Description
The Post Office Cultures project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), investigatesthe cultural heritage of post office buildings as sites of social memory, infrastructure, and belonging. Delivered
in partnership with the University of Huddersfield, World University of Design, The Postal Museum, Kirklees
Council, Radio Sangam, INTACH (India), and collaborating artists and students, the project employs place-based creative methods to explore how post office buildings function as anchors of local history, migration, and
community attachment. In line with Cara Courage’s (2021) work on placemaking, the project situates creative
practice as a catalyst for reimagining infrastructures of everyday life as spaces of cultural belonging,
particularly for communities whose stories of migration are bound up with these buildings [1]. We will present
a selection of methods, designed to engage communities in telling stories about place. Approaches include
postcard elicitation and letter writing, podcast and radio broadcasting, sonic postcards, oral history, citizen
scanning, and community curation. Echoing Ward, Banks, Hart and Pahl’s (2018) reflections on co-producing
research with communities, these practices expand opportunities for people to reflect on personal and
collective connections with post office buildings while co-producing narratives that situate them within
broader histories of place and migration. Drawing on current fieldwork in West Yorkshire, the paper
highlights how creative methods mobilise memory, foster intergenerational dialogue, and support
collaborative heritage-making. Building on recent AHRC work on co-creation in communities (Shaw, 2023),
we argue that participatory, place-based approaches can democratise cultural heritage and transform functional
infrastructures into living archives of shared experience
| Period | 12 Feb 2026 |
|---|---|
| Event title | Zeitgeist 2026: An International Conference on Cultural, Spatial & Sensory Futures of Art, Design and Architecture |
| Event type | Conference |
| Organiser | World University of Design |
| Location | Delhi, IndiaShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |