I am very grateful to the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Stirling for awarding me a small grant from their Impact Support Fund to do some follow-up work on the Social Value Toolkit. The Toolkit is an online resource, designed to help heritage practitioners assess and work with the social values associated with the historic environment. It was developed based on the findings from my PhD research (University of Stirling in collaboration with Historic Environment Scotland) and launched in June 2021.
Over the last three years, the Toolkit has attracted sustained levels of interest, with over a thousand people viewing the site each year. Sector promotion includes the Council for British Archaeology (CBA), which features the Toolkit on its Resources page, the Association of Local Government Archaeological Officers (ALGAO), which refers to the Toolkit in its guidance on Delivery of Public Benefit and Social Value for Archaeology in the Planning Process, and the Heritage Trust Network (HTN), which includes the Toolkit in its online resource directory (accessible to members).
This short project (running May to July 2024) explored if and how awareness of the Toolkit is impacting on practice. It included an online survey, to help us understand who is accessing the Toolkit, for what purposes, how users are adapting and applying the guidance, and what further support might be needed, particularly for heritage and conservation practitioners.
Thank you to all the Toolkit users and potential users who completed our online survey!
The survey findings were shared as part of a dialogue with key heritage sector partners, from Scotland and the UK, on how we might collaboratively extend the Toolkit’s impact (for example, through awareness-raising, training/CPD activities, and embedding the toolkit into organisational processes and practices).
This project is part of a wider programme of research at University of Stirling focusing on the social values of heritage, which is spearheaded by Prof Siân Jones, who has worked in this area for over 20 years, and more recently in collaboration by Prof Sally Foster. It also has close synergies with a current research project, led by Prof Jones and myself in collaboration with the National Trust for Scotland, which is exploring organisation-wide approaches to the social values of heritage places.
Dr Elizabeth Robson 