Challenges in Communication

One way that industrial heritage sites have managed to survive over past thirty years or so has been through charging visitors directly for entry or by stimulating visitor spend indirectly.Industrial museums and attractions have become increasingly adept at generating income through tourism.It should be noted that except for a few industrial heritage sites that have the scale and importance to attract international visitors,by far the most important markets for industrial heritage sites are domestic or regionally based visitors.Industrial heritage tourism is a very competitive market,with sites not only competing with other industrial sites but also with all heritage sites.Markets are typically niche,male dominated and aged over 50 years old.The quality of the visitor experience offered varies considerably with many sites lacking the wider skills to engage in the tourist market.Industrial heritage remains the domain of enthusiasts,technicians and volunteers who were critical in the context of preservation and whose valuable engagement keeps staffing costs down.However,the industrial heritage generally lags behind the wider heritage sector in adapting to the needs of visitors and particularly where visitor revenue is needed.An understanding of the market realities for industrial heritage across all scales is increasingly necessary not only for existing industrial heritage site operators and managers,but also for policy makers engaged in difficult judgements in deciding what to do with deindustrialised plants and factories.

Here I am framing the issue as an economic one;a contribution to the challenges that face the on-going support for industrial heritage.However,the challenge is much wider than this and relates to fundamental issues of communication that are apparent not only in Europe but also across many other parts of the former industrialised world.For a majority of cities and regions and for well over a century,communities were able to define themselves with reference to the products they manufactured and the innovative technologies and work processes they engaged in.Primary and secondary industrial production shaped not only the natural and built environment but also local and collective identities born out of common reference points of work patterns,practical skills,social structures,gender relations,settlement morphology and a whole host of cultural expressions ranging from music to religious rituals.Industrial heritage,sometimes unknowingly,continues to play a significant“reminding”role,not only of things once produced but also of this wider socio-cultural context.(https://www.daowen.com)

At the same time and in the scope of what we can refer to as postindustrialisation,the communities and wider social constituencies for industrial heritage have undergone significant changes(see for example:Janssen et al.,2014;Birkeland,2014).As part of the generational change,the first and second wave of audiences for former industrial sites and museums is quickly passing and with it the tacit knowledge that allows visitors to make sense of the industrial world they were once embedded in.Younger publics are increasingly distanced from the productive industrial culture that was once so pervasive across Europe and concomitantly are immersed in the consumptive service sector that now dominates.Furthermore,Europe has witnessed increasing cultural diversity amongst its communities,again with the outcome of varying degrees of disconnection with the industrial past(Robinson,2018).

Industrial heritage is constructed in contemporary processes in ways that utilize the past for purposes in the present(Smith,2006;Kirschenblatt-Gimblett,1998,2004)and the future(Birkeland,2015,2018).The industrial heritage landscape is thus partly understood via meaning and meaning-making processes relating to a narrative logic and/or narrative organization of meaning(Geertz,1973)and as industrial heritage narratives.Narratives are important in order to construct identities and to communicate and heritage values are constituted and transformed through narratives.A fundamental challenge for industrial heritage sites is to find new narratives that will connect to new generations and communities that have long been disconnected from industrial culture.To maintain the legacies of the industrial past is not only a matter of principle but also of economic practice.The resource of the crafts and skills for maintaining industrial heritage sites,themselves an important form of intangible cultural heritage,require active transmission to new generations.Furthermore,as new generations are effectively the paying market(directly as visitors or indirectly as tax payers)for industrial heritage museums and attractions in the future,it is vital that engaging narratives are developed.