Photo by James Walker.
This year I helped organise the third annual East Midlands Heritage Awards. My remit was to jazz it up a bit and so came up with the theme of ‘Celebrating Creativity’. Rather than have the usual formulaic ceremony, we invited three poets (Lauren Terry, Hannah Cooper-Smithson, Aly Stoneman) a photographer (Chantelle Greenslade) and a filmmaker (Richard Weare) to interpret the winning entries. This had two functions: It gave the winning organisations something tangible to use in their promotion while allowing our ‘creatives’ to perform their work in front of an audience who regularly commission artists.
Photo by Nev Stankley.
The second innovation was the idea of a ‘confessional booth’ whereby we recorded Vox Pops from the attendees. These were then collated together to create a short film. The heritage sector runs largely on guts, good will, and bundles of enthusiasm in the face of adversity. We wanted to catch what it’s like working in the sector – the good, the bad, and the ugly – so that we, and others, can identify support needs. For example, one recurring problem for organisations is that due to budget constraints they don’t have enough staff. Nottingham Trent University has a placement programme through the ‘Humanities at Work’ module whereby they can provide placement students from across disciplines to fill a variety of roles.
I’d originally had the idea of a confessional booth for a literature festival, whereby guests could confess what trash literature they had been reading and I’d absolve their sins by suggesting a more demanding title. But like many things, I never got around to it. The Heritage Awards was the perfect opportunity to put this into practice.
For the last decade or so I’ve been working on literary heritage projects which have included mapping out Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (The Sillitoe Trail) a literary graphic novel (Dawn of the Unread) and I’m currently putting together a project called DH Lawrence: A Digital Pilgrimage set to be launched in 2019 to mark one hundred years since Lawrence’s self-imposed exile. I know how difficult it is to get funding and support and I understand the pressures and dedication required to curate and produce such projects, so I have nothing but admiration for the people in this sector. So to have 150 heritage professionals in one room to celebrate their various projects was an absolute privilege. I hope the ‘Celebrating Creativity’ theme helped them in some way.
The event was also an opportunity to work a bit more closely with Neville Stankley, my colleague at NTU. He’s done an incredible job for the heritage sector and so there’s a lot that I can learn from him. The other core members of our small team were Marc Lupson and Alice Turnbull. Here’s looking forward to next year…
The winning entries were:
Totally Voluntary – Nottingham Industrial Museum
Volunteer Empowerment – Heritage Lincolnshire
Engaging Children and Young People – Erewash Museum
Heart of the Community – Green’s Windmill Trust
Innovation – Chain Bridge Forge
The Wendy Golland Award for Quality Research – Hallaton in the Great War Research Group
Judges Special Award – Nottingham City Museums and Galleries
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