Wellbeing and Place

Sunderland wellbeing study

In October 2019 Historic England commissioned Newcastle-based research consultancy ERS Ltd to assess the impact of Sunderland’s High Streets Heritage Action Zone (HAZ) on local residents and better understand the relationship between people’s wellbeing and the character of their local area.

The project forms part of Historic England’s strategic research to improve understanding of how the historic environment can help to achieve positive social benefit and to explore ways of delivering projects to enhance wellbeing outcomes. The three-year project by ERS Ltd led and developed activities focused on two groups of local residents, one older, one young, and their sense of place and belonging in relation to local history and developments in the Sunderland Heritage Action Zone.

We will publish a report on the project here in due course.

The project organised meetings which evoked lots of memories, of trades and tradespeople, local factories and high street shops that have come and gone. Residents were very positive in their comments about how the project’s activities enabled them to meet, to learn new things and to share memories in a friendly atmosphere.

Residents felt strongly connected to the city’s industrial heritage and the sense of purposefulness and value it provided. They were fiercely proud of Sunderland’s shipbuilding past. Rather than buildings to ‘look at’, people talked of buildings with an everyday function and how quiet and deserted the high streets are in contrast now, compared to how they used to be.

Working with the dedicated staff and students at Hudson Road School everyone enjoyed learning about the Heritage Action Zone (HAZ), with evidence of measurable improvement in their knowledge and positivity about Sunderland’s heritage. Feedback indicated how they spread the impact by telling friends and families what they had learnt. The children also produced some terrific materials to display in Local Studies to celebrate the end of the HAZ programme.

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic seriously impacted on the programme and engagement was hard-won in the circumstances, however on the other hand, given the worries and anxiety of this time the project had a value in supporting the recovery of confidence after the lockdown and made gains in connecting people and places.

Kirkham

Kirkham’s Heritage Health and Wellbeing Programme is a key part of the Kirkham Futures regeneration masterplan funded by Historic England and Fylde Borough Council as part of the High Streets Heritage Action Zones (HS HAZ).

The 4-year programme, which runs from March 2020 to March 2024 is designed to reinvigorate the historic town centre by bringing important buildings back into use, improving streets and open spaces, deliver engaging community heritage art projects through the Kirkham Treasures Cultural Consortium and boost individual and community well-being and reduce isolation through the Heritage Health & Wellbeing Programme developing heritage based social prescribing. Social prescribing is an approach the NHS is advocating in their Long-Term plan to connect people to activities, groups and support that improve health and wellbeing.

The Heritage Health and Wellbeing Programme has been devised by Fylde Council in collaboration with Helen Shearn, Arts, Heritage, Health & Wellbeing consultant and coordinator and works with the providers Phoenix Rising partnership.

Research collaboration with University of Glasgow

We have formed a research collaboration with the University of Glasgow’s MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit to investigate how spatial data may help us look at the health impacts of both heritage environments and changes to them. The Glasgow team specialises in looking at environment and health and has carried out past work on natural environments and health, and health inequalities. You can find more information on their work on the unit's pages.

In this collaborative study, researchers investigated whether geographic availability of heritage varied across neighbourhoods with differing levels of income deprivation, in England, and whether greater heritage availability was associated with a higher likelihood of visiting a heritage site and associated with better mental health. Study findings showed that the availability of heritage varied by area income deprivation; the most deprived areas had fewer sites per population than the least deprived. The research also found that the combination of having heritage present in the neighbourhood and visiting heritage, was associated with better mental health.

For more information:

You can also contact Laura Macdonald at: [email protected]