For this special bonus edition of Recovering Community, Les Back travels south of the border, to Sheffield to look at how rethinking the relationship between heritage and local communities can make them more inclusive, particularly for the most marginalised.

Here, the Roots and Futures project is listening to the perspectives of under-served communities, particularly Sheffield's Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities in seven locations across the city.

The project is informing city-level heritage strategies in partnership with Joined Up Heritage Sheffield, Sheffield City Council, University of Sheffield, and community partners including Zest, SOAR, Sheffield and District African Caribbean Community Association, Care for Young People’s Future, ChilyPep, Manor and Castle Development Trust, and Heeley City Farm. This all might seem like a long way from Glasgow but Roots and Futures is part of the AHRC’s Place-Based Research Programme which is based at the University of Glasgow.

People rooted in local communities are absolutely essential to this kind of co-production and Les spends time with just a few of the people involved in this ambitious project:

Aisha Jones has lived in Sheffield for over 20 years and is a dedicated community volunteer

Lizzy Craig-Atkins is Professor of Human Osteology at the University of Sheffield and the principal investigator of Roots and Futures.

Rhonda Allen, is a Research Associate in the Roots and Futures Project in the DSchool of History, Philosophy and Digital Humanities, Faculty of Arts and Humanities

Izzy Carter is a historian and the co-investigator of Roots and Futures. Much of her work is connected to place and working with communities.

And Robin Hughes, who is a trustee of Joined Up Heritage Sheffield

Many thanks to them all for sharing their time and expertise. Find out more about Roots and Futures here

https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/archaeology/roots-and-futures

We’re already working on plans for our next episodes, but your feedback, comments and questions are always so welcome. You can get in touch with Les via X https://x.com/AcademicDiary

If you’re interested in podcasting as part of your academic research, please do share your work or what you’re listening to, we are interested to hear what other people are working on.

Thanks to the staff in the School of Social and Political Sciences and the College of Social Sciences who helped with this project.

Recovering Community is produced by Freya Hellier.

Les Back meets with Dr Susan Batchelor, Dr Caitlin Gormley and Jim Thomson to learn more about a new piece of research exploring repeat violence in Scotland.

To be homeless is more than not having a roof over your head. It is also about a denial of being, a person out of place to look away from, to ignore and not make eye contact with them as you pass busily through Glasgow's Central Station.

The numbers of people living precariously in the city is increasing (a recent article in the Glasgow Herald says they have doubled recently). This is a story of a deep crisis not only in housing, but it also reveals the symbiotic relationship between social inequalities, homelessness, violence, and the drug economy

And it’s a story that many people and organisations are trying to rewrite. One of them is Glasgow City Council who has been putting up Rough Sleepers and Vulnerable People or RSVPs in a number of city centre hotels for a few years now. For an overstretched local authority struggling to meet demand, this has been a controversial and troubled solution to a very complicated issue.

Another organisation working in this field is Simon Community Scotland; a charity providing information, advice, care, support and accommodation to people experiencing, or at risk of, homelessness.

The Simon Community has a wealth of expertise and lived experience within its teams of staff and volunteers, one of them is Jim Thomson, who - at the time of our interview - was the coordinator of We See You, a project run from the Simon Community’s access hub in the city centre.

Jim and the Simon Community partnered with my colleagues Susan Batchelor and Caitlin Gormley as part of a major research project on Repeat Violence in Scotland.

It’s a piece of work that is urgently important so Les met up with Susan, a senior lecturer in sociology and Caitlin, a lecturer in criminology - who are both based in the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research and Jim to learn more.

Thank you to Jim Thomson and The Simon Community Scotland for hosting this recording

You can read the report on repeat violence in Scotland here

https://www.gov.scot/publications/repeat-violence-scotland-qualitative-approach/

Recovering Community is presented by Les Back and produced by Freya Hellier

Les Back visits the Hunterian Museum at the University of Glasgow to talk about history, and how it impacts our lives and relationships in the 21st century. He meets with Hunterian Curator of Discomfort Zandra Yeaman and Dr Jay Sarkar to learn more about why history is so important when it comes to meaningful and respectful connection and cohabitation.

Glasgow is famous for its museums and galleries - from The Burrell Collection in the Southside, to Kelvingrove in the West End. But as you wander around these grand, serene places, do you ever think about how these traces of the past got here and what museums are actually for?

Perhaps they’re to inspire, to educate, to memorialise our shared history. Or maybe to help us relax on a Sunday or enjoy a nice coffee and piece of cake, but could there, or should there be the possibility that museums can make us uncomfortable?

It’s a question that’s in the minds of the curators and community at The Hunterian - the museum right at the heart of the University of Glasgow’s main building. The Hunterian is home to a beautiful and important collection of art and objects, bequeathed to the University in 1783 by the pioneering obstetrician Dr William Hunter, who was a former student.

A collection tells a story about the collector; it also tells us a lot about the society, politics and trends of the time it was formed. But when we think carefully about how the collection was put together, it also tells us a lot about power, wealth and privilege - and that’s where the stories can start to get uncomfortable.

Discomfort is closely related to confronting the legacy of empire in our culture. The museum exhibits often provide symbols or clues about the unspoken or glossed damage and violence within the historical record. Reckoning with that imperial past involves ‘decolonisation’ an idea that’s in the minds of many people who think about history - from teachers and activists, to artists, curators and writers.

Learn more about the Curating Discomfort here

https://www.gla.ac.uk/hunterian/about/achangingmuseum/curatingdiscomfort/

And you can learn more about Decolonisation Through Archives, including the podcast here

https://www.decolonisationthrougharchives.scot/

Recovering Community is presented by Les Back and produced by Freya Hellier