Heritage and Culture Network Seminars
The Eastern Arc Heritage and Culture Network (HCN) meets every two months to discuss issues of common interest, from opportunities for funding or engagement, to analysing data on visitor numbers or innovative projects involving the region’s museums and archives.
Below is our archive our notes taken from our seminars. To join us for future seminars, contact info@easternarc.ac.uk.
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Prof David Gill (Honorary Professor, UEA and Kent) gave an overview and analysis of the figures for visitors to heritage and cultural sites in the Eastern Arc region.
His analysis was based on figures released by ALVA (Association of Leading Visitor Attractions) on 21 March 2025, and focussed on the data for the counties of Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk and (West and East) Sussex (including unitary authorities). They were supplemented by statistics released by Visit Britain.
Overall, visitor numbers across the region were down, with only Kent showing a slight rise on last year.
Data for visits to museums and galleries were harder to interpret, as there were inconsistencies in how these were gathered.
ALVA figures by county
- Kent: Seven properties in Kent regularly feature in the ALVA dataset (though Sissinghurst has now been dropped). The remaining six sites have attracted 1.9 million visitors, though if Sissinghurst is added (198,589 visitors in 2023), then the figure will be around 2.1 million. Kent has yet to return to pre-Covid pandemic visitor numbers: 2.5 million in 2019. One possible reason is that there are fewer visitors from the EU following Brexit.
- Sussex: The 10 properties listed by ALVA represent 1.6 million visits, a rise of 500k on the previous year. This was in part due to the recent inclusion of Brighton and Hove Museums, which included Brighton Pavilion, Preston Manor and Gardens, Hove Museum of Creativity and Booth Museum of Natural History.
- Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk: There are only four heritage properties in the ALVA dataset for Essex (Audley End), Norfolk (Blickling, Holkham Hall), and Suffolk (Ickworth). This represents 0.78 million visits in 2024, down slightly from 0.80 million in 2023.
English Heritage
There are three properties in the English Heritage top ten sites in the EARC region: Dover Castle (4), Audley End (8), and 1066 the Battle of Hastings (9). There is a modest fall in the top 10 numbers from 2023 to 2024. The top 10 properties received 3.1 million visits in 2024. The same 10 properties attracted 3.3 million visitors in 2019. These figures can be compared with 4 million visits to Historic Scotland’s top 10 properties (with Edinburgh Castle attracting 1.9 million visitors).
National Trust
National Trust properties have seen an increase in visitor numbers from 2023. Part of the growth relates to landscape properties and gardens such as Clumber Park, the Giant’s Causeway; and Nymans. These three alone represent 1.8 million visits. There are three properties from the EARC region in the Top 20 most visited NT sites: Nymans (9), Ickworth (18), and Sheffield Park (19).
Treasure Houses of England
There are two properties in the ‘Treasure Houses of England’ consortium in the Eastern Arc region: Leeds Castle and Holkham Hall. Visitor numbers to properties within the consortium have nearly returned to pre-Covid pandemic numbers: 3.1 million visitors in 2024.
Finally, the group discussed the economic value of tourism. The figures suggested that the value had broadly returned to pre-Covid levels.
It was felt that, with the significant changes to local government proposed by the Devolution White Paper, it was important for the case to be made for the value of heritage and culture regionally. There was a danger of the sector’s voice being lost during discussions to formalise new governance arrangements.
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Emma Hanna (University of Kent) outlined her proposal to develop a Centre for Conflict and Commemoration.
The Centre would offer an opportunity to act as a focus and a catalyst for those working in all of the Eastern Arc focus areas, but in particular in ‘heritage’ and ‘sanctuary’. It would seek to make connections and develop projects in six key areas:
- Invasion – from Vikings and Romans to the Second World War.
- Refuge – from the 11th century to include Jewish, Huguenots and Belgian refugees to present.
- Frontlines – over 1000 years of military action in the region on land, sea and in the air.
- Veterans – the role of the region in recruitment, rescue and rehabilitation.
- Environment – over 1000 years of fortress building, defences, naval bases and airfields.
- Technologies – from shipbuilding to aircraft, sound ranging, radar and nuclear warfare.
While the Centre’s interests were deliberately broad and inclusive, it was expected that it would be of particular interest to those whose research and professional practice relate to significant forthcoming anniversaries of conflict, including the 90th and 100th anniversary commemorations of the Second World War in 2029-2035 and 2039-2045. Many of the major national museums had already put their plans for these events in place.
By its existing networks and contacts, the Centre for Conflict and Commemoration would be ideally placed to offer the expertise of its members to collaborate with these anniversary events, particularly as some members of the Centre had been on the leadership teams of national projects during the Centenary of the First World War – ‘Gateways to the First World War’ (AHRC, 2014-2029) and ‘Reflections of the Centenary: Learning and Legacies for the Future’ (AHRC, 2017-2020).
In the first instance, a networking event would be organised to gather all interested parties. This would be funded by Eastern Arc. Further funding would then be sourced from appropriate schemes such as the AHRC’s Impact Accelerator Account. Activities would involve seasonal papers given by members, to be offered online and/or hybrid to save costs, with events such as themed research days, conferences and bid-writing workshops to be arranged in person or online as required.
The Network welcomed the proposal, and discussed some possible avenues and opportunities to explore including:
- The use of the University of Kent’s Special Collections, should events be held in Canterbury;
- The fact that all but one of the Saxon Shore forts were within the Eastern Arc region;
- The possibility of the Environment Agency being involved in projects, looking at how conflict and commemoration has shaped the regional landscape, but also that many veterans were employed by the Agency;
- The question of how to engage with and access different communities. The links and networks already established by museums would be an ideal route towards doing so;
- The opportunity to build on work that had gone before, such as the Estuary Festival’s 1381 Project, funded by the AHRC, to commemorate the story of the Peasants’ Revolt.
- The value in having a ‘generational exchange’ as part of the Centre, and the possibility for cocreation and coproduction.
EH was thanked for her presentation, and was encouraged to continue working with the Network in the development of the proposal for the Centre.
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Imogen Robertson (Strategic Programmes Manager, Culture Team, Medway Council) outlined the work that the Council had been doing to increase access to heritage and culture across the unitary authority. Medway had been selected as one of nine Heritage Places by the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF) to benefit from £200m of funding to boost local economies and pride in place.
The funding was a positive and welcome investment, being multi-year and open to locally-focused and community-driven projects. It was currently being used to fund small development projects (£250-£15k) building collaborations across the area, and was helping to understand the local capacity and skills around heritage.
Ideally, the projects also met the NLHF’s principles of saving heritage, protecting the environment, organisational sustainability and, importantly, inclusion, access and participation.
IR was keen to encourage those working in heritage outside of Medway to explore ways in which they could collaborate and work together to think creatively about engaging with heritage, including creative health and organisational change, outreach and engagement. It was agreed that colleagues in the Network who could see opportunities to contact her directly at imogen.robertson@medway.gov.uk. More information on the Medway Heritage Place project was available here.
The discussion that followed raised a number of other opportunities, ideas and alternative projects, including:
- The Estuary Festival: the Festival had an open invitation to support/promote independently produced public facing activities (cultural/heritage) that fit the forthcoming festival 2025 (21-29 June 2025), which will explore the theme ‘Vessels’, with a particular interest in issues of trade, food and climate. To apply, complete this form.
- Area-Based Community Grants: also funded by the NLHF, these were open grants for projects that may have multiple aspects or sites across a defined territory, or spans a large geographic area, and aims to connect people with the heritage of their local place. More details available here.
- Creative Prescribing: A social prescribing project, Well-City Salisbury was launched in October 2021 by Wessex Archaeology in partnership with Wiltshire Creative, The Salisbury Museum and ArtCare. The project was about connection – to the arts, the landscape, heritage, community and each other – and provided creative courses for adults and young people with low to moderate mental health needs. More details available here.
- Community Archives Toolkit: Developed by Norfolk Record Office, the Community Archives Toolkit included guides, tips and resources for managing and preserving community archive collections. More details available here.
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Tao Chang (Associate Director for Programmes at the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)) gave an overview of the new AHRC LUCIA programme. LUCIA stood for Locally Unlocking Culture through Inclusive Access, and would provide £400k for four or five networks for 12 months. The Networks were intended to empower communities across the UK to have the agency and opportunity to enable growth and address equitable access through a culture of policy design.
The LUCIA programme would bring researchers, policy leaders, local and regional authorities, and community members together to address key urban cultural challenges which are obstacles to community cohesion and civic discourse. This might include, but was not limited to, challenges around:cultural access; violence against women and girls; religious and cultural intolerance; social media disinformation; and community interconnectivity.
She did sound a note of caution, however: the popularity of the scheme may mean that success rates would be low, and applicants should be aware of this when developing a bid. This was not to discourage them however; rather, it was to recognise and be realistic about it, and to ensure that any potential project was both compelling and potentially transformative.
It had been designed to be deliberately non-prescriptive. It was intended to identify good practice and potential that could make the case for funding from the UKRI Infrastructure Fund. TC highlighted other initiatives that had been funded through this, including CoStar and RICHeS. She encouraged smaller museums and heritage assets across the region to engage with these, and in particular the latter, which provided services such as analysis and imaging free at the point of delivery.
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Gary Tuson (County Archivist, Norfolk Record Office) gave an overview of the Change Minds, an innovative and award-winning project that marries the exploration of heritage with the enhancement of mental wellbeing through a unique 12-workshop model. It was developed in 2016 by the Norfolk Record Office and the Restoration Trust.
The CM model works as follows:
- Participants are introduced to the archives, including a behind-the-scenes tour, then learn palaeography skills before selecting a single patient from 19th-century case books.
- This patient becomes the focus of their work as they develop research skills while exploring the person’s life and experiences. Many participants report developing a powerful personal relationship with the person they are researching.
- In the second half of the workshops, participants use their learning and lived experience to express themselves creatively through poetry, writing, collage, painting, and textile art.
- The flexibility of the methodology allows participants to extend their research and further develop their skills.
Part of CM’s success is its partnership model. As well as partnerships with archives and libraries, CM has partnered with mental health service providers such as Rethink Mental Illness, Together for Mental Wellbeing and the Richmond Fellowship; NHS foundation trusts including the Community Roots LSCft (Preston); and the College of West Anglia. This ensures that CM iterations are targeted at those who will benefit the most.
Every CM project undergoes extensive evaluation of its heritage engagement, learning, and wellbeing outcomes. The latter is based on a Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS) methodology developed with the University of East Anglia. Evaluations have shown that participants form supportive friendships, have positive experiences, develop a strong interest for history and research, learn creative skills, gain confidence, and develop a stronger sense of place and purpose.
CM has been developed over an eight-year period with funding from National Heritage Lottery Fund (NHLF), the National Archives (TNA), Norfolk Archives and Heritage Development Foundation (Norah) and Norfolk County Council (NCC).
This development process has included a two-year (2022-24) NHLF-funded project to prepare for the scaling-up of the intervention for national roll-out. This resulted in shorter intervention and less expensive (£12-14k, rather than £40k) models, resources and templates for project planning and delivery, materials (including videos) for use in workshops, and a shared evaluation process.
The project has garnered significant interest across the UK and, in 2020, it was awarded the AHRC/Wellcome Medical Humanities Award for Best Community Research.
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Stuart Prior (Project Coordinator, Wikimedia UK) outlined the work of Wikimedia, which was the organisation behind Wikipedia. It had been developing a data protocol, Wikidata, which provided a more comprehensive and robust framework for articles and images on Wikipedia, and allowed users to better interrogate the site, to make connections between information and artefacts, and allow for more rigorous and comprehensive research.
He explained how queries could be made to disambiguate and clarify searches. He had been training students at UCL and Exeter, and had been working with the British Library, which had been using the software on its own to better catalogue Lord Chamberlain’s plays ,as well as identifying black playwrights.
The group was impressed with the functionality of Wikidata, and could see the potential for local museums, archives and collections to use it to enable better access to their collections. In addition, they could see the value in training postgraduate students in using it.
Members discussed particular aspects of it, and SP gave examples of what the data looked like in practice, and how it could be used to create relationships between images and artefacts. He said that there was a particular interest in under-represented collections and histories.
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Prof David Gill (Honorary Professor, UEA and Kent) introduced Visitor Trends in the Eastern Arc Region. He had taken data from a number of different sources, including Visit Britain, the National Trust and Historic England. The data showed that, whilst there had been a partial recovery since the pandemic, visitor numbers were still less than those recorded prior to it. The data were split between the Eastern Arc counties and, in some cases, between different heritage assets, and were contextualised with those in other parts of the country. The Network discussed the overall trends, including apparent discrepancies. It thanked DG for his work on the figures.
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The Consortium for the Humanities and the Arts South-east England (CHASE) is a doctoral training partnership that fosters collaborations that provide research-led training in the arts, humanities and creative practices, working across institutions and disciplines, and in partnership with organisations in the creative and public sectors. RW and JU outlined the opportunity for regional organisations to host CHASE student placements.
The students had excellent skills that they had developed during their training, and were highly motivated. They could bring an exchange of knowledge and insights, offer fresh ideas and approaches and add real value to regional organisations. The placements would not cost the organisations anything, as they were covered by funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
Those interested in finding out more were encouraged to contact CHASE via training@chase.ac.uk or joseph.upton@chase.ac.uk.