Within the Walls Project: Comparing Heritage Values as Action within Council & Community Asset Transfer Practices, York, UK 2014-2016

This study compares the heritage values of different community groups and one local authority in York as part of the Within the Walls Project (a Collaborative Doctoral Award with the City of York Council). Focusing on the UK Localism Act (2011) and redistribution of power to community groups, this study investigates values as action towards enhancing or protecting heritage in places, through which new values and collaborative relationships emerge. The study focuses on the priorities of the City of York Council and the process of Community Asset Transfers, which although is not a mechanism of the Localism Act, is demonstrated to support localism policies nonetheless.
The three main contributions of this research include; demonstration through innovative visualisations that it is possible to plot the movement and creation of values within different heritage practices; evidence that physical place impacts upon collaborative relationships in heritage projects (essentially, that the existence of physical infrastructure can foster cooperative activities); and lastly, deep ethnographic insight and pragmatic recommendations were offered into the CAT process, an under-researched area of the heritage sector.