways of developing a sense of place. Whilst undoubtedly this method has its benefits for civic pride, this government-led dictation can be seen as slightly problematic in its top-down, authorised approach to building a sense of place – often focusing on places of national importance, selecting them as valuable according to their ability to speak solely to popular historical narratives, in order to serve the public interest economy which consumes them (most commonly, a tourist trade).
The implications of a touristic focus on building a sense of place can result in the flattening out of narrative, and of values, in favour of its historical associations, as opposed to its relationship with its modern day communities. This is quite evident in York, which as a historic city, reliant on its tourist pulls, and with strict preservation enforcements, has a tendency to develop and advertise itself around historic narratives of the Roman, Viking and Medieval, and according to its iconic monumental landmarks, such as the Minster, Clifford’s Tower and the Walls.
To this end, the Your Place postcard project aimed to offer an investigation of sense of place from a different perspective. We sought to capture the relationship of York’s modern-day inhabitants, to the places which they value as a part of their individual heritage in York. Our intention in this exercise, was to expand the vocabulary of places of heritage, away from the many listed monumental buildings of abstract historic value, to capture how living people are crafting their own sense of place and heritage, in the modern day, and in so doing, draw an alternative geography of York.

Photo: Nicholas Mallinger
The postcard project asked people to draw, write, annotate or otherwise express a place in or around York that is significant to them. (This artistic exercise also spoke to a secondary aim, to provide people with an outlet for expressing and recording their sense of heritage, as well as encouraging people to disassociate the term heritage from purely the iconic and the ancient, to something which belongs to and is built by them). We worked alongside local community groups – The Alex Lyons House, the Tang Hall Community Centre, the Hope Café, York College, York St. John’s University, the Spoken Word, the Arts Barge, the University of York, York College and York libraries, and with their help collated just over 150 Postcards. Ranging in tone from the anecdotal, funny, poignant, jubilant, and quotidian, each postcard stands as a testimony of a heritage value, and sheds new light on the relationship of places in York to its modern-day inhabitants.
In the next blog post, we will publish all 150 of these postcards, alongside some of our thoughts and reflections. Admittedly, this cross-section represents but a tiny percentage of the York population – whilst our exhibition was aimed at promoting an awareness for exploring alternative approaches to sense of place, the Your Place project represents an on-going effort to re-examine this concept, through capturing people’s postcard values. If you would like to contribute a postcard of your significant place – please CLICK HERE, to receive yours in the post for free! In the mean time we would like to say a massive thank you to all who came to the exhibition last Tuesday, as well as the Jack Raine Foundation for so kindly allowing us to use the Boxing Club, and an even bigger thank you to all those who brought the project to life by contributing a postcard to the cause. We greatly appreciate the time and thought that went into every postcard, each is a work of art in itself.
Stay tuned for the next blog post!
– Flo

Photo: Nicholas Mallinger

Photo: Nicholas Mallinger

Photo: Nicholas Mallinger

Photo: Alex Powell

Photo: Nicholas Mallinger

Photo: Alex Powell

Photo: Nicholas Mallinger