4 C O N T E X T 1 0 7 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 8 From Species of Spaces by Georges Perec (1974) TO COVER the world, to cross it in every direction, will only ever be to know a few square metres of it, a few acres, tiny incursions into disembodied vestiges, small, incidental excitements, improbable quests congealed in a mawkish haze a few details of which will remain in our memory: out beyond the railway stations and the roads, and the gleaming runways of airports, and the narrow strips of land illuminated for a brief moment by an overnight express, out beyond the panoramas too long anticipated and discovered too late, and the accumulations of stones and the accumulations of works of art, it will be three children perhaps running along a bright white road, or else a small house on the way out of Avignon, with a wooden lattice door once painted green, the silhouetted outline of trees near Saarbrücken, four uproarious fat men on the terrace of a café in the outskirts of Naples, the main street of Brionne, in the Eure, two days before Christmas, around six in the evening, the coolness of a covered gallery in the souk at Sfax, a tiny dam across a Scottish loch, the hairpin bends of a road near Corvol-l’Orgueilleux. And with these, the sense of the world’s concreteness, irreducible, immediate, tangible, of something clear and closer to us: of the world, no longer as a journey having constantly to be remade, not as a race without end, a challenge having constantly to be met, not as the one pretext of a despairing acquisitiveness, not as the illusion of a conquest, but as the rediscovery of a meaning, the perceiving that the earth is a form of writing, a geography of which we had forgotten that we ourselves are the authors. ‘Aweek or so ago I went with my mother to the UK premier in Liverpool of Terrence Davies’ new film, Of Time and the City. One of the benefits of Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture is to have brought Terrence Davies back to filmmaking. Among the old footage used in the film are shots of St Peter’s Catholic Church on Seel Street in the centre of Liverpool, where my mother went to confession 40 years ago. It’s now a very flash Cuban-themed bar and restaurant where we went for a drink after the showing. ‘Not everyone will be happy about that transformation. Part of me isn’t. But heritage is always going to raise difficult and complicated questions. It is delicate and sensitive territory – for politicians and place-makers – how far we go in adapting historic buildings to give them – and us – a viable future. In a changing world we need flexible and responsible systems alongside local debate. ‘My constituency, Leigh, boasts some of the best industrial heritage in the country, direct, unbroken connections between the town today and the birth of the industrial revolution. But this can be a difficult inheritance for local politicians to deal with, and leads to some challenging debates. It’s absolutely right that we should be encouraging people to get more involved and have more of a say in what happens with their local environment. But “preserve” is an interesting term. Because to my mind, we don’t have the option of creating hard-and-fast rules for the protection of most of our heritage. ‘We are a country blessed with a long and spectacular heritage. Though actually only a relatively small proportion of our sum total of buildings and sites are to all intents and purposes inviolable. That’s why we have and will continue to have Grade I listing. ‘More are designated under a regime that seeks to ensure that their cultural value is first recognized and then taken into account when later decisions are made that affect their future. At this point, at the planning stage, architectural and historic value has to be weighed against economic, social and other relevant considerations, including environmental pressures.Wise judgements have to be made. ‘I know you understand this, so together we need to challenge those who see conservation as being necessarily in conflict with what I’d loosely call “modernisation” objectives – finding new uses for redundant buildings or lowering the carbon footprint of older buildings.We need to make it clear that in the last decade we’ve seen heritage playing a prominent, if not a leading role in economic and social regeneration throughout the country. Older buildings can present the solution not the problem... ‘Nothing brings the case for heritage into disrepute more than vocal conservationists attempting to apply the brakes at the last minute, often making sensible objections easier to dismiss. It’s actually the case that developers who work with heritage at an early stage often credit the partnership with producing something better, more interesting and more appropriate than without the involvement… ‘This government is committed to heritage protection reform and to pursuing the first heritage protection bill for several decades. It is in a good state of readiness to be introduced at the earliest opportunity and the government is committed to doing so. ‘I can’t pre-empt the Queen’s Speech, but I can make sure that we build maintain momentum behind reform whether or not the Bill is part of the legislative programme for the next session of Parliament.’ Extracts from culture secretary Andy Burnham’s speech at launch of Heritage Counts 2008
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