When: Friday 29th June 2018, 12:00-19:00
Where: Room M416, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, NW1 5LS
A half-day symposium bringing together diverse research currently being undertaken at the University of Westminster School of Architecture and Cities exploring the intersections between heritage, identity, politics and the built environment.
Keynote by Liza Fior, MUF architects, on the Venice Biennale and Robin Hood Gardens as a heritage artefact.
Everyone has history, but do some have more heritage than others?
If heritage is the process by which social histories are elevated into the narratives that form collective identities, communal, cultural, national, then heritage is about power, authorised and validated by certain social, institutional and state actors. At its most powerful, it is, as Stuart Hall says, the mirror of the nation, and those who are not reflected in it, can never belong to that nation.
With the revisiting of Britain’s colonial and slave-trading history, for example, there is growing awareness that heritage is contested and that we may just be entering foothills of cultural decolonisation. Heritage, thus, could be central to negotiating difference and diversity; it is a hot topic, the subject of government agendas, cultural projects, and identity politics. It remains, nonetheless, a fluid and contested term; what is heritage, who makes it, how is it made, who is it for?
Free admission. More info and bookings: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/heritage-and-identity-tickets-46386694853