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Developing a taxonomy for culture and heritage capital, Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England, (Ms. Adala Leeson)

The project aims to develop a taxonomy of culture and heritage capital (CHC) that systematically articulates the multiple benefits and values generated by culture and heritage (C&H) in a way that enables us to give weight to culture and heritage in wider economic appraisal and decision-making.

A taxonomy is the result of naming and classifying items into groups within a larger system according to their similarities and differences. ONS 2022

The project will deliver cutting-edge research that is grounded in academic rigour , drawing on theory and practice from the arts and humanities, economics and natural sciences . It will consider the lessons and experiences of other sectors, as well as existing thinking within C&H to develop a systematic, interdisciplinary framework for understanding and classifying C&H, the multiple values of C&H and the benefits/disbenefits of C&H.

Through an extensive qualitative research programme the taxonomy will be located in the lived experiences and practices of stakeholders; testing, challenging, and refining the emerging taxonomy; considering commonalities and areas of agreement/disagreement with the aim to develop a common language and a co-designed taxonomy. The project will be delivered by a Consortium of academics, policy practitioners and consultants from the arts and humanities, natural sciences and social sciences including economics. A panel of experts in the arts, natural capital, policy, heritage science and economics will provide support and challenge, whilst network organisations will facilitate discussions with arts, culture and heritage stakeholders. The research will also de-mystify aspects of economics to empower the sector to engage more actively on an economic platform.

This links to Strand A of the Research Call.

Culture Heritage, People and Place: Understanding value via a regional case study, University of Liverpool, Dr Tamara West

This project explores how and why people value cultural heritage, especially in relation to understanding and defining non -use values and how these might be captured andincorporated into a social cost benefit analysis.

To do this it focuses on a current large scale cultural redevelopment project, National Museums Liverpools (NML) Waterfront Transformation Project. This case study provides an ideal pilot site which will yield nationally applicable findings and recommendations in addition to its relevance to regional development agendas. Liverpool and the city region provide a socio economic and cultural context that in many ways defines the challenges of evaluating cultural value(s). The city has rich tangible and intangible cultural heritage assets but it, and the wider city region, continue to face significant social and economic challenges and spatial inequalities.

Here, the value(s) of culture and associated practices can be seen to go beyond or are, at least, not inextricably bound to- the economic value and are often difficult to capture. The research team, drawn from across the Universities of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores together with Research Partners NML, will address the following research questions via a mixed methods approach:

1.How might narratives of locale and culture be drawn upon in the identification and development of more multifaceted and relevant definitions of non -use value?

2. How do these values align with the wider cultural ecosystem, what are the intersections and gaps, and how might these be made visible?

3. Which cross disciplinary methods can be used to define and measure multi scalar locale specific tangible and intangible cultural heritage values?

This links to Strand B and C of the Research Call.

Understanding the Value of Outdoor Culture and Heritage Capital for Decision Makers, University of Exeter, Dr Amy Binner

Culture, heritage, and nature are closely intertwined in terms of peoples experiences but when a landholder has to make a decision about how to manage the land, such as how to care for historic sites alongside delivering nature recovery schemes, how do they weigh up options and make decisions about the future management?

This project addresses the practical problems of how to undertake robust social cost benefit analysis and how to adapt accounting principles to enable better decisions to be made about the way culture and heritage is managed, invested in, and promoted to visitors.

The project team brings together researchers from the University of Exeters Land, Environment, Economics and Policy Institute (LEEP) with Forestry England and the National Trust, two of the UKs largest landowners, with 13,769 sites across England, Wales and Northern Ireland comprising 5,467 square kilometres of land with more than 1,000 listed buildings, close to 1,700 nationally significant monuments and around 200,000 known sites and monuments.

Together we will engage with stakeholders and local teams to explore the way that people interact with sites, how this interaction is affected by management and investments, and what that can tell us about the different values provided by culture and heritage assets. The project will develop metrics and valuation methods to be applied across a range of culture and heritage assets and deliver estimates of the economic value of culture and heritage assets and their service flows.

This links to Strand A, B, D, E, F and G of the Research Call.

Triangulation of values using different valuation methods, University of Glasgow, Dr Patrizia Riganti

CAVEAT will identify and mitigate the caveats associated with current valuation methods when applied to culture and heritage capital to inform decision making. CAVEAT will explore how to best triangulate existing valuation techniques to assess the value of the stock (and flows) of a complex historic asset, such as a historic high street/neighbourhood, to improve decision makers confidence when using such results in Social Cost-Benefit Analysis (SCBS). CAVEAT addresses a key policy and knowledge gap. The protection of heritage assets requires investments in a regime of scarce resources. Historic Englands High Street Heritage Action Zone (HSHAZ) programme is an example of how conservation areas may require coordinated actions. Historic High Streets are currently suffering from the impact of businesses closures, and without investment in their conservation and requalification, cities lose a central part of their heritage.

A business case for investment requires decision makers to compare costs and benefits of the intervention within a Social Cost Benefit Analysis (SCBS) framework. The main problem they face is to fully account for the economic values (both use and non-use) associated with a cultural asset and articulate their social benefits, which cannot be captured by simple market transactions. A heritage asset is more than its real estate value, or the value people associate with its use. The nonuse value, linked to the cultural, aesthetic, and symbolic quality of the asset and/or the emotional attachment that communities have toward it, define such asset as heritage (Throsby, 1999).

The only methods able to capture the non-use values associated with cultural heritage a

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