Integrating Lifetimes in Heritage Capital

ITHACA旨在阐明保护遗产的经济价值。该项目汇集了一个跨学科团队，包括Josep Grau-Bove副教授（遗产损害预测专家）、Ricky Lawton博士（英国文化部门评估框架开发专家）、Jane Henderson教授（保护及其如何与意义相互作用专家）和Kalliopi Fouseki教授（遗产研究和遗产价值定义专家）。ITHACA响应了“跨学科团队研究文化和遗产资本”的号召，以《界定文化和遗产资本》报告中概述的想法为基础。这项研究将产生新的知识和理解遗产如何变化，以及如何预防这种变化为社会带来价值。该项目的关键创新是将遗产作为一个动态实体的条件考虑进去。在遗产存续期间，条件会发生变化，因此依赖于遗产的利益也会发生变化。目前，还没有完善的方法来捕捉这种关系，也没有反映这种关系的现有数据。该项目旨在影响和转化研究。该项目的目标是推进一个考虑到遗产寿命的评估框架。这个框架不仅需要在理论上合理，而且需要与遗产组织和政策制定者的需求保持一致。在这个项目中使用的主要概念，“价值”，“变化”和“遗产资产”的概念，是复杂的术语，在研究中合作的学科中使用不同的术语。该项目将探索这些意义的交叉点，将遗产科学家使用的价值观念与文化经济学中使用的价值观念结合起来，前者是定性的，指的是意义的不同维度，后者可以用经济学术语量化。该方法是高度跨学科的。为了理解经济效益如何取决于遗产的寿命，我们首先需要能够定义和预测寿命。这是通过破坏函数，预测遗产退化的模型来实现的。这个项目将成为遗产科学的一个分水岭：它将扩大可用于预测寿命的损害函数的数量，并将它们整合到政策背景中。一个重要的挑战是，并非所有的伤害功能都发展到相同的水平。到目前为止，唯一完整的损伤函数是针对档案材料的。该项目将开发三种材料的损伤功能，这三种材料是英国博物馆藏品的代表：绘画、木制工艺品和纸上艺术。ITHACA将回答以下研究问题：(1)哪些遗产资产类型学有助于预测其寿命？(2)遗产资产生命周期内经济效益流如何变化？(3)除了延长生命周期之外，护理的价值是什么，包括适应、再利用、增加获取和退役？开发的损伤函数将用于预测实际情况下的寿命。在与帝国战争博物馆的合作下，这些功能将应用于相关的保护策略、展览、策展和解释背景下的收藏品。这将揭示不同的保护策略如何改变生命周期，考虑到可及性和保护之间的平衡，并涵盖存储，干预，以及生命结束的决定，如退出。然后，这些数据将被用作原型评估调查的一部分，这将引出与护理及其结果相关的价值。调查将确定条件的变化如何定义用户和非用户的价值估计，以及进行此类测量的挑战是什么。

ITHACA aims to articulate the economic value of caring for heritage. This project brings together an interdisciplinary team, including Associate Prof. Josep Grau-Bove (expert in damage prediction in heritage), Dr. Ricky Lawton (expert in developing evaluation frameworks for the UK cultural sector), Prof. Jane Henderson (expert in conservation and how it interacts with significance), and Prof. Kalliopi Fouseki (expert in critical heritage studies and the definition of heritage values). ITHACA responds to Strand D of the "Research culture and heritage capital with an interdisciplinary team" call, building on the ideas outlined in the Scoping culture and heritage capital report. This research will generate new knowledge and understanding of how heritage changes, and how the prevention of this change brings value to society. The key innovation of the project is the consideration of the condition of heritage as a dynamic entity. Condition changes during the lifetime of heritage, and therefore the benefits that depend on it also change. Currently, there are no well-stablished methodologies to capture this relationship, and there is no existing data that reflects it. The project is geared to impact and translational research. The ambition of the project is to advance towards an evaluation framework that considers the lifetimes of heritage. This framework needs to be not only theoretically sound, but aligned well with the needs of heritage organisations and policy makers. The main concepts used in this project, the notions of "value", "change" and "heritage asset", are complex terms that are used differently by the disciplines that collaborate in the research. The project will explore these intersections of meaning, uniting the idea of value used by heritage scientists, which is qualitative and refers to the different dimensions of significance, and the idea of value used in cultural economics, which can be quantified in economic terms. The methodology is highly interdisciplinary. To understand how economic benefits depend on the lifetime of heritage, we first need to be able to define and predict lifetimes. This is achieved with damage functions, models that predict the degradation of heritage. This project will be a watershed moment for heritage science: it will expand the number of damage functions available to predict lifetimes, and it will integrate them in a policy context. One important challenge is that not all damage functions are developed to the same level. So far, the only complete damage function is for archival materials. This project will develop damage functions for three materials that are representative of the collections in UK museums: paintings, wood-based artefacts and art on paper. ITHACA will answer the following research questions: (1) Which heritage asset typologies lend themselves to a prediction of lifetimes? (2) How do the flows of economic benefits change during the lifetime of heritage assets? (3) What is the value of care beyond extending lifetimes, including adaptation, reuse, increased access, and deaccessioning? The developed damage functions will be used to make predictions of lifetimes in realistic scenarios. In collaboration with the Imperial War Museum, the functions will be applied to collections under relevant conservation strategies, contexts of exhibition, curation, and interpretation. This will reveal how lifetimes change with different conservation strategies, considering the balance between accessibility and preservation, and covering storage, intervention, as well as end-of-life decision such as deaccessioning. This data will then be used as part of a prototype valuation survey, which will elicit the values associated with care and its outcomes. The survey will stablish how the change in condition defines the estimation of value of users and non-users, and what are the challenges in conducting such measurements.