This research project argues that embedding visual art and socially engaged practice into heritage interpretation strategies will enhance participant engagement with sites of lost or vulnerable material culture. Using the loss of The Glasgow School of Art’s Mackintosh Building (the Mack) as an overarching case study, the primary research questions interrogate: if participants can have auratic experiences with contemporary replicas; how encounters with replicas compare to encounters with authentic artefacts; and by what means visual art and socially engaged practice can be harnessed to provide a new framework of engagement and interpretation.
Guided by the iterative cycles of action research, a practice-led sculptural enquiry into replication, and socially engaged live events in the field, I have developed and tested a new sub-genre of reproduction – the creative replica. These objects blur the lines between heritage replica and art object, by replicating selected debris fragments salvaged from the Mack, through the use of photogrammetry, 3D printing, and traditional moulding and casting in materials that challenge embedded expectations. Within the structure of the live events, the creative replicas were used as ‘talking objects,’ activating an immersive and social engagement with materiality and historical narratives. During these object handling sessions, critiquing activities and in generating discussion, the social value of the creative replicas was amplified, while also prompting a reconsideration of our relationships with materials, material culture and notions of authenticity.
While there is a growing body of discourse surrounding interrogations of authenticity in the field of heritage studies, there is relatively little research into the use of visual art and socially engaged practice as an interpretative strategy in heritage contexts. This research project seeks to fill this gap in the field of heritage management, proposing an ambitious new framework for immersive interpretation to enhance participant encounters with heritage beyond the workshop environment or case study site. This research has revealed that combining ‘the material’ and ‘the social’ in interpretative strategies can construct a new lens through which participants might engage with intangible cultural
values and material heritage now and in the future - encouraging active participation, a reconnection with lost heritage, and a broader insight into heterogeneous cultural and social values.