English Heritage is developing a crowdsourcing project to help protect heritage at risk.
The announcement came as the organisation, the government's statutory adviser on the historic environment, published its Heritage at Risk Register. This is an annual survey of listed buildings, scheduled monuments, landscapes, battlefields, conservation areas and wreck sites.
English Heritage’s crowdsourcing plan follows 19 pilot projects that were carried out by councils, civic groups, consultants and volunteers. Participants, who were trained by English Heritage, surveyed about 5,000 Grade II-listed buildings in rural and urban areas all over the England.
English Heritage is using the results to develop a model for conducting surveys and an app for recording data while out on site. It wants an “army of volunteers” to carry out surveys of England’s 345,000 Grade II-listed buildings.
“For English Heritage it means we will eventually get, for the first time, a complete picture of the condition of all England’s listed heritage,” said Simon Thurley, the chief executive of English Heritage.
“We can use this information to decide how best to deploy our national expertise to help owners and all those tackling heritage at risk on the ground. And we’ll have a grassroots network to spread understanding and appreciation of local heritage so that less of it becomes at risk in the first place.”
The announcement came as the organisation, the government's statutory adviser on the historic environment, published its Heritage at Risk Register. This is an annual survey of listed buildings, scheduled monuments, landscapes, battlefields, conservation areas and wreck sites.
English Heritage’s crowdsourcing plan follows 19 pilot projects that were carried out by councils, civic groups, consultants and volunteers. Participants, who were trained by English Heritage, surveyed about 5,000 Grade II-listed buildings in rural and urban areas all over the England.
English Heritage is using the results to develop a model for conducting surveys and an app for recording data while out on site. It wants an “army of volunteers” to carry out surveys of England’s 345,000 Grade II-listed buildings.
“For English Heritage it means we will eventually get, for the first time, a complete picture of the condition of all England’s listed heritage,” said Simon Thurley, the chief executive of English Heritage.
“We can use this information to decide how best to deploy our national expertise to help owners and all those tackling heritage at risk on the ground. And we’ll have a grassroots network to spread understanding and appreciation of local heritage so that less of it becomes at risk in the first place.”
