The Victorian Heritage Register Criteria and Threshold Guidelines have been updated to include a revised approach for assessing places of social value. A new framework document including methodologies to support the revised approach was also unveiled at the launch event held in Melbourne on 2 May. Both documents are based on work undertaken for the Heritage Council of Victoria during 2017/18 by Lovell Chen associate principal Adam Mornement in partnership with Dr Cristina Garduño Freeman of the Australian Centre for Architectural History, Urban and Cultural Heritage (University of Melbourne).

As the Heritage Council’s announcement explains, while concepts of communal attachment to heritage places derived from experience and practice have achieved widespread recognition since the 1990s, challenges associated with assessing and managing social value through existing statutory regimes have become increasingly evident over the same period. The recommendations put forward in the Lovell Chen/ACAHUCH report provide a response to some of these challenges. Key shifts are to recognise social value as a composite of multiple facets, and the promotion of strategies to generate evidence for claims of social value.

An historic law court, a public plaza and a municipal library are some of the current projects to which the guidelines are being applied.

For more on our approach, see Social Value in a Heritage Context.

Heritage Council of Victoria guidelines : http://heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au

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Adam Mornement shares a half-hour slot with Prof Andrew May at ….

Heritage Council Victoria : Local Government Heritage Forum
in partnership with the City of Whittlesea
“Identifying and Protecting Places with Social Value — new state and local approaches”
Friday 14 June, 12 noon, South Morang
Forum programme : http://heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au