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‘History is what happened, Heritage is what it means to us, how we remember, the mark it made, the stories we tell.’ ‘Heritage happens now, History happened in the past. Which is why heritage is so political.’ The first of the quotes above is my answer to the question ‘what is ‘heritage?’, the second is […]

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Great visitor experiences at heritage attractions do not happen by accident. Just over three years ago Peter, my partner in TellTale, was asked to advise the Irish National Heritage Park in County Wexford, Ireland. He found a fascinating site, a team with great passion and belief running a severely underfunded, tired attraction. The vision seemed to […]

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The big questions are ‘why?’ Why is this museum of horrors here, in this most gorgeous of places? Why did I, on this most romantic occasion (we are celebrating a significant-to-us anniversary) decide to visit a Museum of Torture? The second answer is because as I said at the end of my last post, I am both/and. […]

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“This is a ‘both/and’ not an ‘either/or’ universe”.  I know I say that often, probably too often; I certainly said it rather often at the Interpret Europe conference in Pisa. I do believe it is true – in life, in business and in our business of interpretation. Not all dichotomies are real, they can be artificial barriers […]

Interpret Europe, conference Pisa 2012

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Colourful, diverse, dramatic – this is the start of our Interpret Europe conference in Pisa.   This is an  opportunity to get up close to European heritage traditions.   It is an opportunity to see things differently, hear perspectives of shared history that we have not heard, to see how people’s relationship with the land […]

Three tales about interpretelling

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I have been asked why I thought the English language needed a new word, especially a rather clunky portmanteau word like interpretelling. I do not have deeply serious or illuminating answer. As with many stories there are different versions, or maybe more accurately – the one-liner, the short story and the novel. The one liner […]

Quotable quotes on the importance of story

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Stories matter to me. I believe the difference between history and heritage is the way we tell the story and that, oddly, there is more story in ‘heritage’ than in ‘history’. I have recently found these two short but big quotes from  men far wiser than I.  They pack more thought into 20 words than […]

Fun and games – powerful communicators in wildlife interpretation

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Why do these flags fly at WWT Caerlaverock? What are they? Is that the flag of Norway? What’s going on? I am pretty sure that’s exactly why these flags are flying – to puzzle visitors, to set us thinking. Specifically to encourage us to ponder about places far away and how they connect with this […]

Interpretation to provoke and promote remembrance

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The National Memorial Arboretum, near Lichfield, Shropshire, UK is one of the most interesting places I have worked at (and there’s a lot of competition for positions on that list!). Unusually and interestingly, it is that it is not the material or event history of the place itself that is important here, but the intangible […]