This study adopts an interdisciplinary approach to interrogate a creative public history project commemorating Horton Cemetery in Epsom, Surrey - Europe's largest asylum burial ground containing around 9,000 unmarked graves. The 'Out of Sight, Out of Mind' project, supported by a Historic England 'Everyday Heritage' grant, facilitated numerous arts-based, historical workshops and a large scale, crowd-sourced memorial installation. Written qualitative feedback from nearly 300 participants is analysed through the imbricated and iterative theoretical frameworks of heterotopia (spatial othering), rhetorical space (discursive construction), place identity (affective attachment), and everyday heritage praxis (lived, community-based enactment). This case study demonstrates how creative and co-productive local heritage activities can surface marginalised histories, (re)animate rhetorical spaces, and contribute to place identity formation and future-oriented heritage imaginaries.
This article proposes the examination of the climate politics of labour unions, particularly the strategy of just transition, through the prism of environmental labour studies, an ecosocial approach to labour environmentalism. In the first part, it presents a historical overview in order to highlight how the just energy transition became a central element of labour environmentalism. The paper then examines the double impact of climate politics and just transition on labour environmentalism - narrowing its substantive focus while deepening the intersection of nature and labour within and beyond the workplace. The second part draws on the environmental labour studies approach to propose that labour environmentalism should take into account the inseparable relationship between labour and nature, expand the scope of work and workers, and account for global divisions of labour. In our view, such a programmatic shift will ensure that work and workers are placed centrally within ecosocial politics.
In the late 1980s football was in a state of crisis. Falling attendances and a genuine unease among potential spectators about going to live football matches suggested that, without radical changes, the game would soon become a minority spectator sport. Originally published in 1989, reissued now with a new preface, Football in its Place presented a new approach to the problem that concentrates on the spectators' experience of football and on the places where it is played. This approach recognizes four themes, which relate directly to the spectators' experience: spectator comfort; the need for effective crowd control; the problems of coping in emergencies; and variations in club cultures. A special chapter on football-related violence shows how this needs to be understood in relation to all of these themes and not treated as a problem in isolation. This was said to be the only way to reverse the spiral that had given rise to hooliganism. Finally, the authors discuss the options for the future on football. They emphasize that football is a recreational activity whose management should be treated as part of the leisure industry. All aspects of the game, its traditions, club variations and heritage, needed to be harnessed if football was again to be Britain's most popular spectator sport. Today we can see the impact that the points made in this book have contributed to how we continue to watch and enjoy football now.
nExamines the relationship between informal environmental interpretive experiences and formal environmental education. Similarities and differences are delineated and implications are drawn for the use of interpretive experiences in environmental education school curricula. The Informal Environmental Learning Checklist (IEL) is presented as a means of enabling teachers and interpreters to evaluate and alter informal learning experiences to meet student needs.
•We are concerned about JEVP's decision not to accept pure qualitative research.•Qualitative research provides important insights for environmental psychology.•Excluding this method limits opportunities for research with minority populations.•The decision may negatively impact scholars from minoritised backgrounds.•It may also limit interdisciplinary approaches to environmental psychology.
Heritage sites are complex environments that cannot be easily be located within a nature – built space dichotomy. Although a small but growing body of evidence supports the potential of visits to heritage sites in generating wellbeing benefits, there is a gap in understanding how such benefits may be related to the perceived qualities or affordances of heritage sites. We present an exploratory survey instrument designed and tested to generate empirical evidence on the association between the qualities of heritage sites, the restorative effects of a heritage visit, and the extent to which these are positively associated with self-reported subjective wellbeing benefits. The survey was given to sample of 780 visitors to 7 heritage sites in England from June to October 2020. Factor analysis of responses led to extraction of 3 core components related to how participants evaluated their experience of the qualities of place, and 2 core components linked to the restorative effects of the visit. Using these core components to create composite variables, regression models were fitted to understand which qualities of place and effects of the visit predict self-reported wellbeing benefits. The results suggest that different components of heritage sites may contribute to increase in positive affect and reduction in anxiety elements of wellbeing. They suggest potential therapeutic benefits of visits to heritage sites for self-directed visits, and thus potential means of sustainably delivering support for public wellbeing at scale.
This paper examines the convergence of national identities and war heritage, among first-, second- and third-plus-generation Australians. In Australia, interpretation of a First World War event, the Anzac story, is promoted as war heritage central to national identity. What meaning might this discourse have in today's multicultural Australia? Qualitative interviews were conducted with 93 adult visitors to the Australian War Memorial, 37 of whom had recent migrant backgrounds from 20 countries of origin. The analysis applied 'authorised heritage discourse' (AHD) as a theoretical framework. Visitors displayed three different orientations to an AHD that merged war heritage with national identity. The dominant group positively aligned with the war heritage/national identity AHD. In this group, national identity is reinforced by those qualities typically ascribed as being forged out of the ANZAC's experience. Those consciously aligned critique the mythological status of the Anzac legacy yet embrace it as important for national identities. Those resisting the war heritage/national identity AHD disrupt the often-assumed links between history, heritage and identities. These three orientations appear to be independent of the participants' country of birth or cultural background, showing the constructed nature of heritage and fluidity of national identities.
Environmental psychology seeks to provide a holistic account of the environment where the meaning captures the symbiotic relationship between the individual and their physical surroundings. If we are to achieve this, we need to understand how the environment 'speaks' to us and how we 'read' and interpret our environmental interactions. This paper begins by suggesting a model for understanding the relationships between environmental conditions, our psychological response to the environment, and how these might be mediated by the presence of other people. This is illustrated with two case studies from the UK, in which it is demonstrated that when a residential neighborhood is seen to be a high risk one in terms of crime, the perceived social order - either by the presence of the police or even by the types of residents who live there - mediates the messages communicated by the physical environment. The paper concludes by demonstrating that the physical environment provides 'affordances' which are the perceived physical qualities of a place that have the potential to facilitate people's physical and social activities. Affordances can be used by architects and landscape architects to not only reduce or design out crime, but also create social spaces that encourage people to use and enjoy the city.
The COVID-19 lockdown of society in 2020 deprived people of access to many heritage sites. This made the public uniquely aware of why they visited heritage sites and what they valued about the visits, once heritage sites reopened. In particular, regaining access framed visits in terms of personal agency and wellbeing. Notions of capability, social connections, ontological security, and trust - all important elements of wellbeing - were widely shared values. Heritage sites also offered distinct opportunities for combining hedonic (subjective) and eudaimonic (psychological) wellbeing effects. While heritage value cannot be reduced to wellbeing effects, we suggest that constructive awareness of how these effects may be generated can enhance the outcome of visits to heritage sites.