CULTIVATE seeks to understand the role of cultural heritage in shaping sustainable landscapes and communities in the context of societal challenges such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the climate emergency and transitions required to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This research will explore how cultural narratives are co-created, contested and negotiated at community, regional and national scales using methods that bring to the fore cultural values, identity and relationships between people and land. CULTIVATE aims to make conceptual advances by integrating cultural heritage paradigms with socio-ecological systems (SES) to design a methodology to analyse how cultural narratives emerge in relation to stakeholder dynamics, landscape features and drivers of change. CULTIVATE will explore different meaning of heritage through a participatory co-creation approach thereby contributing to JPICH CHIP project and also informing progress towards SDGs. Cultural narratives will be reshaped using the ‘Seeds of a good Anthropocene’ methodology which focuses on using inspirational visions and stories to achieve transformations to sustainability. CULTIVATE will have valuable impact in real world socio-ecological systems by conducting research across 4 Biosphere Reserves which represent a diverse spectrum of rural cultural landscapes with an ethos of scientific-based management and community engagement. Cultural narratives in the BR communities will be contrasted with those at regional and national level to explore how cultural heritage is conceptualised in different parts of SES. Findings will be synthesised for dissemination both regionally/nationally and internationally. A bank of narratives expressed in written and arts-based forms will be produced as a resource and other outcomes will include policy recommendation for the integration of intangible heritage into planning and management. CULTIVATE will have lasting impact on communities through the empowering nature of its co-creation approach. The role of Biosphere Reserves as demonstration regions will lead to international impact through global Biosphere networks.

The past persists in material objects, perhaps most profoundly in the bodies of the long-dead and the artefacts associated with them. Such bodies, like those of Richard III and Cervantes, are erupting into view in contemporary Europe with increasing frequency. Whilst offering opportunities for education and the promotion of heritage, such encounters with the dead can also pose unsettling questions about cultural identity, the collective past, and the shape of time. Why do the long-dead become flashpoints of identity for the living? Harnessing the disciplines of literature and archaeology, DEEPDEAD will examine historic and prehistoric encounters with human remains and related artefacts in England and Central Europe in order to shed light on their cultural and social power. Through a series of case studies juxtaposing distinct eras, cultures, and modes of recording the encounter, the project will reveal what is constant and what is locally and historically specific in our ways of interacting with the long-dead. Our research will explore the relationship between long-dead bodies and myths of national or community origin, and the ways in which they have been used to reinforce or challenge historical narratives. The project will thus lead to a better understanding of why these forms of matter provoke such a range of responses, and how stakeholders including archaeologists, curators, policy-makers, and the public might better anticipate and understand the reactions they elicit.