Exploring how activism, citizenship and and the politics of representation transforms the concept of heritage in the public space

The project will enhance understanding about, and facilitate change in, the ways in which public space is used as a forum for conversations about ‘British’ heritage and values. To this end the OSC will address the following questions: 

• How is public space – and particularly urban public space – used as a site for active citizenship, emotional and political engagement?
• How is this achieved through linguistic and semiotic means?
• How can a framework be developed, which will be of use to community organisations, to understand how national and cultural heritage is constructed and communicated in the public landscape, how people engage with, contest and debate this, and how grassroots groups can contribute to shaping it?
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The OSC will draw upon and further develop a number of collaborative projects we have run on cultural representation and social activism, including the in/visibility of the Black presence in the heritage landscape and the use of public space for grassroots political activism, which have introduced and proposed ways for citizens to take an active role in shaping images of British heritage through the linguistic landscape. These include ‘Bearing witness to the Black presence in the linguistic landscape: blue and black plaques as sites for active citizenship’ (2022/23) funded by BAAL (£2974) and TEF (£1536), which examine practices of contesting past understandings and challenging discriminatory discourses in the linguistic landscape of London; ‘Political activism and the linguistic landscape: Or, how to use Public Space as a Medium for Protest (2023, Multilingual Matters); the conference ‘Writing Place: what haunts the landscape of modern Britain’, Senate House, in association with the Institute for English Studies (2023); and OpenLearn content on ‘Is the blue plaque scheme still relevant?’ (https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/is-the-blue-plaque-scheme-still-relevant).