An 'Evening With' ICRT students and alumni

Just back from London where I spoke to a small but enthusiastic group of ICRT students, alumni and a prospective student (thanks for coming along Caroline - hope you enjoyed it!) about some of the consultancy work I have been doing. My last blog covered much of what I was speaking about: how we need community passion behind any attempt to develop heritage-based tourism, but that without the public sector's ability to mobilise and mediate between different stakeholders (and often also to provide core funding) such projects often fail. What was interesting to me was how the conversation towards the end of the evening took a quite unexpected turn, coming around to the issue of whether or not there is ever a business case for investing in heritage conservation from a tourism perspective. Having analysed the issue from a number of sides, we came round to the decision that whilst there is very rarely, if ever, a BUSINESS case, there is quite often a broader economic development case. In other words, the public sector's role is to intervene in a situation where there would be conventional market failure in order to ensure the broader benefits are delivered. My problem is that I know I've read all this before, but can't remember where. So it's off to the library for a load more research before I start updating my teaching materials for next year!

ICRT 'Evening With'

For several years it has been a tradition for ICRT staff, students and alumni to meet on the second Wednesday of the month to catch up with one another, share ideas and generally try to find ways to progress the Responsible Tourism agenda. Tomorrow evening's meeting at the Vintry, a wine bar near Bank underground station, will be no exception. From my perspective, however, it will be slightly different as I am the 'guest speaker' and will spend an hour or so talking about three recently completed consultancy assignments.

The first project is the Cycle Hubs project that we have just completed in Northumberland, working for 18 months to set up a suite of routes radiating out from the two market towns of Wooler and Haltwhistle. At a time when the UK government is very keen to push more and more responsibility onto communities as part of its'Big Society' movement, it has been very instructive to compare and contrast the differing attitudes in the two towns towards the creation of a legacy group that can take the project forward now that our initial seed funding has been exhausted.

The second project was the preparation of a business plan for the Scottish Fisheries Museum in Fife, a small but important museum with a nationally recognised collection relating to the fishing heritage of Scotland, and particularly of the East Coast fisheries which once employed tens of thousands of people. The museum has existed for some 30 years, has a core of local authority financial funding and yet still relies on volunteers for much of the labour needed to care for and present the collections to the public. There is a good cohort of volunteers at the moment including ex-fishermen, academics, accountants and marine engineers. But what is interesting is the way that these men (and they are almost exclusively men who are volunteers at the museum) gravitate towards the 'sexier' jobs of restoring and conserving fishing boats and sailing the boats (particularly Reaper, a historic sail-powered 'Fifie' fishing boat) to other ports up and down the East Coast. There is far less interest in the unglamourous jobs of staffing the till in the shop or catologuing the photograph collection. So even when there is volunteer support, it is not always easy to direct it in the most effective direction - I know many museum curators who are afraid to do anything that might upset volunteers and drive them away - better some input than none!

And the final project I shall be discussing is an evaluation I carried out for UNWTO of the Saudi Council for Tourism and Antiquities Urban Heritage Programme. In many ways this seems totally different from the others but there are similarities. In one of the flagship projects, Rijjal Al Maa, a village of four and five storey stone-built houses in the mountains of Aseer, a community-based group has been investing its own resources in the conservation of the historic core of the village in order to protect and preserve the traditional urban form. They recognise that this is not only their own heritage, but also that without their involvement, they run the risk of the state party diverting its attention towards other, equally worthy causes. In two of the other historic villages participating in the scheme there are other interesting issues arising - at Al Ghat north of Riyadh, much of the leadership has come from one family (related to the Saudi Royal Family by marriage) who have the resources to be able to invest in the restoration of their original home in the village, thus setting an example (and challenge) to others in the area. And in Dhi'Ain in Al Baha province, ownership of the whole village has been transferred into a trust so that the conservation and re-presentation of the village for tourism purposes can be delivered effectively and to the highest standards.

No matter where I work as a consultant, I constantly am faced with new permutations of the community:state party relationship, and feel that there is still much that we can do in this country to learn how to make the most of community passion for heritage.