{"id":43449,"date":"2025-07-08T17:18:31","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T16:18:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/?p=43449"},"modified":"2025-07-08T17:18:31","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T16:18:31","slug":"looking-back-to-context-183-part-1-ihbcs-journal-examines-wellbeing-and-heritage-from-work-and-economics-to-emotions-and-ageing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/?p=43449","title":{"rendered":"Looking back to Context 183 (Part 1): IHBC\u2019s journal examines \u2018Wellbeing and Heritage\u2019, from work and economics to emotions and ageing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Our Spring issue of IHBC\u2019s members\u2019 journal, Context<\/em><\/a> \u2013 No. 183<\/a> <\/strong>examines \u2018Wellbeing and Heritage\u2019, highlighting how historic buildings and places trigger rich evocations, but that\u2019s only part of a complex story being told here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The IHBC writes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feeling better already<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contributors to the \u2018Vox pop\u2019 and \u2018New member profile\u2019 columns in Context often explain what it was that set them off on a life of working with historic buildings. Sometimes it was familiarity with a particularly fascinating place; sometimes being dragged round historic buildings by enthusiastic parents; and sometimes an inspiring teacher at school or university. Often a love of historic buildings is difficult to explain. For some people historic buildings and places trigger rich evocations of those who lived there in the past; of those whose visions, dreams, ideas, skills, lives and activities are reflected in the physical fabric that survives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those of us who feel this way, there may be no need to understand fully why we respond so viscerally to history. It is just the way we are. But when it comes to communicating the importance of historic conservation (\u2018the management of continuity\u2019, as Jukka Jokilehto called it), gut feelings are not enough. In recent years we have become aware of new ways in which the historic environment has value, whether evidential, historical, aesthetic, communal, cultural, social or environmental. We have become used to arguing that building conservation is good economics, and so is worth investing in. That is not enough, though. A great many things are worth investing in, and hard-pressed government, central and local, chooses its priorities carefully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can anyone compare competing values? A few years ago the Office of National Statistics began measuring national wellbeing. If building conservation has to be justified according to the degree to which it promotes wellbeing, that is fine by us; and Historic England\u2019s first three-year Wellbeing and Heritage Strategy, published in 2022, sets the scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All that remains is for us to consider what wellbeing is, and to reflect on how historic building conservation contributes to it in terms of quality of place, sense of belonging, sense of purpose, civic pride, happiness, culture, mental health and resilience, and much more. That is the theme of this issue of Context.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Context<\/em> 183\u2019s themed articles include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n