scholarly journals Seeing Eye to Eye? The presentation and understanding of interpretation at a New Zealand heritage site

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Elise Caddigan
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Heritage Sites ◽  
Visitor Satisfaction ◽  
Heritage Site ◽  
Depth Interview ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Perception Of Quality ◽  
A Site ◽  
International Visitors

<p>Old St Paul’s is an iconic New Zealand heritage site managed by Heritage New Zealand.¹ It is a site that tells both national and local stories and draws a wide range of international and domestic visitors. Key recommendations made by the New Zealand Ministry of Tourism in their 2010 and 2015 strategies were that the country is no longer automatically perceived as ‘authentic’² by international visitors, and that heritage in New Zealand should be striving to deliver engaging, educational and rich cultural and social experiences.  Using Old St. Paul’s as a case study, this research asks if New Zealand heritage sites are providing exhibitions, interpretation and stories that successfully communicate the site management’s presentation goals to visitors. This relationship is evaluated through the exhibitions and interpretation used by site management, and compared with visitor understanding and their experience of these.  This research uses interviews and visitor surveys to gauge the management/visitor relationship at Old St. Paul’s. An in-depth interview with the site’s manager is analysed and presented comparatively against the results gained from conducting visitor surveys. This research provides an investigation into contemporary heritage practice in New Zealand and offers a pilot study for future development in the heritage sector. Furthermore, it is suggested that heritage sites could adopt similar summative practices to those used in the museum sector in order to monitor visitor satisfaction and the perception of quality.</p>

scholarly journals Seeing Eye to Eye? The presentation and understanding of interpretation at a New Zealand heritage site

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Elise Caddigan
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Heritage Sites ◽  
Visitor Satisfaction ◽  
Heritage Site ◽  
Depth Interview ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Perception Of Quality ◽  
A Site ◽  
International Visitors

<p>Old St Paul’s is an iconic New Zealand heritage site managed by Heritage New Zealand.¹ It is a site that tells both national and local stories and draws a wide range of international and domestic visitors. Key recommendations made by the New Zealand Ministry of Tourism in their 2010 and 2015 strategies were that the country is no longer automatically perceived as ‘authentic’² by international visitors, and that heritage in New Zealand should be striving to deliver engaging, educational and rich cultural and social experiences.  Using Old St. Paul’s as a case study, this research asks if New Zealand heritage sites are providing exhibitions, interpretation and stories that successfully communicate the site management’s presentation goals to visitors. This relationship is evaluated through the exhibitions and interpretation used by site management, and compared with visitor understanding and their experience of these.  This research uses interviews and visitor surveys to gauge the management/visitor relationship at Old St. Paul’s. An in-depth interview with the site’s manager is analysed and presented comparatively against the results gained from conducting visitor surveys. This research provides an investigation into contemporary heritage practice in New Zealand and offers a pilot study for future development in the heritage sector. Furthermore, it is suggested that heritage sites could adopt similar summative practices to those used in the museum sector in order to monitor visitor satisfaction and the perception of quality.</p>

scholarly journals ASSESSMENTS OF STORYTELLING INTERPRETIVE PANEL AT HERITAGE SITE: A CASE STUDY OF VISITORS’ EXPERIENCE AT DATARAN MEDAN BANDAR, ALOR SETAR, KEDAH DARUL AMAN

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 71
Author(s):  
Wan Iskandar Zulkarnain Wan Shamsuddin ◽  
Siti Norlizaiha Harun
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Structured Interview ◽  
Qualitative Information ◽  
Content Creation ◽  
Heritage Sites ◽  
Heritage Site ◽  
Explanatory Factor Analysis ◽  
A Site ◽  
Heritage Interpretation

The aim of this study is to find out the existing ‘realities’ on storytelling at heritage sites. The gap is visitor’s expectation between storytelling presentation versus perception of heritage visitors. There were instances in the country whereby misrepresentation and/or inappropriate descriptive information in storytelling has resulted in visitors experiencing disappointment, disorientation, and ignorance of heritage significance. The researchers decided to investigate further on this and had selected a site for case study that was the Dataran Medan Bandar, Alor Setar, Kedah Darul Aman. A sequential mixed methodology was employed. The study began with literature review, site inventory and observation activities in order to obtain qualitative information. This was followed by visitors’ survey and a semi-structured interview with stakeholders to obtain their views on historical and cultural values  to validate the quantitative data findings. The explanatory factor analysis was used to analyse the data and the results showed that over 40% of total respondents perceived ‘storytelling’ as extremely important attributes of heritage interpretation during the visit. In terms of the post-experience, the results showed that 18% of the respondents proclaimed of having ‘dissatisfied experience’ after reading the description on interpretive signage, with ‘uninteresting storytelling’ being the main reason. Almost half of total respondents (49%) believe that improvement of ‘Storytelling Content Creation’ was needed at the Dataran Medan Bandar. It is hoped that the findings obtained are expected to inspire conservation stakeholders to start making ‘heritage interpretation’ as a top priority when designing interpretative signs at heritage sites.

CONTEXTUALIZING PALIMPSEST OF COLLECTIVE MEMORY IN AN URBAN HERITAGE SITE: Case Study of Chahar Bagh, Shiraz - Iran

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leila Mahmoudi Farahani ◽  
Marzieh Setayesh ◽  
Leila Shokrollahi
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Active Part ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Urban Heritage ◽  
Heritage Site ◽  
Historical Sites ◽  
A Site ◽  
Historical Centre

A landscape or site, which has been inhabited for long, consists of layers of history. This history is sometimes reserved in forms of small physical remnants, monuments, memorials, names or collective memories of destruction and reconstruction. In this sense, a site/landscape can be presumed as what Derrida refers to as a “palimpsest”. A palimpsest whose character is identified in a duality between the existing layers of meaning accumulated through time, and the act of erasing them to make room for the new to appear. In this study, the spatial collective memory of the Chahar Bagh site which is located in the historical centre of Shiraz will be investigated as a contextualized palimpsest, with various projects adjacent one another; each conceptualized and constructed within various historical settings; while the site as a heritage is still an active part of the city’s cultural life. Through analysing the different layers of meaning corresponding to these adjacent projects, a number of principals for reading the complexities of similar historical sites can be driven.

scholarly journals Community engagement in developing urban design guidance for heritage sites: The case of Bursa, Turkey

Urbani izziv ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (30) ◽  
pp. 70-84
Author(s):  
Sibel Polat ◽  
H. Özge Tümer Yıldız
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Community Engagement ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Design Guidelines ◽  
Guidance System ◽  
Rapid Urbanization ◽  
Heritage Sites ◽  
Heritage Site ◽  
Design Guidance

In recent years, central and local governments have carried out studies to establish a legal administrative infrastructure for urban design and to develop urban design guidance to preserve the identity of historic cities under the pressure of rapid urbanization in Turkey. The main aim of this article is to explain how we implemented a participatory urban design guidance (PUrDeG) model for cultural heritage sites, which was developed as part of a research project. We explain how we used various techniques to engage various actors in preparing urban design guidelines for a cultural heritage site. In addition, the article discusses the importance of community engagement techniques and processes in developing urban design guidance, and the context of guidelines for sustainable conservation of cultural heritage sites with examples from the United Kingdom and Turkey. It then presents a case study conducted in the Hanlar District, a Unesco world heritage site in Bursa, Turkey. The case study includes research on planning decisions, site analysis, a survey of urban residents, in depth interviews with local artisans, and an urban design workshop with various actors. The main outcomes of this study include a presentation of how to use various community engagement techniques to prepare urban design guidelines for cultural heritage sites in Turkey, an urban design guidance system for Bursa, and a list of recommendations related to urban design guidelines for the Hanlar District and Bursa in the light of UK experience.

scholarly journals Diet-Derived Variations in Radiocarbon and Stable Isotopes: A Case Study from Shag River Mouth, New Zealand

Radiocarbon ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Higham ◽  
Atholl Anderson ◽  
Christopher Bronk Ramsey ◽  
Christine Tompkins
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
River Mouth ◽  
Freshwater Species ◽  
Faunal Remains ◽  
Cultural Sites ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Dietary Variation ◽  
Early Human ◽  
Dietary Food

Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) determinations of rat bones from natural and cultural sites in New Zealand have produced ages at odds with the accepted date for early human settlement by over 1000 yr. Since rats are a human commensal, this implies either an earlier visitation by people or problems with the reliability of the AMS determinations. One explanation for the extreme ages is dietary variation involving movement of depleted radiocarbon through dietary food chains to rats. To investigate this, we 14C dated fauna from the previously well-dated site of Shag River Mouth. The faunal remains were of species that consumed carbon derived from a variety of environments within the orbit of the site, including the estuary, river, land, and sea. The 14C results showed a wide range in age among estuarine and freshwater species. Terrestrial and marine organisms produced ages within expectations. We also found differences between bone dated using the Oxford ultrafiltration method and those treated using the filtered gelatin method. This implies that contamination could also be of greater importance than previously thought.

scholarly journals Making Meaning Together: Heritage site management and new approaches to meaning-making

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Cindy Jemmett
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Cultural Work ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Heritage Sites ◽  
Political Work ◽  
Heritage Site ◽  
New Thinking ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Policy Work ◽  
A Site

<p>This dissertation looks at how those who manage and interpret heritage sites are incorporating into their practice, new thinking about the way visitors make meaning. Recent research has emphasised visitors' agency, and drawn attention to the cultural and political work of heritage performance. The ways visitors use emotion and imagination has also received greater attention. Rather than heritage value as intrinsic to sites, and best identified by the professional, recent theoretical understandings position visitors as active co-creators of heritage. How these new ideas might be applied in practice, and how organisations could most productively share authority for meaning-making, has not been sufficiently addressed. This research positions itself in that gap, and seeks to contribute to a conversation about how theory translates to practice.  The Department of Conservation (DOC) was selected as an information-rich case study. At the time of research, the Department was in its third and final phase of new policy work that places greater emphasis on working in collaboration with others. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with four DOC staff from across a range of roles. A further three interviews were undertaken with DOC partners and a contractor connected with sites discussed by DOC interviewees.  The findings show that while heritage managers accept that visitors will make a variety of meanings at a site, they do not currently have a robust understanding of the meanings their visitors are making; of what they think and feel, and what a visit to the site really means to them. Only recently has getting this knowledge really appeared a priority, and organisations are still working out how best to collect this data, and how it could then inform their practice. This lack of understanding has inhibited practitioners' ability to respond to visitors, and to recognise the cultural work they do. When it came to partnerships, organisations were more invested in both understanding and responding to the other party. In some cases, they were willing to add to or modify their own ideas about what the value of the heritage was, or what stories it could be used to tell. A flexible and reflexive practice is advocated, in which organisations are clear about their own goals, recognise and engage with the meanings visitors and partners make, and are open to the possibility of being changed themselves in the process.</p>

scholarly journals The Evolution of Learner Autonomy in Online Environments: A Case Study in a New Zealand Context

2018 ◽  
pp. 71-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qunyan Maggie Zhong
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Learner Autonomy ◽  
Primary Objective ◽  
Autonomous Learning ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Learning Conditions ◽  
Online Environments

With the advent of technologies, language learners are faced with unprecedented opportunities and a wide range of alternatives to engage with in their self-directed learning. However, a review of the literature indicates that studies investigating how learner autonomy is shaped and reshaped in online learning environments are under-researched (Reinders & White, 2016). Using a case study method, the primary objective of this study is to examine how a learner engaged with technology-mediated environments to meet his learning needs and goals and how his autonomy evolved in online environments. A qualitative analysis of the interview data collected at two different timescales reveals new developments in the learner’s autonomous learning. Instead of using limited online materials, the learner became a critical user of multiple online sources. Additionally, the learning conditions he was exposed to in New Zealand fostered an interdependent and social dimension in his autonomous learning. By the end of this research study, he was also found to be more capable of regulating his self-directed study. The results corroborate the argument that the notion of learner autonomy is fluid and dynamic, suggesting that apart from psychological factors of the learner, environmental factors, e.g. the guidance from the teacher and learning conditions also play a critical role in the formation of different dimensions of learner autonomy.

scholarly journals Remnant of the Past? An Investigation into the Past, Present and Future Role of Archaeology in New Zealand Museums

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Brenden Shirley
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Qualitative Methodology ◽  
Cultural Landscapes ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Personal Connection ◽  
Heritage Sites ◽  
The Past ◽  
Physical Context ◽  
Heritage Site ◽  
Cultural Agency

<p>Museum archaeology is a subject that has received little attention from local academics and museum professionals. This is despite the fact that it continues to be perceived as a foreign subject that most New Zealanders find difficult to relate to. This dissertation takes an exploratory approach in understanding what has to be considered in future efforts to connect museums and their wider communities with archaeology. Rather than reiterating what the literature has previously confirmed, this research examines the perspective of archaeological interpreters, namely museum and heritage professionals. This provides an avenue for examining how archaeological content is perceived by museums, how this can be conveyed to the public and its potential benefits and limitations.  This research was developed around a qualitative methodology that collated data from interviews with practitioners from a range of backgrounds: archaeologists, museum curators, heritage site mangers and Maori studies. An examination of some of the educational programs and resources currently provided by New Zealand museums and heritage sites was undertaken to recognise opportunities already established. A critical observation of exhibition practice provided additional insight into the physical context of archaeological interpretation and display methods.  Key findings from this research found that many of the issues and opportunities are interrelated and not always exclusive to archaeology. Museums are continuing to move away from specialised curation and instead, favouring the development of multidisciplinary, thematic narratives. As a result, they now rely on the support of outside institutions and consultants to provide this perspective. The dissertation concludes by arguing for a multidisciplinary framework where subjects like archaeology recognise the museum’s potential as a hub for providing relatable experiences across the various disciplinary perspectives available and as an opportunity to promote and the wider exploration of cultural landscapes in their region. This research makes a contribution to the academic analysis of museum and archaeology in New Zealand by encouraging a more inclusive dialogue around the role museums can play in the future of public archaeology. Engagement within the wider heritage and indigenous communities is required to establish a greater level of cultural agency and awareness for these issues and allows for further involvement in site management and cultural interpretations This can ultimately produce a more personal connection and understanding of archaeology in general.</p>

scholarly journals Making Meaning Together: Heritage site management and new approaches to meaning-making

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Cindy Jemmett
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Cultural Work ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Heritage Sites ◽  
Political Work ◽  
Heritage Site ◽  
New Thinking ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Policy Work ◽  
A Site

<p>This dissertation looks at how those who manage and interpret heritage sites are incorporating into their practice, new thinking about the way visitors make meaning. Recent research has emphasised visitors' agency, and drawn attention to the cultural and political work of heritage performance. The ways visitors use emotion and imagination has also received greater attention. Rather than heritage value as intrinsic to sites, and best identified by the professional, recent theoretical understandings position visitors as active co-creators of heritage. How these new ideas might be applied in practice, and how organisations could most productively share authority for meaning-making, has not been sufficiently addressed. This research positions itself in that gap, and seeks to contribute to a conversation about how theory translates to practice.  The Department of Conservation (DOC) was selected as an information-rich case study. At the time of research, the Department was in its third and final phase of new policy work that places greater emphasis on working in collaboration with others. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with four DOC staff from across a range of roles. A further three interviews were undertaken with DOC partners and a contractor connected with sites discussed by DOC interviewees.  The findings show that while heritage managers accept that visitors will make a variety of meanings at a site, they do not currently have a robust understanding of the meanings their visitors are making; of what they think and feel, and what a visit to the site really means to them. Only recently has getting this knowledge really appeared a priority, and organisations are still working out how best to collect this data, and how it could then inform their practice. This lack of understanding has inhibited practitioners' ability to respond to visitors, and to recognise the cultural work they do. When it came to partnerships, organisations were more invested in both understanding and responding to the other party. In some cases, they were willing to add to or modify their own ideas about what the value of the heritage was, or what stories it could be used to tell. A flexible and reflexive practice is advocated, in which organisations are clear about their own goals, recognise and engage with the meanings visitors and partners make, and are open to the possibility of being changed themselves in the process.</p>

scholarly journals Foreign Tourists in World Heritage Sites: A Motivation-Based Segmentation

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 3263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Menor-Campos ◽  
Jesús Claudio Pérez-Gálvez ◽  
Amalia Hidalgo-Fernández ◽  
Tomás López-Guzmán
Keyword(s):  
World Heritage ◽  
World Heritage Site ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
World Heritage Sites ◽  
Heritage Sites ◽  
Visitor Satisfaction ◽  
Heritage Site ◽  
Unesco World Heritage Site ◽  
The City

The inclusion on the lists published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)—World Heritage Site (WHS), Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), and World Heritage Sites in Danger—suggests, first of all, the acknowledgement of something worth protecting and, secondly, an increase in the strength of tourist attraction to the affected destination, especially among specific visitors. The identification and classification of tourists that are seen to be more interested in heritage is the stated aim of this work, based on models already proposed in the scientific literature. For this purpose, a survey was conducted that interviewed a representative sample of international tourists visiting the city of Córdoba. A multi-variant technique of case-cluster was applied. In addition, a discriminant analysis was used to validate the clusters of the cases obtained. For analyzing the differences between the different groups obtained, some non-parametrical statistical procedures were applied. The results obtained allowed for the visualization of a model that shows the empirical evidence regarding the presence of four types of foreign tourists that are considered valid for segmentation in the city of Córdoba as a WHS tourist destination: the alternative tourist, emotional tourist, cultural tourist, and heritage tourist. These results allow public and private managers to design specific strategies to increase visitor satisfaction.

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