Heritage is an odd word. It means different things to different people.
For one person it could mean a National Trust estate, filled with beautiful landscapes and architecture that has been preserved and cherished for everyone to enjoy. To someone else it may represent a Museum filled to the seams with old relics from distant countries, giving us insight into a long forgotten world. Or perhaps it could be something so personal as an old photograph passed down from generation to generation.
What words can we associate with 'heritage'? Preservation, history, culture, antique, identity, Legacy? Personally I see heritage to represent the last two, Identity & Legacy. Heritage only exists because of who was there before us to leave it behind in the first place, and this legacy helps us understand our own identity and to also identify with the people from the past. You can't know who you are without knowing where you came from. I think people often forget or don't appreciate the rich heritage that is all around us, especially in a large city such as Manchester, and they don't realise how much we can learn from the mundane. Museums may teach you a lot but they don't allow you to engage with the relics they put on display, it doesn't allow you to empathise with the real people of history and immerse yourself in the past. How can we break this barrier?
As a design student I am taught to look for issues and solve them. Not to just accept what I'm given but to try and improve it, to challenge it. As my time as a student draws to a close I find myself trying to bring together all my interests and design experience together into one final project. I have always had a passionate interest in history and before joining Design Futures at the University of Salford I had never even considered how design and heritage could co-exist. For a while now I have been trying to figure out how to bring more attention to the fact that there is all this 'hidden heritage' around us and the fact that they can make for stunning photographs. Being an avid photography I'm always finding myself carrying my smaller camera with me everywhere, and when I'm walking around this city I'm constantly finding new heritage based photography sites. And this is essentially what this blog is about. To run alongside my final project 1 Mile Heritage, and to showcase the insane amount of images I am getting from my primary research and while I generate content for the final piece as well as guide to the more interesting hidden heritage areas of Manchester.
So, ON Y VA!
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