Legacy and lavender: community heritage and the arts

This chapter studies how new perspectives on organisational practices are revealed when participants in an arts practice research project decide to focus on a local heritage subject. The Lavender Project, as this arts project became known, is a case study in an Arts and Humanities Research Council Connected Communities collaborative doctoral award between Robert Gordon University and community partner Woodend Barn, a rural arts centre in the North East of Scotland. The chapter shows how participants with different roles across their organisation reflect critically together upon difficult and complex topics, including the future direction of their arts centre. The dialogues are characterised by humour and metaphor, referencing the heritage subject and their experience of this research process. These reflections shed light on how collaborative participatory arts research, when combined with a local heritage subject identified by the participants, can open new spaces for criticality between communities, generating durable, negotiated change.