Discovering the 'old East End': heritage organisations and public memory in East London, c.1971- the present

该项目将研究遗产组织对1971年至今伦敦东部城市变化的代表性。它将通过探索遗产组织在多大程度上传播对具有凝聚力的社区历史的怀旧之情，推动先前关于地方历史的学术研究，作为社会经济动荡时期的一种激进主义形式。考虑到这些群体对日益增长的全国遗产学术的重要性，它还将探索伦敦东区有多远是英国的象征。在此期间，社区历史组织通过CEnterprise(估计1971年)、岛屿历史信托(估计1981年)和东区社区遗产(估计1993年)在当地激增。一个专业的博物馆部门同时发展起来，通过伦敦博物馆(MOL)(1976年估计)、哈克尼博物馆(1985年估计)、Mol码头(2003年估计)和东区妇女博物馆(2015年估计)。因此，探索该地区历史的愿望越来越强烈，这与这些团体试图纪念的东西的消失不谋而合。我的初步研究表明，在阐述变化的过程中，有三个核心叙事：构成郊区化和中产阶级化的住房重建，无障碍设施/机构的丧失，以及植根于共享经验的更广泛的“社区”意识的侵蚀。我计划围绕探索这些更大主题的项目案例研究来组织我的研究，从而检验这些团体在试图理解、叙述并纪念过去时的行动和互动。这项工作将推动现有的关于伦敦东部和遗产产业的史学研究。保罗·纽兰(Paul Newland)和比尔·施瓦茨(Bill Schwarz)研究了东伦敦与该地区重新开发有关的不同代表。纽兰认为，重建商使用的是“疾病”和“欠发达”的说法，而施瓦茨则认为，在20世纪80年代的码头重建期间，当地居民建造了“神话般的”社区，以抗议流离失所。也不考虑遗产组织，他们为应对城市变化，为公众消费制作了并广泛分享了历史叙事。然而，历史学家越来越多地研究其他地方的遗产群体，展示他们批评当代发展的努力。劳拉·卡特发现，20世纪60年代以后，“民间”历史上出现了全国性的复兴，其中大部分是为了纪念逐渐衰落的工作和居住模式，并帮助人们适应去工业化和社会变革。我将通过MOL、ECH和Shevey的档案研究组织的不同研究、收集和采访过程。考虑到他们工作的社会/政治前景，我将通过对遗产演员的原始采访来补充这一点。因此，我将通过将劳拉·卡特的论点应用于一个特定的地理区域来测试它，该区域既是战后英国城市变化的缩影，也是丰富多样的遗产产业的所在地。

This project will research heritage organisations' representation of urban change in East London c.1971 - the present. It will advance prior scholarship on local history as a form of activism during a period of socioeconomic upheaval by exploring how far heritage organisations propagated nostalgia for a cohesive, communal past. It will also explore how far East London was emblematic of the nation, considering these groups' significance to the growing scholarship on heritage nationally. Community history organisations proliferated locally in the period through Centerprise (est.1971), the Island History Trust (est.1981) and Eastside Community Heritage (ECH) (est.1993). A professional museum sector grew contemporarily, through the Museum of London (MoL) (est.1976), the Hackney Museum (est.1985), the MoL Docklands (est.2003), and the East End Women's Museum (est.2015). A growing desire to explore the area's history was thus demonstrable, coinciding with the disappearance of what the groups sought to commemorate. My preliminary research suggests three central narratives in the articulation of change: housing redevelopments constituting suburbanisation and gentrification, the loss of accessible facilities/institutions, and the erosion of a broader sense of 'community' rooted in shared experience. I plan to organise my research around project case studies which explored these larger themes, thus examining the actions and interactions of these groups as they sought to comprehend, narrate, and therein commemorate, the past. This work will advance existing historiography on both East London and the heritage industry. Paul Newland and Bill Schwarz have studied competing representations of East London in connection to the area's redevelopment. While Newland argues redevelopers used narratives of 'sickness' and 'underdevelopment', Schwarz argues that local residents constructed 'mythic' communities to protest displacement during the 1980s Docklands redevelopments. Neither consider heritage organisations, who in response to urban change have produced and widely shared historical narratives for public consumption. Yet historians have increasingly studied heritage groups elsewhere, demonstrating their efforts to critique contemporary developments. Laura Carter has identified a national resurgence in 'folk' history after the 1960s, much of which sought to commemorate fading patterns of work and habitation and aid adjustment to deindustrialisation and social change. I will study organisations' different research, collection, and interview processes through archives such as the MoL's, ECH's, and Shevey's. This will be supplemented through original interviews with heritage actors, considering the social/political outlook of their work. I will thus test Laura Carter's thesis by applying it to a specific geographic area which both epitomised the urban changes of post-war Britain, and hosted a rich and varied heritage industry.