Description

M onuments from almost every culture have, for centuries, captured the imagination Land awe of people. Apart from being imposing and beautiful, they are replete with value, and community pride. There is an entire world of decision-making which surrounds their conservation; however, it is usually disjointed and piecemeal: committees are formed to defend, maintain, and in some cases, rebuild them; funds are donated and allocated locally, collected internationally and expended critically when it works well and otherwise when not, institutions are set up to identify and create awareness about them; and multinational banks support conferences and seminars around the world to discuss them, establish policies regarding them, and dissuade the world's art market from destroying them. Unfortunately, historic urban settings in general - the communities of people who live around and in these historic buildings - do not receive the attention or support they deserve to maintain a vitality and quality characteristic of historic areas, to protect the integrity of their structures, and to stimulate local economies as populations, occupancy and economies change. Those programmes of conservation usually focus on documenting select structures; socio-cultural history receives a perfunctory nod, often to the exclusion of stories people tell which form part of a large jigsaw puzzle, and which we might call its "context".

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