Heritage Management

The ways in which we understand and manage ‘heritage’ are changing rapidly, while the physical remains of our past – buildings, landscapes, city streets, archives, artefacts and archaeological sites – and the intangible associations of tradition, language and memory continue to shape the ways in which we live our lives.

Why study Heritage Management ?

The course offers a broad basis for developing your skills in heritage management, and will reflect both your needs and interests and the changing nature of the sector itself. It has been designed to provide everyone with a common starting point, but it also offers a chance to explore particular themes and to become involved in substantial pieces of work.

“I want to know the relationship between this wooden object ... and where it has been. I want to be able to reach the handle of the door and turn it and feel it open. I want to be able to walk into each room where this object has lived, to feel the volume of the space, to know what pictures were on the walls, how the light fell from the windows. And I want to know whose hands it has been in, and what they felt and thought about it – if they thought about it. I want to know what it has witnessed.”    Edmund de Waal, The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance (Chatto & Windus, 2010)

The hare with amber eyes – a tiny Japanese netsuke – is part of de Waal’s personal inheritance, knotted into the threads of family and world history, but the questions he asks of it belong to us all.

We will ask these questions of historic buildings, museum collections, parks and gardens, archaeological sites, public and private archives. We will consider the ways in which these resources are managed, presented and explained, and explores these through a series of encounters with heritage practitioners and heritage places. What challenges are heritage bodies currently facing? What choices do they make in dealing with them? How will pressures on public funding for heritage in the UK – and further afield – shape our experience of visiting and working in museums and heritage sites in the future? And how will our wider understanding of heritage change as a result?

Trying to answer such questions provides a framework for practical work in the sector, underpinned by hands-on, supportive teaching. As well as thinking about heritage, we want you to become involved in a range of projects, working with our extensive range of partners, and to gain experience on the ground.