Civic associations and urban community: local history, place-making and activism in twentieth-century Britain

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From their origins in the late nineteenth century, civic associations have grown to be a popular and influential feature in many of Britain's towns and cities. They have provided a focus for community and for activism among local urban populations, connecting residents with local professional and policy debates, and establishing the potential for community engagement in urban management policy. Over the course of the twentieth century civic associations have developed a broad-based concern for the urban landscape that incorporates conservation and heritage, planning and development, local history and place identity. They have worked through a wide range of methods, collaborating with schools, businesses and local authorities, publishing information and guides, campaigning, fundraising and intervening directly through the purchase of buildings or land in order to protect local amenities. As such, they are significant, but largely unexplored contributors to place-making in Britain over a sustained period of time. This study contains three core elements. The first is a review of existing literature that will draw on urban and social history, planning, conservation and heritage studies, and the social sciences. Through this review process we intend to identify existing areas of both empirical and conceptual relevance. The literature review will lead to an academic article that situates our research within a definitive synthesis of current thinking and suggesting ways forward for future research. The second element of this study is an exploration of surviving archival material relating to the history of civic activism in Britain. This exploratory part of the research will break new ground in its assessment of documentary evidence held in both public and private archives. We will produce a guide to this material, an archives assessment document and finding aid, that will be a key reference for future research and of interest and value to those currently active civic and amenity societies. This document will be disseminated through the civic movement and made available through dedicated webpages hosted by Newcastle University. The final element of the project will be a second journal article. This will examine some of the conceptual questions raised for our understandings of community by the project focus on history, place-making and activism. In particular, this article will seek to develop a stronger theoretical basis for our understanding of the importance of distinctive place and historical identity for community group formation. In so doing, it will address questions of contemporary importance relating to increased capacity for local well-being and participation.