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UKNEAFO WP5: Arts & Humanities Annex 2 - Additional Cultural Values work Report on ‘Additional Cultural Values Work’ Peter Coates, Department of Historical Studies, School of Humanities, University of Bristol, BS8 1TB: [email protected] 1 Contents Contents .................................................................................................................................................. 2 Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................. 3 Preface .................................................................................................................................................... 6 1. Introduction and report structure .............................................................................................. 7 3. Incorporating ‘non-use’ values ................................................................................................. 15 4. CES research without (before) AH researchers’ input .............................................................. 17 5. Contributions of individual subject areas and approaches within the Arts and Humanities ... 25 5.a. Environmental ethics and aesthetics .................................................................................... 25 5.b. Ecolinguistics ..................................................................................................................... 29 5.c. Religion and spirituality ........................................................................................................ 30 5.d. Creative expression and place .......................................................................................... 33 5.e. History, stories and narrative................................................................................................ 36 6. Digital cultural mapping: a keystone activity for CES work, with examples ............................. 41 7. Future AH contributions to CES research: challenges and potential ........................................ 52 8. Templates & Toolkits: Statement of Significance and Spirit of Place ....................................... 57 9. Creative practices and communication ........................................................................................ 60 10. Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 64 Appendix 1: AH Working Group Membership ...................................................................................... 65 Appendix 2: Related Workshops Attended by Coates .......................................................................... 66 Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................... 67 References ............................................................................................................................................ 68 UKNEAFO WP5: Arts & Humanities Annex 2 - Additional Cultural Values work Executive Summary The purpose of this Additional Cultural Values Work project (July-November 2013) is to review available materials on cultural values relevant to UK NEAFO from an arts and humanities (AH) perspective. As the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) explains on its website, the arts and humanities sector ‘covers an immense range of subjects: ancient history, modern dance, archaeology, digital content, philosophy, English literature, design, the creative and performing arts, and much more’. These subjects, AHRC emphasizes, ‘encompass all aspects of our lives - our experiences, identities, languages, histories, values - in fact, all those things that make us what we are. And they all play a vital role both in maintaining and improving our quality of life and the well- being of our economy’. Materials consulted comprise policy-relevant scholarly literature; grey literature such as technical reports and working and white papers, where available; and, most importantly, examples of down-to-earth, eminently tangible and deeply material practices and engagements, often in conjunction with land managers and environmental practitioners, that address concrete, useful and measurable values and benefits. Building on the two chapters (16 and 24) of UK NEA’s report dedicated to Cultural Services and Shared Values respectively, and in step with UK NEAFO’s WP5 and WP6, this report has two main objectives. Firstly, to locate and assemble information and knowledge on the ways in which values and benefits that are culturally grounded and shared emerge from environmental settings (aka places, localities and landscapes) that are time, place and socially specific. Secondly, to provide a set of instructive examples of work on cultural values and benefits that can assist with incorporation of cultural values into ES approaches to planning and decision-making. Site specific case studies, also a central component of WP5 and WP6, provide the best opportunity for the development of a consistent approach to CES research and the means to compile a database that can inform future site specific case work. The pursuit of novel empirical work was not part of the brief. Research that seeks to generalize and systematize knowledge about human relationships with place, locality, nature and landscape only gets us so far. Research conducted for UK NEAFO into values that are shared, social and plural highlights their ‘context-specific nature’, their status as ‘outcomes of local circumstances, of specific times and particular places’ and the ‘spatially explicit’ character of ecosystem services and benefits that are rooted in specific environmental settings, whose scale cannot be predefined: cultural spaces (places, localities and landscapes in which people interact with the natural environment and each other) host cultural practices (expressive, symbolic and interpretative interactions between people and natural environments, such as gardening, walking, painting and watching wildlife programmes) that yield cultural benefits (dimensions of human wellbeing that have come to be associated with these interactions between people and the natural environment) (Fish and Church, 2013). Moreover, arts and humanities perspectives are grounded in the ambiguity, variety, irreducible difference, contingency, unpredictability and incertitude of human experience. Highlighting their role is therefore a strength rather than a weakness, and paying attention to these qualities improves rather than impedes understandings of the values and benefits attached to ecosystems and environmental settings. The cultural benefits of ecosystems, though habitually described as ‘intangible’, ‘non-use’ and ‘non- monetary’, are just as tangible as the benefits associated with the other three categories of provisioning, regulating and supporting services, and no less material than water and timber. To access and appreciate the full range and depth of cultural ecosystem values, services and benefits, a broad range of perspectives, methods and tools is required. Non-deliberative (survey), deliberative 3 and participative methods yield data and insights on cultural values both quantitative and qualitative. Qualitative data are also clearly articulated, however, and arguably exercise their greatest authority, through a broad range of (non-deliberative and non-conversational) media and genres associated primarily with arts and humanities perspectives and methodologies. These include written texts, storytelling (including oral history), mapping, performance and visual forms such as film, artwork and photography. A number of these cultural forms will be discussed in connection with various recent UK projects that, though not consciously or explicitly conceived pursued within an ES framework, nonetheless demonstrate shared research interests. Though some values are over-arching as well as more strictly contextual, values identified as ‘transcendental’ (or ‘deeper’) are frequently place-bound, anchored in, rendered explicit and reinforced by particular places. Arts and humanities approaches confirm that cultural meanings, whether individual or shared/plural, reside primarily in specificity - the fine-grained, time-sensitive texture of the relations of particular people with particular places at particular times and for particular reasons. This case study approach remains particularly appropriate given the obstacles that benefits transfer methods face in the application of individual case study evidence across a range of heritage assets, whose distinguishing characteristic is heterogeneity rather than the homogeneity to which value transfer is best suited. Though the small scale of many case studies and the larger scales desired by policy makers can limit the transferability of data and outcomes, there may well be no alternative to the commissioning of a host of individual studies (including digital mapping projects) to the end of building up a databank extensive enough to capture the full spectrum of ecosystems, environmental settings, landscapes and places that supply CES. As AH scholars emphasize the importance of philosophical reflection and political critique, this report encompasses existing and potential contributions of individual AH subject areas to the filling of ‘knowledge gaps’ in our understanding of CES, and how AH perspectives and approaches can inform future research by raising fundamental issues. At

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