Skip to main content
Realising just cities Realising just cities
  • About Jam and Justice
  • News, events and blog
  • Our projects
  • Coalitions
  • Media
  • Publications from Jam and Justice
  • Downloads
  • Search
Realising just cities
  • Menu

A Realising Just Cities Project

Jam and Justice

News, events and blog

Whose Heritage Matters? Final Reports

The final reports for the British Academy / Mistra Urban Futures project Whose Heritage Matters are now available for free download.

The central question for Whose Heritage Matters was whether, and if so how, cultural heritage could be mobilised to support more sustainable and just urban futures in Cape Town and Kisumu. Our aim was to critically explore what international targets and agendas for cultural heritage and sustainable development mean in the context of entrenched and everyday urban challenges.

  • Read more about Whose Heritage Matters? Final Reports

Braai, the beloved country: The impossible burden of heritage

Heritage is not only our identity: It is also our politics, our complex histories, and our memories. Heritage shapes the way we live, eat, pray, raise our children and interact with each other. Cultural heritage can bring people together, but it can also be used to keep people apart — as the rise of the right wing all over the world is worryingly demonstrating.

By Naomi Roux, Rike Sitas and Maurietta Stewart

  • Read more about Braai, the beloved country: The impossible burden of heritage

Culture, heritage, justice and belonging

By Rita Sitas, African Centre for Cities

  • Read more about Culture, heritage, justice and belonging

Effective utilisation for whom and how?

On July 22nd the Whose Heritage Matters team took part in an online seminar, organised as part of an AHRC Global Challenges workshop, University College London. The team were part of a panel on the effective utilisation of sustainability and heritage research and asked 'effective for whom and how?'

  • Read more about Effective utilisation for whom and how?

Cultural Heritage, Urban Justice and Rewriting the Future

Feminist science and speculative fiction authors, film-makers, musicians and artists have recognized that any vision of a future that has eradicated prejudice is such a far leap from the everyday reality of every corner of the world, it can only be a flight of fiction, a story of a future just beyond our grasp, unless we are committed to finding more just transitions and transformations.

Whose Heritage Matters is concerned with how cultural heritage can be leveraged in this future imagining, by drawing on the past and present in creative ways.

  • Read more about Cultural Heritage, Urban Justice and Rewriting the Future

Kelham Island: Industrial Heritage and Urban Transformation

Anders Hanson, local resident, walking tour guide and steering group member Kelham Island and Neepsend Neighbourhood Forum, 5 November 2019

  • Read more about Kelham Island: Industrial Heritage and Urban Transformation

Plans and Reflections: Sheffield Meeting

In October 2019 team members from Cape Town, Kisumu and Sheffield met in order to feedback initial results from framing interviews and plan work for the coming year. The workshop offered opportunities to provide interview feedback, develop comparative emergent themes, and decide next steps. Importantly the time frame of this project reflects the needs of a set of researchers embedded in different contexts, positions and places. Following these differentiations, a long project set up was organised from the outset.

  • Read more about Plans and Reflections: Sheffield Meeting

Mistra Urban Futures Latest Newsletter Published

The latest newsletter is published. You can read about our ESRC Jam and Justice final project report launch, our work on festivals or our recent participation in a TV debate on citizens and climate action, plus lots of news from our international partners.

  • Read more about Mistra Urban Futures Latest Newsletter Published

Festivals can transform cities by making space for overlooked people and cultures

Professor Beth Perry, Professorial Fellow Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield and Dr Rike Stiatas, Researcher at the University of Cape Town discuss how festivals can transform cities by making space for overlooked people and cultures in an article for The Conversation published on 15 August 2019.

  • Read more about Festivals can transform cities by making space for overlooked people and cultures

Cultural Heritage and Sacred Sites in Kisumu: Inception Meetings

By Vicky Habermehl, Urban Institute, University of Sheffield

In April 2019 the inception meetings for the project started with a series of visits across the Kisumu region. These were organised with communities in different cultural heritage and sacred sites. At each meeting organisers, communities or elders took the group around the site and discussed the key concerns, and organising strategies, as well as future plans. This provided a context for cultural heritage in the area, as well as meeting potential research partners and allowing for broader understandings of different cultural heritage challenges across the region.

  • Read more about Cultural Heritage and Sacred Sites in Kisumu: Inception Meetings

Narratives of Cultural Heritage in Kisumu: Reflections on a Workshop

By Beth Perry, Urban Institute, University of Sheffield

The baking Kisumu heat on a Friday afternoon was not enough to deter people from attending our first stakeholder meeting in Kisumu, on 5 April 2019. Held at KLIP House in central Kisumu, it was standing room only as 46 people joined for a collaborative workshop to map different understandings and meanings of cultural heritage.

  • Read more about Narratives of Cultural Heritage in Kisumu: Reflections on a Workshop

African Centre for Cities Seminar

Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - 12:00 to 13:00
University of Cape Town, African Centre for Cities

Dr Rike Sitas, from the African Centre for Cities, will present the Whose Heritage Matters project during a 'brown bag' seminar at the University of Cape Town, followed by a discussion with scholars at the University, practitioners and city officials.

  • Read more about African Centre for Cities Seminar

Stakeholder Meeting, Kisumu

Friday, April 5, 2019 - 14:00 to 17:00
KLIP House, Kisumu

In April, during the set up visit in Kisumu, a stakeholder inception workshop will take place to enrol local organisations, officials and community based organisations into the project.

The workshop will take place at KLIP House, in Central Kisumu.

  • Read more about Stakeholder Meeting, Kisumu

British Academy Inception Meeting

Tuesday, March 5, 2019 - 09:00 to 16:00
British Academy, London

On 5 March the 27 funded projects from the British Academy Sustainable Development Programme will meet in London at the programme inception meeting. Professor Beth Perry, Dr Victoria Habermehl and Dr Patrick Hayombe will speak on behalf of the Whose Heritage Matters project to present the work in Kisumu and Cape Town.

  • Read more about British Academy Inception Meeting

Launch of Whose Heritage Matters project in Cape Town

Monday, November 5, 2018 - 09:00 to Friday, November 9, 2018 - 13:45
Cape Town

Join us for the launch of the British Academy funded Whose Heritage Matters project, during the Mistra Urban Futures Realising Just Cities Conference, organised by the African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town.

A panel comprising scholars and creative practitioners from Gothenburg, Kisumu, Cape Town and Sheffield will discuss local work to explore the relationship between cultural heritage and just cities, before launching the new Whose Heritage Matters project.

  • Read more about Launch of Whose Heritage Matters project in Cape Town

People, Places, Policies, Practices: Whose Heritage Matters in Cape Town

By Rike Sitas, African Centre for Cities

The potential of art, culture and heritage in shaping our cities has captured the imagination of artists, officials, developers and activists alike. Heritage has found its place in local and global policies, in urban plans, in precinct development, in the visual and performing arts, in tourism and heritage-based place making. Although there is a general agreement that heritage is important, what this means is less clear. In particular, how this lands in different contexts can run the risk of creating or exacerbating existing tensions.

  • Read more about People, Places, Policies, Practices: Whose Heritage Matters in Cape Town

New paper on festivals as integrative sites for sustainable urban development published by the International Journal of Heritage Studies

“As cities in the global South urbanise at rapid rates and cities in the North face their own challenges, it is timely to think and experiment with new ways of thinking and acting in the cultural heritage and urban development sphere” says Mistra Urban Futures’ Beth Perry, Laura Ager and Rike Sitas in an article recently published by the International Journal of Herita

  • Read more about New paper on festivals as integrative sites for sustainable urban development published by the International Journal of Heritage Studies
View of Cape Town

Mistra Urban Futures Conference 2018, Cape Town

‘Comparative Co-production’ was the theme of the 2018 Mistra Urban Futures conference in Cape Town earlier this month, which was attended by members of the Urban Institute’s Realising Just Cities team.

  • Read more about Mistra Urban Futures Conference 2018, Cape Town

Project Set Up: Unsettling Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Livelihoods

By Beth Perry, Urban Institute, University of Sheffield

The 'Whose Heritage Matters?' project had its first project meeting and formal launch in Cape Town in November 2018.

  • Read more about Project Set Up: Unsettling Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Livelihoods

Whose Heritage Matters?

New project announced from British Academy Sustainable Development Programme.

  • Read more about Whose Heritage Matters?

New Festivals Report Published

Festivals are international cultural practices, taking plural forms and expressions across the world. They offer an empirical lens to enrich our understanding about how tangible and intangible cultural heritage combine, collide, conflict and cohere. Festivals are a spatially and temporally bounded public sphere, a break from normality that surfaces and reveals understandings of and approaches to culture and heritage in very different contexts.

  • Read more about New Festivals Report Published

Pie-Jacked by Middlesbrough Food Partnership

Author: Nick Taylor Buck, 28th February 2018

  • Read more about Pie-Jacked by Middlesbrough Food Partnership

Cultural Heritage and the Just City

The New Urban Agenda, signed in Quito Ecuador in 2016, calls for a broad and holistic understanding of the strategies and approaches needed to develop more sustainable urban transformations.

  • Read more about Cultural Heritage and the Just City

Our Projects

All our projects seek to contribute to realising just cities through developing more participatory processes, valuing citizens knowledges and supporting fairer outcomes for different groups.

Culture Heritage and Citizenship

How can we value everyday understandings of place, culture and heritage? These projects support citizens’ own understandings of the value of formal and informal cultural practices, memories and meanings of place.

Democracy and Engagement

How can decision-making processes be redesigned to include more voices and place citizens at the heart of policy-making? These projects directly seek to support more inclusive and co-productive governance within city-regions.

International Collaborations

This cluster of projects highlights those that specifically involve international partners across the Mistra Urban Futures network and beyond.

Local Management and Organisations

What are the changing roles and relationships between different organisations involved in the governance of city-regions? These projects have a specific focus on the roles of institutions as change agents in realising just cities, including local government, universities, partnership bodies, trade unions and third section organisations.

Neighbourhoods and Communities

How can we empower neighbourhoods and communities to develop their own capacities for social and economic change? These projects all have a strong focus on spatial and social justice through working at the neighbourhood scale.

Planning and Environment

How can citizens be involved in complex topics such as climate change, environment and planning? These projects seek to understand and map how different kinds of expertise can inform spatial planning and environmental strategy development and implementation.

Economy and Entrepreneurship

How can we support alternative economic practices and social entrepreneurship? These projects have a specific focus on spending decisions and new forms of economic organising.

Digital Tools and Techniques

To what extent can digital technologies support citizen participation, or do they create new forms of exclusion? These projects include a consideration of the role and value of digital platforms, tools and techniques in enhancing democratic engagement.

Methods and Practices

What methods and practices are needed to support transformative urban research? These projects have a specific focus on innovative methodologies, methods and mindsets, to test and learn about what works to support coproductive research and governance.

Greater Manchester

These projects are all being undertaken in Greater Manchester, North West of England.

Sheffield

These projects are all being undertaken in the Sheffield city-region, in the Yorkshire and Humber region of England.

You can search our work by clicking on the themes below:

Culture Heritage and Citizenship
Democracy and Engagement
International Collaborations
Local Management and Organisations
Neighbourhoods and Communities
Planning and Environment
Economy and Entrepreneurship
Digital Tools and Techniques
Methods and Practices
Greater Manchester
Sheffield
Reset Filters

The System Doesn't Work

Democracy and Engagement
Culture Heritage and Citizenship
Neighbourhoods and Communities
  • Read more

Search form

footer logos University of Manchester, University of Birmingham, GMCVO
Copyright © jamandjustice-rjc.org