Making Sense

Local History

For some history enthusiasts it might be an old story. The kind of kings and queens history taught immediately post-war was like a kind of standard fiction that everybody read but which offered few points of personal contact. I got as far as the Tudors but then, under the rules of the fifties, had to take physics because I was fractionally better at it. So the talk of friends about The Balkan Question and the Corn Law Question passed me by. Thank goodness for geography that I could relate to all around.

It was geography that opened up history for me, in fact. In my home town, a small Staffordshire market-with-silkmills town called Leek, when I looked at geography I inevitably saw history. A good friend was in to medieval church history because of interesting ruins nearby. My place was not ruins, though. It was a living, rattling, sort of place full of people, the sight of smoky chimneys and the smells of oily machinery. It was here that the family worked, mostly in the mills, with one or two in white-collar jobs. It was easy to move from a childhood of train sets and Meccano construction kits to the discovery of mill engines, lorries loaded with goods for the shops and an awakening realisation that textile factories and terraced housing had been woven together according to some historical pattern.

I don't know exactly what it was that opened up an interest in industrial archaeology. I don't think it was the silk mills as such or the James Brindley Water Mill in the town - that was not restored in 1961 or 1962 which was roughly the time I'm remembering. It might have been knowledge of some of the sites in Stoke-on-Trent just a few miles away: potteries, canals, a steel works. Or a book on the industrial revolution from the local library. Or it might have been a further education tutor I happened to know who had his own interest in the subject. Whichever it was I began to read more and visit some of the places by bus or with a friend who had a car (sadly prone to frequent breakdowns). It was the geography that caught my imagination first, so I'm sure there was a strong transport-pattern element. Also, the fascination of machinery like the steam engine that used to drive all the silk-making equipment in the mill where members of my family worked. There must have been some sort of art or sculptural-appreciation side to this - wheels turning, connection-rods sliding to and fro, steam hissing in small clouds. Perhaps there was the boy-thing about power, in the sense of something which made movement and processes possible. Engineering was a way of solving problems and making things work - very utilitarian but often in a visually attractive or intriguing kind of way.

If you had said I was becoming caught by the history bug you would have been right, as I read up on the people who made the industrial revolution and the people who were drawn in to the new worlds that it offered. Especially amongst my family and their earlier generations, who moved in the area from farm to smithy to millwrighting in three generations.

If you had come up with the word 'heritage' I would have thought it an idea that seemed a bit airy-fairy.

At least then.

Catching up

After planning this blog in the summer other projects and travels got in thhe way. I will now be posting regularly!

History As Trend Analysis

Having seen (in the previous posting) how popular in the market history is – or at least, let’s say, heritage tourism – it’s obvious that anyone in tourism marketing and development needs to know something about history. However, you could say that people like visiting historic places because those places have a different ‘flavour’ and they find that interesting, but communicating the history can be left to the guides at the particular place. There is a lot of truth in that – if you are an amateur manager. 

A professional in this job would have several reasons for wanting to know the history themselves and not leave it to someone else. They would want to know just what it was about the history that was attracting people. Was it the sense of place and time to be found in the surroundings? – the kind of buildings and environment, such as would be found in a medieval town or an industrial community, for example. They would demand to know how well the guides and other forms of interpretation were performing in communicating the historic story. They would want to be a step ahead of the visitors in knowing what period of history was gaining in popularity, possibly because of the influence of the latest novels, film or TV series. Alongside that, what kind of history was catching the public imagination? Once upon a time it was about kings and queens and national heroes. Today it is often the story of ordinary people, their ways of life and events in those lives. Any marketing director or development officer who does not keep up with this kind of knowledge is risking being taken for a ride – and I don’t mean a quality coach tour but a brief hurtle through a theme park concoction of the past. 

There is another important reason for having an interest in what has gone and that is because the marketing manager needs to think about the future. Confusing? The reason for looking back in order to plan for the future is to see what the trends have been. In a broader sense it is a matter of finding out how we got to where we are in the tourism industry today. What were the reasons, the causes of change and the influences on the choices that people have been making? We talk of Push and Pull Factors, of innovations and failures. How we make sense of the airline industry and the changes it is going through depends on looking back over aviation activity since the late 1940s – at least. What will be the outcome of the present situation for the major airlines including the ‘flag carriers’ like BA, Lufthansa, Qantas or Aeroflot? Many factors come in to play, not the least of these the growth of low-cost or ‘no frills’ airlines. To understand why these have been successful at the expense of the big companies it’s necessary to read up on the likes of Southwest Airlines, Freddie Laker’s Skytrain, easyJet and Ryanair. In doing so you’re studying history. 

That exercise would be looking at relatively short-span history. Important, broad, lessons come from longer spans such as the three centuries in the graphic above. It’s a great simplification of course, to relate the Grand Tour to the eighteenth century, countryside touring to the nineteenth and overseas beach resort tourism to the twentieth. But the point being made is that the changing face of tourism can only be properly seen by examining causes and effects. So the Grand Tour largely educated the sons of wealthy landowners who travelled by horse-drawn carriages around to destinations such as Rome. In the nineteenth century railways became available with cheap transport to take people out of the new industrial cities with their dirt and disease to places like the Lake District. In the twentieth century aircraft became dominant for the longer journeys that the up-market customer was demanding, again with elements of escapism from a mainly urban lifestyle that was often stressful. Yes, it was much more complex than that, but this pattern, crude though it might be, is a starting point for comprehending not only where tourism seems to be going, and why, but what exactly it is all about. 

And discovering the detail is what makes the study of history such fun.

[Photo: Statue on the Grand Palais, Paris]

 

Examining Heritage Tourism

Historic Levels of Attractiveness

Students who study tourism management are unlikely to have much knowledge of history, at least on average. As it happens many of them have a remarkably poor sense of geography, which is even more worrying. The point about historical knowledge, however, is important also but for rather subtle reasons which are worth exploring in a few postings. We can state the obvious one first, that visiting museums, historic houses and places is enormously important in terms of visitor numbers, and then look at some of the subtleties.

In the period July 2005 – October 2006 the Department of Media, Culture and Sport ran a survey which obtained detailed results from over 28,000 interviews with people over the age of 16. This showed that 70% of the respondents had deliberately chosen to visit a historic environment in the year previous to them being questioned. 42% had visited a museum or gallery. Under the heading ‘historic environment’ came, in order of importance, historic towns (52%), historic parks or gardens (38%), monuments such as castles or ruins (37%), historic buildings open to the public (approx 36%), historical places of worship (27%), places connected with industrial history (19%), archaeological sites (16%) and places connected with sports history (4%).

Meanwhile, the National Trust reports, in its 2009 Annual Report, that it has some 3.6 million members. The 2009 English Heritage report says its membership scheme has 687,000 people enrolled (there are also large numbers of corporate members but it is the individuals who are important here). Historic attractions can have very high visitor numbers. The Guardian newspaper stated that in 2008 the British Museum had almost 6 million visitors, Tate Modern 4.8 million, the Tower of London 2.1 million and St Paul’s Cathedral 1.6 million. Not all had shown increases – the Victoria and Albert Museum declined by 15% after higher numbers to popular exhibitions in the previous year. And, of course, small ‘heritage’ attractions – local museums, historic houses, churches etc – garnered much smaller numbers: Holy Trinity Church, York, took in 38,000 – but even this was 10% up on the previous year – and the Martyr’s School, Glasgow, only 2,484 – even so, 50% more than in 2007.

Historic places represent big business and very popular appeal.

[Photo: Armley Mills Industrial Museum, Leeds]

Four Modes of Discovery

It's normal to think of education in schools, colleges or universities when we talk about discovering the world and making sense of it. In fact in many ways formal education is the lesser part of the process. there are others which are encountered earlier, are highly influential and which continue long after the few years spent in formal education are finished. Besides, we have a limited view of what 'education' means. Mostly it is associated with a process in which a few people tell others about something and that is it. Even for the youngest it has never been like that. Even in the days when rote learning was the norm, for example the nineteenth century and early in the twentieth century there were elements of something else. Children find out things for themselves. Either it happens in simple ways such as one child telling another something or in rather more structured ways when a child wants to find out what it is like to paddle in the sea or get to the end of an adventure story.  Good education at all levels tries to balance out using children's natural curiosity as a means of learning with the use of sessions where information is fed in concentrated form to a whole class. Kindergartens employ the discovery method virtually entirely. Universities use a lot of lecturing to groups sometimes in the low hundreds - but even then it is part of a process in which students are encouraged to find out things for themselves.

So it follows that if 'finding out' is the dominant force, then formal education is by no means the only, or even dominant, method. Babies find out things from their mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, grandparents, aunts and uncles. Toddlers discover their homes and immediate surroundings as they explore on hands and knees and then their feet. The ability to move around ever further from some starting point is a crucial tool. Add on the car driven by mum or dad, the bus, train or plane and the world suddenly becomes bigger, even if it does take a long time before the little traveller knows what that means. The media is encountered almost from babyhood: some noises and images from a TV set across the room, meaningless at first but within a while recognised as a fascinating source of fun - these are only one source of experience and information from the media. And then around the age of four or five children begin to attend pre-school groups, to be followed by the earliest grades at the start of a dozen or more years of formal teaching.

We can talk of four 'modes of discovery' therefore. Each is complicated within itself and quickly tends to mix in elements of the other modes. The four modes are -

1 The family - plus friends and acquaintanes as they are added

2 Travel and tourism

3 The media, both one-to-one and mass media

4 Formal education from kindergarten to higher education, adult education and formal training courses

The four are encountered roughly in that order, although the media, probably in the shape of the ubiquitous television, will be present and even given close attention quite early on. But travelling has an early and influential effect because it starts from the point at which the baby is moved from one place to another - a room within a house to a different room, out into the garden or the local neighbourhood.

Each mode incorporates the earlier modes as well as adding its own set of distinctive elements. So travelling involves the family, who continue to have a huge effect. The media show other people who might be considered, at least for a short time, as 'additional family' by the child. They also show other people and places as if the child has travelled and increased their own circle of contact. Education brings all four modes together in a very special way. there is a 'family', or at least community; travelling is usually employed in visits to places, and all kinds of media from whiteboards to DVDs and distant conferencing linkages are brought in to the process.

The main interest of postings on this blog will be in travel and tourism.

Making Sense of the World: Tourism

This blog is about discovering the world and making sense of it. What a challenge that can be!  But I’m not going to try writing a global encyclopaedia or anything like that. What interests me is the ways in which people find out about their world and their place in it.

I might broaden out later to explore the connected fields of the media and education. At the moment its tourism that is my focus. And particularly Tourism As Education. I don't mean 'education to work in tourism' and I don't mean school or university trips, although they certainly come into it. What interests me is tourism as it was in its early days in the Grand Tour and in the nineteenth century with its excursions and early tourism packages. Tourism is a way of discovering the world, not just with a school party or adult education weekend, but using any kind of travel whatsoever. As children we explore our surroundings - homes, gardens, back yards - then walk or get driven to see new places: first shopping centres, community centres, schools, days out in the countryside or on the coast. As we get older our travelling becomes more sophisticated. We use guide books, visitor centres, leaflets and guided tours to discover new places and people. We learn to identify what is different about them and what is similar to our own homes and selves. Different climates, environments and cultures make themselves known to us. If we like travelling we start making deliberate trips to explore new destinations, or to find out more about familiar ones. We travel to understand. It's fun. We learn more. And we are better equipped to contribute to making the world a little bit better. That’s what this set of pages is going to be about.