Olinsson, Sascha Bjarnø; (2024) Advancing the Sustainable management of Heritage through Social Entrepreneurship. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (Univetrsity College London).

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Abstract

In many heritage sites, management in its current form is failing, resulting in the slow but steady decay of our cultural heritage. Initially, the cause seems clear; public funding has been dwindling for decades and is consequently now insufficient to adequately maintain and preserve the sites. The under-prioritising in national budgets of heritage and culture is inarguably in part due to tighter national budgets. However it could credibly be argued that this under-prioritizing has been a consequence of the inability of heritage managers to transform their strategies according to modern expectations and thus gain a beneficial and sustainable position for heritage sites within society. It can furthermore be argued that this “inability” in part is an unwillingness on the part of the heritage managers to willingly engage in development efforts. However, to put this unwillingness in perspective, these development projects are often devised and imposed by outside interests such as the tourism sector, and are aimed at a “utilization” of the heritage material which makes heritage managers uncomfortable. This is as such not an unwillingness born out of nowhere as past experience has shown these often to be detrimental to the heritage fabric. This project will explore the potential of social entrepreneurship approaches for developing a methodology for sustainable management of heritage sites and will suggest a definition of a sustainable entrepreneurship approach in the heritage sector. In order to gain a modern position in society, meaning one that satisfies both the anticipations of the modern “consumer” of culture as well as expectations from society of economic solvency, sustainable heritage management is understood as resting on three interdependent pillars of social, cultural and economic sustainability. For the purpose of testing these three pillars in one strategy, the project will explore two suitable concepts; open-air museum mediation concepts, as developed in “best practice” sites in Denmark and England and social entrepreneurship practices relating to sustainable management and development. Employing an action research strategy, the project will investigate (i) the employment of open–air museum mediation strategies in developing a “sustainable cultural product” based on intangible heritage and (ii) the functionality of these mediation approaches in combination with social entrepreneurial strategies for site management. The purpose is to provide (a) an integrated picture of the mediation strategies employed by these “best practice” sites and (b) practical learning of the implementation process of the combined strategies and (c) concrete recommendation for social entrepreneurial management strategies.

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