A Blast from The Past - Community Heritage Report

"There is no period so remote as the recent past..."

In January 2004, now scarily ten years ago, Magic Torch published a report into local attitudes to and opportunities for local heritage. It was launched in the McLean Museum, and we had speakers along from New Lanark, specifically encouraging everyone who came along to think about the Sugar Sheds in the same way New Lanark had thought about the mills - now of course a massive tourist attraction / social enterprise / unesco world heritage site.

No one commissioned the report, we got the funding and resources to pay for it ourselves, to try and make the case for local heritage at a point in time when it was much further down the agenda - we were very aware of the upcoming riverside regeneration programme, and wanted to try and ensure heritage was embedded in the way forward and in a way which involved our community. Imagine our complete lack of surprise when it wasn't. However it wasn't all bad news, the report formed the backbone of most of the projects we developed for the next few years, specifically our award winning Downriver project.

It's interesting to look back over it now, to see how many of the same debates are still ongoing, the same suggestions being made. Happily, a few of these opportunities and suggestions are gradually coming to fruition, and attitudes to heritage and regeneration have changed. It would be nice to think we gave at least a few people some pause for thought. Even people that would rather we hadn't.

Here then, as a wee curio now in its own right, is the report. (apologies that some of the graphics and tables have bitmapped, but the text is still readable throughout)

Local heritage, local People (2004)