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The UK has a very large heritage industry both in government and third sector areas, as well as in private ownership. The national funding body, English Heritage, has set out to stimulate a stronger diversity element across all sizes and types of heritage locations. A key aim is to stimulate grass-roots activities, ideally on a collaborative regional basis, and the specialist charity Heritage Link has a two year project specifically for this purpose. This presentation showcases methods used by Heritage Link (HL) , partly based on techniques developed both generically, and specifically at a leading UK business school, for promoting authentic dialogue among very diverse groups of students and managers, and also drawing on approaches evolved in different sectors. One of the key aims of the workshops is to “practice what we preach” and the same will apply to this proposed presentation. The key elements of a one day workshop will be applied in the 60 minute period, including time to review the value and practicality of the techniques in wider settings. One important constraint is that the funds available for development and implementation of the dialogue techniques are limited, both for HL and for its member organisations, so this has placed a considerable emphasis on ingenuity to compensate for the lack of resources. The central technique used is called “Dialogue Sheets” which has evolved out of the World Café approach, but specifically for use in an organisational change context. Instead of starting with a blank sheet, a large poster-sized pre-printed sheet is used as the basis for the dialogue. Feedback from the workshops to date of the whole approach have been very favourable and it is hoped that the presentation will enable delegates to develop their own versions of the approach.

Stream: Organisations

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

Angela Dove is Heritage Link's Diversity Programme Co-ordinator, developing a major two year region- wide programme for voluntary sector heritage organisations and leading to six diversity projects. From 1998-2000 she developed a new education programme for the National Trust property Sutton House in Hackney, London, in partnership with Hackney Archives Department, and was Heritage Lifelong Learning Officer for The London Borough of Newham. From 2000-2006 she set up and ran a successful consultancy with a wide variety of clients, working with key collaborators on developing methods of engaging knowledge workers in designing physical space for sharing and creating knowledge, and was a trainer for The Chartered Institute of Librarians and Information Professionals. 2004-2005 she designed and delivered a national regional programme of workshops in conjunction with the Museums Libraries and Archives Council, for librarians working in the public library sector. Prior to working in heritage Angela had a 16 year career in theatre design, including a period with the BBC, and was senior lecturer in design at Middlesex University. She is a visiting lecturer at The Cass Business School, City of London, and is the author of a number of publications, including a collection of poetry.