Our Lincolnshire is a new county-wide public consultation on attitudes about Lincolnshire’s heritage.  The research team at the College of Arts – Professor Matthew Cragoe, Professor Carenza Lewis, Dr Rafaelle Nicholson, Anna Scott and Anna Cruse – would like your opinions on Our Lincolnshire. Here’s the link https://www.research.net/r/ourlincolnshire.  Professor Carenza Lewis explains more in this video (do you recognise her from the TV?)

From the project team: Our Lincolnshire is a county-wide exploration by the University of Lincoln into public attitudes to Lincolnshire’s heritage, encompassing everything from castles to airfields to traditions and much more.  ‘Our Lincolnshire’ gives people living and working in the county a chance to affect decisions about how the county’s past is presented today and preserved for the future.  This week, Professor Carenza Lewis launched the first part of this project, an online survey collecting people’s thoughts and feelings about Lincolnshire’s heritage: We’d like as many people as possible to take part in the survey, so please do give us just 15 minutes or so of your own time to complete it, and circulate it on to everyone you know who lives or works in Lincolnshire so they can have their say, too. The team will be collecting responses over the next few weeks and you can keep updated on its Our Lincolnshire blog.

‘Our Lincolnshire’ is an initiative funded by Arts Council England (ACE), aiming to understand the value that inhabitants of, and visitors to, Lincolnshire place on the county’s heritage, and the relevance this has to them. These insights will then help inform future strategies for heritage curation and service provision.

There has been recognition by the county heritage sector that the heritage of rural areas of Lincolnshire does not attract as much attention as the many iconic city-centred attractions, facilities and services. This separation between people in Lincolnshire and their county heritage is thought to generate indifference towards heritage sites and collections, which presents challenges for reviewing the purpose and function of museums and heritage services.

Re-connecting people in Lincolnshire with their heritage in a meaningful and creative way is needed to justify the continued collection, curation and presentation of heritage, so that it is effective in encouraging responsible guardianship of heritage, building social capital within communities, and ensuring this resource reflects, meets and advances contemporary interests, needs and aspirations.  The issue of how best to achieve these aims for rural heritage affects areas well beyond Lincolnshire and also reflects the wider ‘crisis of identity’ affecting British citizenship.

The ‘Our Lincolnshire’ initiative will involve undertaking and analysing a programme of structured creative public engagement to ensure that that the future form and nature of the collections development strategy for Lincolnshire will be firmly rooted in the interests and aspirations of residents and visitors. If you would like to know more about ‘Our Lincolnshire’ then please visit the project’s site: http://ourlincolnshire.dev.lincoln.ac.uk