Place Matters: Assessing the potential of the Eco-museum in the UK to connect communities to their landscape and help foster sustainable futures.

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The State of Nature 2019 report starkly details the pressures facing UK ecosystems in the face of climate crisis. It highlights the gap between people's values and actions and states a 'disconnection to nature' as the main factor. Its authors declare that urgent research is needed into connecting people to nature and how such connection is related to sustainable behaviours. With the aim of removing the perceived dichotomy between nature and culture/society, my project will critically examine the expanded view that a holistic place-based understanding of social/cultural-ecosystems leads to relevance for individuals and communities and so is more likely to lead to long term sustainable care and development. This resonates with ICOMOS's 'The Future of Our Pasts' report (2019) call for research into what part the heritage sector can play in tackling climate crisis and fostering resilient communities. Ecomuseums, unlike traditional museums, aim to safeguard heritage within its own landscape and through community leadership and therefore present a powerful and democratic conduit through which to facilitate the type of meaningful engagement that is paramount to creating lasting emotional connections. My project will form the first study of all five established ecomuseums in the UK, thus deepening understanding of their role and impact in a specifically UK context and exploring the potential of a wider understanding and adoption of the framework as an adaptive collaborative means of safeguarding tangible and intangible heritage in line with the Faro Convention (Council of Europe, 2019). I intend to examine a number of key points; how the ecomuseums are perceived by their local communities - if at all, their reach and type of engagement within their local communities, what effect this engagement has on people's feelings towards their communities, their place within and perception of the cultural landscape and their actions in safeguarding that landscape. Ecomuseums have great potential to advance the role of 'unauthorised' heritage, youth and intergenerational engagement in the stewardship of holistic ecological landscapes and this will be a particular focus of the study.I will also explore emerging practice outside the heritage sector, such as the Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society (2019) to provide understanding of how such ideas may be applied to the heritage sector in general and ecomuseums in particular to help achieve the lasting engagement that is pivotal to effect the cultural transformations that are needed to achieve sustainability goals.