MESOC Serapeum | Where culture meets AI

Id		847
Author		Power A., Smyth K.
Title		Heritage, health and place: The legacies of local community-based heritage conservation on social wellbeing
Reference		Power A., Smyth K.; Heritage, health and place: The legacies of local community-based heritage conservation on social wellbeing ;Health and Place vol:39 issue: page:160.0
Link to article		https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84964330266&doi=10.1016%2fj.healthplace.2016.04.005&partnerID=40&md5=a30a56db25ef9cb4651b5b986c033258
Abstract		Geographies of health challenge researchers to attend to the positive effects of occupying, creating and using all kinds of spaces, including green space and more recently blue space. Attention to the spaces of community-based heritage conservation has largely gone unexplored within the health geography literature. This paper examines the personal motivations and impacts associated with peoples growing interest in local heritage groups. It draws on questionnaires and interviews from a recent study with such groups and a conceptual mapping of their routes and flows. The findings reveal a rich array of positive benefits on the participants social wellbeing with/in the community. These include personal enrichment, social learning, satisfaction from sharing the heritage products with others, and less anxiety about the present. These positive effects were tempered by needing to face and overcome challenging effects associated with running the projects thus opening up an extension to health-enabling spaces debates. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd.

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The findings reveal a rich array of positive benefits on the participants' social wellbeing with/in the community. .
There was some evidence of a growing sense of collective social wellbeing which stemmed from the projects amongst the wider community. .
And that was a relief, you know. .
These include personal enrichment, social learning, satisfaction from sharing the heritage products with others, and less anxiety about the present. .
Whether becoming involved in heritage is good for ones health is thus significant in this respect. .
Understanding the spaces being created and occupied by community-based heritage groups and whether they are likely to promote social wellbeing is important. .
Heritage conservation as noted above is by its very nature about generating a closer relationship with one's local area. .
From the above two comments, it is clear that heritage conservation can go some way towards helping people make strong connections with their local sense of place and to some extent help alleviate some present day anxieties. .
Moreover, these positive affects appeared to have contributed to wider experiences of belonging, engagement, and social wellbeing, with each tied to place overtly. .
For the first point, there were obvious benefits from being able to draw on one's love of history and place, in terms of building and sustaining one's sense of belonging, cultural identity and security in one's area. .
Our findings show that people can develop much stronger, long-lasting connections with their communities through the heritage conservation work. .
Moreover, we would argue that facing these challenges can have longer lasting health-enabling effects, given the wider collective sense of community, belonging, order, balance, stability and place which can be cultivated and sustained by researching and conserving the heritage of one's local area. .
There can also be health benefits associated with walking around between places associated with the heritage project. .
2. Researching heritage, place and wellbeing As indicated, the health geography literature has explored the beneficial physical and mental health effects of participating in a range of community-based activities. .
There was a clear awareness of the beneficial effects of giving young people an opportunity to become involved in the heritage research projects. .
For example, they can create mutually supportive atmospheres that can tackle social isolation and enhance people's quality of life and social wellbeing. .
Bringing people together Secondly, we were interested in the extent to which the social aspects of community-based heritage research were important in sustaining people's interest in the projects. .
The findings revealed a rich array of examples of gaining social wellbeing through interacting with others with shared interests. .
The positive experiences were tied up with firstly, whetting one's appetite and original passion for history and place; secondly, meeting other like-minded people and seeing wider community connections grow; and thirdly, seeing the final product come to fruition and sharing it. .
A treasured outcome reported by one participant was learning tolerance for people with different capabilities: It teaches you tolerance I think. .
Tracing these paths can inform how and where people become connected with, and forge connections amongst local heritage groups and how they use narratives to make sense of their involvement. .
Our rationale for working with the same groups was to draw on what they learned from the workshops and other experiences, to enable the creation of our mapping tool to help other communities become involved in heritage conservation. .
Community-based heritage conservation refers to the increasingly popular activity of coming together with members of the community to research local historical assets. .
Therefore the therapeutic effect can be extended to others through the sharing and interpreting of the heritage re-presentation. .
Heritage largely remains the preserve of cultural geography. .
The findings thus offer an early contribution to the way in which heritage is worked by individuals in their own practice and understanding that of others. .
Such work would help to uncover the true value of heritage conservation on health and wellbeing across the many different stages of becoming or staying well that are enabled or inhibited within a broader web of social, political and economic contexts..
Notwithstanding these limitations, the paper showed a wide range of positive experiences associated with community-based heritage conservation. .
Moreover, despite the heritage projects being predominantly led by older people, many in the wider community were able to participate and benefit too, through the active interpretation of exhibits and other products attached to the history of their local area and through attending talks and school workshops. .
Our focus was to represent how community-based heritage groups operate and to share the lessons learned. .
These groups accessed a variety of skills-based training workshops from the universities including archival searching and storing data. .
It also typically involves the creation of cultural products to conserve such heritage such as voice recordings of oral histories, poster exhibitions, heritage trails maps, books and murals. .
What emerged from the interviews was a commonly shared experience of valued social connections and the extent the projects brought people together. .
I can't complain cause Im really, really happy with the end product. .

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