As in her other writings, Waterton raises excellent and critical questions in this book.  Some of these are of immediate relevance to interpreters:

1) Are we including people, or are we assimilating them?

In interpretive speak, what Waterton is concerned with here is target audiences: those audiences that are under-represented, and often considered to be ‘excluded’.

In policy terms, this is the concept of social inclusion.  After reviewing the introduction of the concept into policy and legislation, Waterton goes on to examine the discourse surrounding social inclusion, and the organisational practices that flow from it.

The conclusion that Waterton reaches should give all heritage managers and interpreters some serious food for thought: rather than ‘to include’, Waterton argues, what these practices are currently doing is to force the dominant culture’s heritage values onto the ‘excluded’.

2) Is there such a group as ‘the excluded’ in museums and at heritage sites?

This may be a hard question to face for many interpreters.  Identifying target audiences is still uncritically proclaimed as best practice by many, and yet Waterton argues that perhaps, the ‘excluded’ simply do not care about this particular heritage.  It may not represent them, and it may not reflect their own view of what constitutes heritage or how it should be presented and used.

Therefore, Waterton suggests, practices that claim to be motivated by social inclusion, or making heritage accessible to the ‘excluded’ and underrepresented, are actually deeply hegemonic.  She writes, ‘…to presume that everyone can or should share in an elite, class-based and white vision of heritage is to take unwarranted liberties with many peoples’ sense of identity, place and belonging.’

3) Is it fundamentally arrogant to presume that we are ‘educating’, and building bridges or creating connections between ‘visitors’ and ‘sites/objects’?

Underlying Waterton’s argument is her assertion of the existence of an Authorized Heritage Discourse (AHD).  In summary, the AHD is a view of heritage that is based on materiality and dependent on expert definition and care.  In Waterton’s opinion, neither is justified.  For one, Waterton argues that heritage is a discourse: it is made, shaped and changed by people and their interactions with materiality.  Because of the nature of heritage as discourse, however, Waterton writes, heritage is ‘inherently exclusive’.

For interpreters, this immediately raises another challenge.  At the core of many definitions of interpretation are images of ‘bridges’ and ‘connections’.  In fact, the most frequently cited mantra in interpretation has ‘to relate’ as its focal point [1]. And yet, such an approach to interpretation quite obviously denies the (discursive) participation of ‘visitors’ in making heritage.  It seems to me that in interpretation, we therefore still practice what Waterton calls assimilation and hegemony.

4) Do we have a clue what we’re talking about?

Waterton criticises that policy and legislation make a link between heritage and social inclusion without actually understanding this link, or how it works – if it exists at all.  Consequently, she calls for further research that provides real evidence for the relationship, or lack thereof.  To some extent I suspect that Waterton hopes that such research will also provide the sort of persuasive argument that no theoretical writing or discourse analysis alone can achieve.

The same applies to interpretation.  The claims are many: interpretation helps protect sites, it adds value, it helps people connect.  But does it?  How do we know?  And how does interpretation achieve this?  There are plenty suggestions of how to go about it, but as far as I am aware the hard summative evidence is lacking.

I think the field of interpretation can take a lot from Waterton’s book and her other writings.  From research to discourse analysis, here are all things that will be worth looking at.  Some of it I imagine will be painful, but I would hope that rather than resist a good session of healthy self-examination, we apply that most important of interpretive qualities: to be open-minded.

Notes

[1] I am, of course, referring to Freeman Tilden.  I’ve already written elsewhere that I think we should give Mr Tilden a well-deserved rest.

For me, this project is a perfect example of interpretation as a facilitated process.  The project has several stages with associated activities, which my team and I will facilitate [2].  This isn’t a one-way street where we impart knowledge about the site to the young people.  Rather, we set the parameters of the activities, and within these, the young people are very much in control. [3]

Creating the young people’s area at the end of the project is actually the ultimate expression of and participation in the heritage of the site.  The reason is this: my site is all about social empowerment and making your mark on the world around you.  It is evident in many structures that are in the historic park, and by adding their own structure, young people will visibly stake their claim to this heritage, add to it, and hopefully carry it into the future.

In other words, through this project young people won’t just learn about the heritage values of the site: they will actively perform them. [4]

I’m hugely excited about this, and I hope HLF will fund the project.  I always try to ensure the interpretation I offer is facilitation, but this is not always possible to the extent that it is with this project.  It will be very interesting to see whether young people truly connect to the heritage of the site, and see it as their own, as a result of this project.

A project like this is of course not feasible for a visitor who can only spend a limited time on site.  However, I think even these visitors will benefit from the project.  In interpretation, we often talk about ‘a sense of place’, and I think the best sense of place I can give other visitors is by facilitating the (heritage) community telling their story to these visitors directly.  That’s one activity in this project (the young people will produce a ‘traditional’ piece of interpretation), and the young people’s area will be another aspect in this.  I believe that although these visitors will not have participated in the interpretive process, the outcomes of this process, such as the young people’s area, will tell a story in themselves.  I think that a word or two about the project (e.g. “In 2012 the young people of the community created this area as their contribution to the community’s heritage of social empowerment.”) will give visitors a stronger sense of place than many other interpretive interventions could do.

Notes

[1] In summary, the project aims are about helping younger people understand the heritage values of the park, and what their place is within that heritage.  The project also aims at empowering young people to share that heritage with others.  And there are several project activities aimed at increasing exchange and collaboration between young people and older members of the community.

[2] In summary, the activities are 1) researching the history of the site in collaboration with existing community groups; 2) making a creative response to what they’ve found in the research, and organising an exhibition of this work; 3) speaking to former mayors of the town about what it meant to them to serve the community in the tradition of the many Labour politicians that started their career here; 4) working on a traditional piece of interpretation of their choice for the benefit of other visitors, and 5) creating the young people’s area.  It is envisaged that participants can leave/join the project at every new activity/stage.

[3] This ‘self-guided’ and explorative learning is at the core of not only the new Welsh curriculum, but also the Scottish one – and I daresay every curriculum in the UK and probably even elsewhere.  And it is an important aspect of the HLF funding programme.

[4] That’s my hope, anyway.  Of course, it all depends on whether we get the funding, but if we do, we’ll also do a baseline survey and evaluation throughout to measure the ‘impact’ of the project as much as we can.

Heritage is about people…

My current site is of high regional (Welsh) architectural importance and of low national (British) historical importance.  But that’s not why the community (local and beyond) value it.  To them, the site is entirely of social value: it represents their own social empowerment over many, many years, and it acts as a focal point for community life.  That is why people care about this site.  That is what gives it its sense of place.  Architecture and history are just a bonus.

…and it is people’s values that we need to interpret

We could put together a stunning interpretive programme on architecture, but if that’s what we focussed on we would entirely miss the point.  Our local stakeholders would rightly question our ability to manage the site, and we would send our visitors from further afield away with no understanding at all of why the site is actually important.  Therefore, our interpretation needs to focus on what the community value about the site – see above.

Heritage is about identity…

The town that surrounds my site is one of the most deprived wards in Wales – and it shows.  However, the site itself is stunningly beautiful, and by its sheer physical presence in the centre of town it goes a long way to illustrating who the people of the town are.  It is not just about one particular moment in (historical) time; rather, it is about the entire experience of life that spans the history of the site. Anytime I talk to stakeholders I feel that this is where their passion for the site comes from: the site tells of prior hardships, and of the town folk’s empowerment.  It is this sense of empowerment, and the pride that flows from it, that folk enact every time that they come to the site.

… and interpretation should facilitate this enactment of identity

I should qualify what I’ve just said: it’s not ‘folk’ per se that have this sense of identity associated with the site.  It is the older generation.  Many youngsters have fond memories of spending time in the park, but few – if any – of them benefit from the positive identity that the older generation enact on site.  So while youngsters appreciate the site as a place to hang out in, without further facilitation the site can’t help them develop their own identity as members of this particular community.  I daresay that they cannot make sense of the dilapidated state of their town, and the existence in its centre of a tranquil, and attractive property – nor can they make sense of what the older people are so very proud of.  So this is what I want our interpretation to achieve: to help all members of the community, young and old, to experience this sense of empowerment that has shaped the site and the town over time, and to participate in it.  And in doing so, I hope that our interpretation will inspire young people to carry this empowerment into the future and to contribute to the town’s revival.

Heritage is about passion…

The majority of our stakeholders are truly passionate about our site.  In our case, their passion is primarily centred on a sense of ownership.  The site is theirs, as they continuously state, and of course they’re right.  The sense of ownership is intimately connected to the empowerment that the site represents; the community have shaped the site for over one hundred years. And in my mind, this passion is what it’s all about.  In managing the site as a heritage site, we need to place this passion at the centre of all we do.

… and our interpretation needs to be passionate

I have always been a firm believer in emotion in interpretation, especially if it is emotion that is at the core of the heritage value in question.  So at my current site, it is definitely this passion, this pride in ownership and empowerment that I want our interpretation to inspire.  I want people – local stakeholders and visitor-stakeholders, young and old – to be moved while they engage with the site through interpretation.  Only then will we have done justice to why the site is important.

Notes

[1] Of course, this hypothetical recreation ground may have a heritage value also, but for argument’s sake, we imagined it as having no relevance to people whatsoever.

Take for example an article by Henker and Brown that was published in the Journal for Interpretation Research earlier this year [1].  Their study set out to ‘compare the effectiveness of three interpretive formats’ (online and on site podcasts, and personal interpretation).  They used the following measures for effectiveness [2]:

• Enjoyment,
• Knowledge gain, and
• Conservation support (behavioural change).

They didn’t offer an explanation for why they chose these particular measures.  However, from their introduction, it’s quite clear that these measures are directly related to how they define the aims of interpretation:

• Inspire visitors (although it’s not clear in what respect),
• Make a connection between visitor and resource, and
• Elicit support for conservation.

But herein lies the crux of the matter: Henker and Brown don’t spend any time on showing just why we should accept these as the aims of interpretation.  Do they really capture what interpretation is about?  Or could it be that this is interpretation – but only under certain circumstances?  Is there not also a long list of other, hugely important aspects (under certain circumstances) that determine what interpretation is (or should be)?  Why were these left out?

Please don’t get me wrong.  What Henker and Brown have listed are legitimate aims for interpretation.  In fact, I’m sure they are the aims that we would find most often asserted if we were to do a count across interpreters’ discussions and our literature. However, without further explanation, these aims just don’t satisfy me.

Let me elaborate.  In a nature preservation area with endangered flora and fauna, conservation is an obvious aim for interpretation (or is it – see note 3?).  At my site, however, this is much less the case.  For us, the objectives focus on bringing the site back into the heart of community life, and giving a sense of pride to the members of a community that has been thwarted by economic decline for decades.  These, therefore, are our measures for interpretive effectiveness.  Behavioural change or even knowledge gain are really not that important.

Would you argue that therefore, what we do at my site isn’t interpretation?  I know some interpreters that would, but as you can guess, I’m not one of them.  I also don’t think that such a narrow, original definition of interpretation (in terms of the nature conservation origins of interpretation in the US National Park Service) will carry the discipline far.  It’s certainly not what an architect, a teacher, or a marketing professional would be concerned with – and these are the professions that too often are still used within organisations to provide ‘interpretation’.

So to come back to my original question: what makes interpretation effective?  Well, it depends on what your aims and objectives are.  Make sure you can show that these suit your site, and why. Then choose your measures of effectiveness accordingly, and with any luck (and an interpreter’s expertise) you will have provided effective interpretation.

So here are my thoughts on the future of interpretation (and also: the interpretation of the future):

1) The interpretation of the (immediate) future will be resource-aware

Whether we like it or not, the immediate future of interpretation will

be shaped by the harsh reality of diminishing heritage budgets across the board.  It’s no use dreaming up all-singing, all-dancing interpretative solutions when we can hardly even afford to reprint our site leaflets today.

Therefore, resource-aware interpretation will necessarily take us back to basics.  On site level, this is about looking at what’s visible, and how we can use that as-is to achieve our objectives.  For example, a smart visitor flow that builds up a story through guiding visitors strategically past visible traces can eliminate many a panel that is intended to help the visitor ‘imagine what it was like’.

On the level of interpretative media, resource-awareness will force interpretation to go back to the essential questions of why a site (or object) is important, and to whom.  Now it is necessary to get to these answers as quickly and with as little intervention as possible.  Layering of media will still be desirable, however, a mere duplication of content will no longer be enough.  Every word (picture/sound) must count for every visitor.

Resource aware interpretation will also need to reach out to the communities whose heritage we seek to interpret [1].  Under our professional facilitation these communities may provide us with most of what we need for good interpretation: research, editorial advice, artefacts, artistic expression, materials, and most importantly: their time and energy.

2) The future of interpretation will be benefit-driven

It is becoming more and more obvious in national and international legislation that heritage, and with it heritage interpretation, are expected to actually deliver benefits.

These benefits go far beyond the learning and behavioural objectives that current interpretive planning models call for [2].  They centre on concepts such as identity, social cohesion, and democracy.  Consequently, the interpretation of the future will need to show that it delivers these benefits.  This, I suspect, will dramatically change our practice as we learn more about how we can achieve this aim of benefit delivery [3].  It will no longer be enough to measure knowledge gain or attitudinal change about a topic of our choice.

3) The future of interpretation will lie in the hands of heritage communities

I’ve already touched upon this above.  However, including heritage communities is more than just a budgetary necessity.  Just as legislation and policy are changing to focus on benefits for the people, there is also a philosophical change that understands heritage as more than just fabric.  It is people’s use of objects and their performance of traditions that make heritage.  In fact, the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage quite clearly states that it is a groups’ own estimation of something being ‘heritage’ that makes it so.  The underlying aim of the convention is therefore not to freeze the practice, but to enable communities to continue practicing heritage.  For the interpretation of the future, that means acting as facilitator for these heritage communities where they exist. We must go much deeper than simply asking heritage communities for content.  Now, we must enable them to interpret their own heritage [4].

4) The interpretation of the future will be based on sound research

We’ve come some way over recent years with regard to gathering scientific data on aspects of interpretation, but the studies are still very few and far in between.  Interpretative writing has been examined, and so has visitor learning in museum contexts [5].  We also have two good studies on costumed personal interpretation [6], and there are several studies on attitudinal change in nature interpretation.  However, as departments fight for a slice of the budget cake, it will be even more important than ever to produce sound data as proof that what we do makes a meaningful difference.  However, that’s just one side of the coin.  If we are serious about interpretation as a valid discipline, then we need to improve our understanding of its practice.  I’ve expressed elsewhere that woolly claims of the benefits of interpretation are no longer enough.  We need to substantiate these claims through scientific research.  And then we need to base our practice on that research to have some sense of objective assurance that what we do is right.

This leads me to my final point.

5) The interpreter of the future will be educated as an interpreter

A survey that we did on the German-language business networking site Xing showed that the majority of interpreters did not have any formal education in interpretation.  I daresay that a survey in the UK would show the same result.  This will no longer be acceptable in the future.  Just as organisations will want to see proof for the contribution that interpretation can make to their efforts, they will want to be assured that the interpreter knows how to achieve the desired results.  As interpretation becomes truly grounded in research, it will no longer be enough for interpreters to have a creative talent, or to be enthusiastic about heritage.  They need to be educated in the specific theories, research, and methodologies that form the basis for interpretation.  They need to be trained in assessing their own practices scientifically and to contribute to the on-going development of the discipline.  To be an interpreter of the future requires a unique set of skills which can only be acquired through appropriate education.

What do you think is the future of interpretation?

Happy new year!

Notes

[1] I’m speaking here of ‘heritage communities’ and not merely the physical neighbourhood community surrounding a site.

[2] These objectives are primarily driven by what Laurajane Smith called the ‘Authorized Heritage Discourse’ which is focused on the physical expressions of heritage and their conservation.

[3] This is why I decided to make benefit delivery through heritage interpretation the focus of my doctoral research.  I’ll be sure to share what I find!  Watch this space.

[4] This is something that has become really obvious to me at my current site as a necessity for interpretation of the future.  I always include the community in creating interpretation, to the point where sometimes they determine what should be interpreted. That’s often a challenge, but I’ve learnt a great deal on how to assist the community with my professional experience, and work with them to tell the story they want to tell but in a way that satisfies my professional ‘best practice’.

[5] see for example Falk, J.H. and Dierking, L.D. (2000) Learning from Museums.  Visitor Experiences and the making of meaning. Lanham: Altamira Press and British Galleries (1999) Ekarved text layout.  Prototyping Research Report 5. [Available online].

[6] Jackson, A and Kidd, J (2008) Performance, Learning and Heritage.  Centre for Applied Theatre Research: Manchester, and Malcolm-Davies, J (2004) ‘Borrowed Robes: The Educational Value of Costumed Interpretation at Historic Sites. International Journal of Heritage Studies 10 (3), pp. 277 – 293.

However, the conference also highlighted the complexity surrounding the issue of remote access.  While one speaker from England asked, When would you not want to offer remote access? the traditional owners of Uluru in Australia pointed out that pictures and video recordings of their sacred site (as remote access media) weren’t something that their culture easily embraced.  Uluru of course is a very good example of a site that is physically remote and under physical (and cultural) pressure from tourists.  Remote access seems like the ideal solution, and yet, beside the owners’ cultural unease with mechanical representation, they also felt that remote access wasn’t enough to give people a true understanding of the importance of the site, and an appreciation of their culture.

This brings us back to the question of whether interpretation has to happen in view of the thing itself.  From the point of view of interpretation, my answer remains, no.  You can absolutely interpret a site hundreds of miles away from it.  In fact, an excellent example that I heard during the conference was that of laser scanning.  CyArk use this technique as the basis for follow-on presentations, such as 3D environments that a web user can explore.  And this is just a (fairly traditional) example of what can be done (CyArk had many more examples, and many of them brilliantly creative and interactive).

However, like the traditional owners of Uluru argued, I think for those truly committed to and respectful toward heritage, nothing can beat the experience of being in the place.  And yet, how many tourists are truly that committed?  At Uluru, they still climb the rock despite being asked not to.  What (good, really good) remote access interpretation might achieve here is two things: one, it might be able to begin prepping tourists for their visit as they begin to plan it.  They could be exposed not only to the rock that they are primarily drawn to, but also introduced to the surrounding cultural importance the place holds for the local guardians.  I don’t think we’ve tried this enough yet to dismiss the hope for such pre-visit behavioural change, as it were.

The second possible outcome of (good, really good) remote access may be that it gives those less-committed tourists enough of an experience so that they may not feel the need to come in person.  That’s not just a perfectly acceptable outcome of interpretation in my mind, it sometimes is a matter of survival for the site.  St Kilda is one such example, where you can just image the damage that would be done to the fragile bird habitats on the island by commercial tour operators arriving there on an hourly schedule (luckily, it seems, the stormy sea prevents this anyway).

In other words, remote access can become another layer in the interpretive offer, and at this point it might be good to briefly remind ourselves that remote access doesn’t have to be just fancy technology.  Storytelling, as one speaker pointed out, can be another form of remote access to heritage, as are travel accounts, and photographs.  My only hesitation about these media with regard to good, really good remote access would be that they aren’t quite powerful enough to fulfil their (remote) purpose.

Why?  These more traditional access media are still very one-dimensional and especially, one-directional: from interpreter to audience.  With many of the remote access technologies that were discussed at the conference, however, what struck me was their interactivity.  It became the most obvious in a talk given by a Nokia representative.  He started off by talking about ICE – Inspiring, Connecting, Exploring.  That sounded so much like Tilden’s interpretive principles that I was just about to switch off, when he explained that by ‘connect’ he didn’t mean ‘connect with a site’ – he meant, ‘connect with peers’ (of course, Nokia’s strapline is ‘Connecting people’).  Equally, by explore he specifically didn’t mean just telling people to ‘look at this’.  He meant to provide content that people could interact with, and preferably add to.  That is quite a refreshing way for interpreters to look at interpretation.  The strength of such remote access isn’t just with regard to providing access when people, for whatever reason, are not able to or are not allowed to come to a site.  This kind of remote access can also extend the experience, and can finally help to consolidate what we as interpreters so desperately try to achieve during the brief time visitors are on site: to ge visitors to understand the site, to care for it, and to engage with it further.  Again, remote access here is simply another layer of interpretation.

The key is to ensure that remote access is of high quality. If we think of remote access as actual, off-site access to a site, then it becomes clear that simply providing the same content and interpretation that we offer on site isn’t enough.  We need to really go that step further, and offer an experience of the site.  Just as on site, you don’t want to get in the way of people’s first-hand interaction with the site itself by forcing them to look at a screen for a long time, off-site you don’t want them to feel the absence of the physical experience with every click of the mouse (or whatever it is).  Remote access becomes a different way of thinking about interpretation away from the site.  Only once we stop treating it as the ‘second best thing’ will we be able to fully take advantage of what remote access can offer – a way of supporting conservation and an opportunity to enhance the visitor experience.

Indigenous Management

Under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 in the United States, for example, quite a few objects and collections have been returned to the tribes to whom they originally (and still) belonged.  This is the ultimate acknowledgement of heritage as part of a people’s life: some tribes use the objects, some tribes destroy them (because that’s what was supposed to happen to them after use), and some tribes create their own version of a museum to allow tribal members access (but not always everyone – some objects, for example, mustn’t be seen by the ‘uninitiated’).  It took many decades, in some cases even a century, for the (post-colonial) heritage decision-makers to come around to this view, and to accept the right of so-called source communities to manage their own heritage.  Today most of us read these case studies and I think we mostly agree that this is the right thing to do.  However, in our own (Western European) circumstances we unashamedly practice the same colonial and hegemonic dominance over (others’) heritage.  Many are the tourism studies that show the negative effect a top-down development had on relationships with host communities, or indeed the very practice that was put on display.  While stakeholder engagement seems to develop into the Western equivalent to indigenous calls for heritage autonomy, the models still largely confine stakeholders to consultative roles during planning stages.  So perhaps if we began to think of our various stakeholder groups as indigenous communities, we may find it easier to loosen our grip on the heritage reigns, and give stakeholders more control over their heritage [2].

Indigenous Access

In some cases I’ve read about, Native tribes felt that the (post-colonial) museum was actually the best place to protect and care for their heritage objects.  And yet, as heritage objects, these still had an actual use in the tribes’ ceremonies.  Consequently, tribes and museums made agreements whereby the tribal leaders could actually come into the museum to perform rituals around these objects, or even be allowed to take the objects out of the museums and return them after the ceremonies had taken place.  Like Laurajane Smith and Emma Waterton I think that heritage is a social process, and as such it needs people to continue participating in it for it to remain alive.  The agreement that tribes and museums have found here strikes me as a splendid solution.  Bella Dicks, for example, mentions the case of miners’ flags in Wales that have been taken out of use by placing them in museums.  The relevant parades happen perhaps once or twice a year: wouldn’t it be a sight supremely placed to inspire protection and appreciation if on those occasions the flags were brought back to life by flying them proudly in the parades?  I think so.

Indigenous interpretation

At the NAI National Conference in Las Vegas last year, I was really intrigued by the absolute conviction with which American colleagues asserted the necessity to have Native guides for Native heritage (and I’ve since heard the same about Aboriginal heritage).  In the literature, it becomes clear that Native engagement in interpretation actually goes much further: if the Native community doesn’t plan the interpretation themselves altogether (through labels, panels, guidebooks and any other media) then they are most certainly consulted and involved every step of the way.  Nothing, it seems, goes public at these sites [3] without those whose heritage it is having approved it.  I daresay that even the most radically minded Western conservationist would probably agree that this is a good thing. And yet, interpretive project upon interpretive project is still dominated by expert assessment and input, with stakeholders at best having been used as a convenient mine for local stories and general consultative bodies (are you happy with us doing a film about your heritage?) with little power.

So let’s think of us all as indigenous

I think by treating all heritage as indigenous, and applying the same practices as post-colonial museums and heritage managers have used with regard to ‘traditional’ indigenous heritage, we in the Western heritage sector may actually be able to address some of the concerns that have been popping up in our heritage literature.  For example, we may no longer need to worry about people being disengaged when it comes to heritage, and the consequent loss of heritage as a living, meaningful practice.  Perhaps we no longer need to lose sleep over how to communicate ‘sense of place’ because by letting stakeholders author their own interpretation (with professional guidance) the sense of place may be right there in it anyway.  Either way, I think it’s worth sitting back and giving this some more thought.  Personally, I’m already committed to this.  I’ll let you know how I get on.

Notes

[1] I am quite aware of all the injustices that indigenous communities have suffered with regard to their heritage under colonial powers.  In no way do I mean to imply that majority segments of West European countries have made similar experiences.  I am simply proposing that Western heritage management and interpretation could do with more awareness of and respect for the many different stakeholder groups that have a claim to heritage.

[2] I’m not at all proposing that we hand all heritage management over to stakeholders on a volunteer basis – in fact, I’ve already voiced my concerns about this.  Our stakeholders more often than not are far less organised and socially linked than Native American tribes, for example.  But I think you get the gist of what I’m saying.

[3] That is, at those sites which show what’s considered best practice these days.  I’d not want to claim that this is true for all sites.

Something about this unquestioned assertion sat uncomfortably with me, however.  I do support the concept – I have target audiences at my site also, in fact, I’m writing an HLF application for a Young People project as we speak – and yet, I wanted to know why I might feel this unease.

So here we go:

First there is heritage, then there may be target audiences

In our quest to ensure that our interpretation is accessible and relevant to wide audiences, I fear we sometimes may lose sight of one of the most fundamental aspects of our work: the heritage we actually deal with.  The concept of target audiences in my mind can smack just a little bit too much of changeability – as if we could adapt the heritage of a site to a specific audience. In my experience, many of the audiences we segment, perhaps artificially so (e.g. locals vs tourists), actually want the same thing from interpretation: they want interpretation to enable them to engage with the essence of the heritage that’s there.

So sometimes the issue at hand may not actually be about interpreting for different target audiences at all; it may primarily be about reminding ourselves of the fundamental considerations of best practice interpretation, such as simple language, no assumptions about prior knowledge, and ensuring physical accessibility.

Are we hiding our mistakes behind target audiences?

Sometimes I cannot help but feel that perhaps through target audiences we’re trying to address an issue that we as part of the heritage profession have created ourselves.  As I’ve argued elsewhere, interpretation is often still developed as an exclusive one-way-street from interpreter to ‘consumer/visitor’.  Basing interpretation on expert values, interpreters often don’t spend enough (if indeed any) time on establishing the values held by communities and including them in the development of the interpretation of these values.  My suspicion is that this may be why certain segments of the community don’t engage with a site, at least not officially (i.e. through visiting).

In other words, I’d rather see us focus on stakeholder engagement first before we worry too much about target audiences.

If we do identify target audiences, we must make sure we know what they’re for…

At my current site, I inherited an Audience Development Plan that identified, among others, people with health issues as a target audience.  I’ve not had time yet to change this, and in all fairness, the plan doesn’t specifically say that this is supposed to be a target audience for interpretation.  However, I would seriously question the extent to which this category of ‘people with health issues’ could ever be relevant for the content and implementation of any specific piece of interpretation (the best practice of physical accessibility not withstanding).

Of course, if the category was identified with community activities in mind, then it suddenly gains a purpose – not for interpretation, but for events and programmes that we can offer for people to become more physically active.

…and make sure the categories are meaningful to interpretation

Following on from the above, if we embark on the process of identifying target audiences for interpretation, then our categories need to be able to inform interpretive practice in order to make this exercise worthwhile.  Income, for example, is still a measure that pops up in audience development plans for interpretation (I suspect uncritically adopted from tourism surveys), and I continue to wonder how this category is expected to guide interpretation.  It is meaningful to site management, yes – we can decide on admission prices to ensure lower income families, for example, are more likely to visit. But I can’t think of a scenario in which interpretive content nor interpretive design would be impacted by income levels (and it is simply faulty to equate income levels with educational attainment, for example).

So ditch target audiences?

Not quite.  I think going through the process of visitor and non-visitor surveys is a good way of becoming aware of the strengths and weaknesses in our practice.  However, I propose that we first spend time considering carefully what our audience categories are so that they will be meaningful in informing our future practice.  We also need to reflect more critically on what the results tell us (for example, is the issue more systemic than a ‘mere’ matter of outreach work?), and how we will use these to improve practice.

Most importantly, however, I think other concepts need to become more established first in interpretation, such as stakeholder engagement and inclusive significance assessments.  We might just find that target audiences become less of an issue.

Much of this has already been discussed in heritage studies.  Heritage has been cut up into assessable pieces (most famously by the 1974 UNESCO World Heritage Convention), the assessments have been criticised as hegemonic (see for example Laurajane Smith’s The Uses of Heritage), the criteria have finally been reviewed to add a semblance of democracy (recently for example by English Heritage), and much debate is still on-going about the relationship between history and heritage (see almost any writing by David Lowenthal), to name but a few.

In other words, heritage is by far not the absolute concept that it is presented to be in most interpretive writing.  As a matter of fact, a quick glance at the indices of the interpretation books on my shelf reveal that not a single one of them deals with the manifold issues surrounding this term so central to our profession (and the picture is only marginally better when you replace ‘heritage’ with ‘significance’, a term which has been associated with different values slightly longer than heritage has).  We spend a great deal of time discussing themes, and media, and target audiences in our journals and at conferences, but we hardly ever (well, never, as far as I’m aware) reflect on what it actually is that we’re interpreting.  What is heritage?

Please don’t get me wrong:  themes, media, and target audiences are all hugely important aspects of the work we do.  And yet, we need to move beyond that, or rather: we need to go back to understanding what it is that we’re dealing with.   It becomes immediately clear that there is no easy answer to, ‘What is heritage?’  And a concrete answer is not what I am about.  It is rather the awareness that there is something to be thought about at all which I think is necessary before we can begin to talk about interpretive best practice.

Put bluntly, the fact that our literature on interpretation spends next to no time critically reflecting on different heritage values or significance is a clear indication that something is amiss.  If we don’t reflect on the different aspects that make a site significant or ‘heritage’, then how can we expect to meaningfully interpret it to others?  Too often the underlying assumption still seems to be that interpretation is a translation of historical, architectural, archaeological expertise into engaging and bite-sized pieces for a leisure audience (or as some describe it, a ‘bridge’).

However, once you recognise that heritage doesn’t equal heritage, that sites are significant due to different values, one of which may be more significant than the other, and also, that audiences (stakeholders, visitors, users) are intimately involved in this heritage process of a site, constantly changing it, constantly contesting it, then your entire approach to interpretation necessarily has to change.  The issue becomes much less about theme versus topic, or interpretation versus information; rather, it becomes a matter of facilitation, of enabling people to engage in this process of heritage.  It also means that interpretation must become much more democratic.  Stakeholder engagement can no longer be a luxury, it must be at the heart of what we do.

And how exactly do we achieve this?  What should be these new interpretation guidelines that I call for?  Well, that’s something that I’m still working on.  Certainly, I’ve realised that this is my core hypothesis to be examined in my research: that in order to deliver public benefit, interpretation needs to intimately involve stakeholders, and democratically and comprehensively consider and reflect heritage values.

Watch this space.

• A clear goal (or call it theme, if you like)

What do you want people to take away from the tour?  With our ‘Behind the Scenes’ tour, I wanted people to feel that they’re getting something really special.  I wanted them to share a sense of discovery and recognise that there are many more layers to the history of the house than what they normally get to see.  If you needed to you could turn this into a theme statement (‘There are aspects of the history of Bedwellty House that aren’t normally told’), and in many cases doing so will focus your mind.  But, as I shall argue below, I personally find it is much more helpful to think about telling a good story.

• Clear objectives

My greatest bugbear are pieces of interpretation that do not have clear objectives stipulated.  Traditional objectives are emotional (80% of visitors will feel a sense of discovery during the tour), they are about learning (70% of visitors will know that our knowledge of Bedwellty House is partially built on architectural evidence), or they can be about desired behaviours (60% of visitors will tell their friends about Bedwellty House because of the tour).  Having these objectives does two things: it makes sure that you tell a relevant story, and it allows you to test whether your interpretation works.

This latter point is crucial: if you don’t set clear objectives, how can you ever test whether your interpretation works?  Asking visitors whether they ‘enjoyed’ themselves is nice, but meaningless.  Interpretation has a purpose, and this purpose is expressed in and measured by objectives.

• A good story told

On my German blog I once wrote that interpreters could learn a great deal from fiction writers.  This doesn’t merely apply to interpretive writing: it applies to any interpretive medium.  In creative writing, they always stress the importance of ‘the voice’, ‘place’ and ‘characterisation’. ‘Show, don’t tell’ is another one of the mantras that you hear regularly in creative writing classes.  They also talk about ‘pace’, repeated ‘peaks’ in the story, and periods of calm to allow readers to collect themselves again.  And then of course there is the journey, both that of the characters and the reader following them.

To me, interpretation works best if it follows these same principles. Think of your site as a character: in our ‘Behind the Scenes’ tour, the character (Bedwellty House) went on a journey of transformation (building phases).  The character also kept secrets (peak in the story) which our visitors discovered (‘Look up – there are iron cast plates supporting the floor above’) and for which they then received an explanation (period of calm).  This is the pacing of the tour: building excitement, intrigue and interest.

I always spend a great deal of time arranging the pieces of information in such a way that it will tell a coherent story that leads from A to B.  I always go and practice it on location also, and often I find that I have to swap points around to get them into a better flow within the site.

• Good positioning

A good tour is one where the tour guide blends into the background and enables visitors to interact (emotionally, intellectually) with the site.  This requires some advance planning: where will you stand at any one stop during your tour? How will you best allow visitors to see what you’re talking about, but still hear you?  I’m often astonished when I train guides about how many of them don’t think of this at all.  Instead, they have their group stand with their backs to the very things they’re told about.

• Enthusiasm

This is a matter of delivery, but hugely, hugely important.  Tell your story with enthusiasm, even if it’s the tenth time you’ve done the tour that day.  Visitors feed off the emotion that you give out. The greatest story will fall flat if delivered in a bored, monotonous voice.  You should be so enthusiastic that visitors think you have a personal stake in the site.  One visitor on a guided tour I gave at a historic mansion once asked me whether I was a member of the family!  I felt really chuffed that day.

• Building rapport

I summarise a few things under this point, starting with the tour guide being at the meeting place well before the first visitor will feel the need to sign up.  This way you can reassure visitors that yes, this is where the tour starts, and you can also start having a conversation with them.  Get to know them, find out who they are, where they’ve come from and why they’re here.  Not only is this the sign of a good host (and after all, that’s what every interpreter is: a host to the site), it also makes sure that you can add little things to the tour that will particularly meet their interest and therefore increase their engagement with the site.  It’ll also give you a chance to get a conversation going between visitors.   I feel that at many sites, visitors will actually gain the most from exchange with other visitors.  At Culloden Battlefield, the best tours I gave were those where I managed to get local visitors to share with visitors from abroad what the battle meant to them, and how they felt it still had an impact on their lives today.  Learning beforehand who everyone was, and what motivated them to come to the site, was essential to be able to do this.

• Discipline

Again, this means a few things to me.  Firstly, it is the discipline to stick to your tour, and not get sidetracked by someone’s specific interest.  Most interpreters know everything about a site, but if your tour is about what is ‘Behind the Scenes’, then this is not the place to indulge questions that are about the tramroads.  The thing to do is to give a brief answer, then ensure those interested that you will talk to them more about this matter after the tour.

Discipline also means leadership.  I find that visitors rely on you to make sure the tour runs smoothly.  This means controlling visitor questions and visitor movement.  It also means being very clear about what is happening: visitors appreciate the structure, and it helps their engagement.

This is not an exhaustive list of all that should be considered when scripting and delivering a guided tour.  There are other little things, such as having a script in the first place, or, as I do, a structured list of key points (I don’t like telling others how to express these key points; everyone is different, I just need the key points communicated, no matter who takes the tour).  However, I hope this can be helpful to some of you out there doing guided tours.