Staying local – experiencing local landscapes and the potential of hidden stories

Abstract

This article considers some of the opportunities increased visitation to recreational areas presents in terms of engaging residents and visitors with local heritage in the form of Historic Environment Records (HERs). There are countless potential ‘hidden stories’ related to cultural heritage sites and artefacts within palimpsest landscapes. These sites and artefacts present opportunities for alternative narratives of place to be negotiated, creating links to the past in the present, and between the exotic and the familiar. The changing approach to landscape practices resulting from COVID-19 restrictions presents new opportunities to engage people with these hidden stories, linking places near with far-off lands across time and space. It also encourages new connections with place that have the potential to (co-)create new narratives; increasing engagement, as well as correlating with pressing issues centred around the climate crisis and the urgent need to reduce travel to achieve Net Zero targets.

Rights

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.

Cite as

Downloadable citations

Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2024.2320338

Repository URI

https://pure.uhi.ac.uk/en/publications/359fc13d-4f05-4c91-86dc-25565ba56da1