Well, it turned out to be quite a year for heritage in Wales. While there were occasions which provided cause for great optimism, there was a steady stream of reminders to highlight just how vulnerable our national heritage resource actually is. The sad truth of 2013 however, is that the real negative impacts will not truly reveal themselves until deep into 2014, if not later, as the creeping tendrils of fiscal cuts continue to slowly erode the foundations of museums and heritage organisations in Wales and beyond. Surely the most controversial moment of the year though had to be the Chartist mural debacle. I’ve promised myself on more than one occasion that I would just let the mural story go, but every once in a while we receive little reminders as to why the mural destruction was so symbolic. When Newport city council battered their way through with plans to obliterate the distinctive mural, they critically underestimated the sentiment of locals in Newport. Perhaps there were not thousands demonstrating against the council’s actions, but there were certainly hundreds, not to mention the odd Hollywood celeb to add to the mix. The anger regarding the loss of the mural stimulated a debate as to what constitutes heritage. Is a thirty year old wall mounted mural something that is worthy of protection? Is it part of the heritage landscape worth protecting? Opinion in Newport was clearly divided, with the city council making a concerted decision, that being that the mural was indeed not part of the heritage landscape, and certainly not worthy of saving. This though raises other more pressing concerns, namely what comes next? What else could a council decide to cast by the wayside in the name of development and gain? Perhaps our built heritage, in terms of castles for instance, may not seem under any immediate threat, but the heritage sector is in many respects standing on a precipice. Our museums are slowly being stripped down from the inside out, as budget cuts erode staff positions, education programmes and, in places, the very existence of museums in their entirety. Chapel heritage across Wales is gradually vanishing as more and more buildings fall out of use, while proposed developments seem to be encroaching closer and closer on to the edges of hillforts in Wales (not to mention Offa's Dyke), and it is questionable how close new buildings will get to rampart defences before new residents can confidently claim to actually live on top of an Iron Age fort. Sites and staff are threatened in a manner in which we have not experienced for several decades, and it should be an ongoing cause of concern for all in related fields. At the same time, Welsh Government moved ahead with its consultation on the Heritage Bill for Wales. Many will remember a similar white paper being drafted for heritage in the UK several years ago, before it was bumped in the list of priorities for a general election. Whether a similar fate awaits the Welsh Heritage Bill awaits to be seen, but at the very least government in Wales is actively discussing the future framework for heritage in this country, so the field is at least not being forgotten about. However, the poor old Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments for Wales looks set to buy the farm as a result of government involvement, despite almost everyone in public consultation stressing what an incredibly bad idea it would be to merge the RCAHMW and Cadw. While government is certainly focusing on heritage in Wales, the consequences may most clearly be manifest in the loss of another significant organisation. While the RCAHMW remains threatened, the archaeological trusts are fighting their corner, and the Archwilio application, developed by the four trusts, is a positive reminder both of the scale of the archaeological resources at our disposal in Wales, and the intent in this country to enhance public accessibility to those resources and archives. In this respect, Wales has forged a path as a world leader regarding accessibility. Few other, if indeed any nation, can boast the same level of access to historic environment records as Wales currently does. The next challenge is to make sure people know that they can access this information, and of course encourage potential audiences that this information is worth accessing in the first place, but perhaps that is a battle for 2014. For the moment, we can certainly welcome and celebrate the addition of Archwilio to the likes of the People’s Collection project. The real challenge for 2014 will be one of resilience. Local and national government have collectively lined up the culture sector with a succession of budget cut tipped bullets, and are only too keen to pull the trigger. What fate awaits the Newport medieval ship for instance? This internationally significant artefact is going to be evicted later this year, with no obvious home for it to go to. What happens to the Newport ship will probably serve as the acid test for the position of heritage in Wales for the rest of this decade, for if such an assemblage were to be lost to Wales, it would be an indictment on the attitudes of officials in this country regarding our heritage resource. Should the ship be saved, with an intention to display and develop, in a manner akin to the Mary Rose museum which dominated heritage headlines in 2013, then we might have some reason to be optimistic. That all awaits to be seen though, either way, some very significant decisions regarding the heritage of Wales will take place in 2014, and the ramifications will remain with us for much, much longer.
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Despite mixed signals regarding download rates and subsequent use, digital resources, frequently manifest in the form of an ‘app’, have become one of the most ubiquitous forms of heritage and museum interpretative tools in recent years. Now I’ve never held myself up to be among the most technologically advanced of people, and a phone that opened like an original series Star Trek communicator was wizardry enough for me for almost a decade. Equally, there was once an occasion where I hurled a book at a television in outrage at the perpetual references to ‘apps’ in television advertising. I did not give in to progression without some severe resistance. Yet, here I am today with my smart phone, upon which I can conduct the vast majority of my day to day business, and I love it – my inner luddite is screaming at me in protest I’m sure. As a result, I can now freely explore and take advantage of the growing range of heritage and museums apps, many of which are free to download. However, I’m still not particularly on the ball with things. The Archwilio app for instance is a classic. Launched just over a month ago, I was among those to be espousing the virtues of such a device, and naturally downloaded it on the day of release, and my new app sat proudly on the front page of my mobile phone...and there is stayed, untapped, unexplored, utterly redundant, for the following month. I can’t help wonder if this is the fate shared by many of our heritage downloads – can we effectively measure participation in relation to downloads? A question for another time perhaps. With the teaching year wrapped up, I have now had, at last, an opportunity to press the ‘A’ symbol on my phone, and finally give this app a proper run through its paces, and I was not disappointed. Some context here is perhaps necessary. Archwilio is a collaborative effort between the four archaeological trusts in Wales. The project looks to make available a digital archive of all of the archaeological sites and listed buildings located in Wales. Accessibility is at the heart of this project, and this arguably unique endeavour should be celebrated on principle alone – to make the entire national archive freely available, through mobile phone technologies, is a concept that must be applauded. The application is certainly promising. Again, I am no expert whatsoever when it comes to digital technologies. To the expert eye, this might be an utterly hackneyed effort at a mobile phone app, I simply would not know the difference (though I promise to expand my knowledge base on such resources over the winter period), but I have at the very least found it easy to use and make sense of, and, probably the most important result of all, I have learned about new sites because of it. Walking around Caerleon and Ponthir today, I enjoyed scanning the landscape to confirm the locations of previous excavations and find spots. It is important to note that Archwilio is far from complete. Checking up on some sites, including those I have excavated, I found odd gaps in the archive. Still, it is early days, and the resource is, or should be, continuously updated. The capacity for users to suggest sites for inclusion, additional information, and site images, is equally important, and reinforces the sense that this is not a prescriptive resource, but a participatory one. In terms of my test run, I discovered new sites in Ponthir, a community I walk through daily. Even visually prominent sites, such as the nineteenth century Baptist Chapel, were new to me. Having found the site marked on my Archwilio map, I then immediately swung by to visit the site. This alone must be seen as some sort of success for the app. The frustrated Pokemon collector in me would love to see some manner of check list, to tick off sites visited (after all, you gotta catch em all – excuse flashbacks to my youth), but this is far from essential. I’ll certainly be making generous use of this as I visit familiar and unfamiliar sites alike in the future. The potential of the resource is staggering and I would certainly encourage those with an interest in their surrounding landscape to at least have a look at Archwilio. It might not be the most polished app available, but as an open door to the archaeological landscape of Wales, Archwilio has no rival. Archwilio can be downloaded from google play, with more information available at the homepage. |
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