Who Needs Experts?

Book excerpt: Taking the significant Faro Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society (Council of Europe 2005) as its starting point, this book presents pragmatic views on the rise of the local and the everyday within cultural heritage discourse. Bringing together a range of case studies within a broad geographic context, it examines ways in which authorised or 'expert' views of heritage can be challenged, and recognises how everyone has expertise in familiarity with their local environment. The book concludes that local agenda and everyday places matter, and examines how a realignment of heritage practice to accommodate such things could usefully contribute to more inclusive and socially relevant cultural agenda.