We ask: What’s Your Heritage?

I don’t often get the chance to go to the pub for work, but when we were talking about launching our What’s your heritage? campaign, the Laurieston Bar in Glasgow came up as a possible venue.

What’s your heritage? is our first ever campaign of its kind. We’re asking you to reveal which of Scotland’s places, buildings and monuments you want to see acknowledged and celebrated. From theatres to pubs, from castles to standing stones, what are the sites and buildings that have made us who we are?

To show the variety of local heritage, we decided to visit the Laurieston Bar. I had first visited it in 2010 when we were working on a review of historic pubs across Scotland to see which ones should be listed for future generations to enjoy. It has a wonderful period interior – a time capsule of the 1960s in the Gorbals. With its formica-lined bar and tiny ladies’ loo it tells us much about the changes taking place in 1960s Glasgow. It’s now listed and was an ideal venue for launching What’s your heritage?.

Proprietor John Clancy and Elizabeth McCrone in Glasgow’s famous pub, The Laurieston, a listed building in the Gorbals area of the city

What’s your Heritage?

As part of the campaign, we’d also like you to think about how change to designated sites and places should be managed, as the historic environment can be a great focus for regeneration and sensitive development.

As we’ve not done this before I’m really excited about this campaign. It’s important that we ask Scotland’s people what sites and structures they think should be recognised for the future.

We know that people are increasingly interested in different aspects of our history that designation hasn’t traditionally focussed on, such as the stories and experiences associated with different places. Through the What’s Your Heritage? campaign, we’re hoping to reach out to people across the country to find out whether we’re right about that and, if so, how we can take a fresh look at our work.

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Get involved

There are lots of ways for you to get involved in the campaign. Tell your colleagues, friends and family about it and ask them to take part too!

• Share your ideas and thoughts through this quick survey
• Join the conversation at one of our What’s Your Heritage? workshops or on Twitter with #MyHeritageIs
• Organise your own What’s Your Heritage? workshop – register for our workshop toolkit

And if I’ve whetted your interest in our historic pubs, download our free booklet to find out more about Scotland’s public houses.