“Culture, Tourism and Local Community” are concepts which, perhaps in the recent past, may have been considered to be mutually exclusive categories for the work of many cultural organisations.

For Manx National Heritage however, the combination of these elements have proved to be crucial in developing what has so far proved to be a very successful strategy for overall cultural management and promotion.

It is a strategy which, although not yet fully implemented, has resulted in Manx National Heritage winning the British Museum of the Year Award twice in the last four years - no organisation has ever won it twice before!

We have also received a special award in the European Museum of the Year competition for our innovative, all-embracing approach to cultural management.

I hope those of you who regard working with Tourism Departments as collaboration with the enemy will forgive us for also having received our own Tourist Department’s Award for Excellence, and a further award as the nation’s International Ambassadors of the Year.

Perhaps more significantly, representatives from fourteen other European countries have visited or consulted us in the last two years when making their own consideration as to how best to organise their own cultural strategies for the future.

A typical example of this European level of influence and contact has been the inclusion of the Isle of Man in a major promotional “Cultural Routes of Europe” publication by the Council of Europe, as one of the 50 best places in the world to visit Viking heritage sites.

For those of you who still have fears about this kind of cross-community collaboration, I can tell you that, in our experience, the efforts we have made to explain the relevance of our work to other areas of the community, rather than perverting our mission, has led to a much firmer understanding and support of it within the areas of community influence. Our professional staff has been enhanced, major new capital developments have taken place, and our academic output has radically increased - to such an extent that we have raised a previously un-dreamt of level of finance to research and publish a new five-volume History of the Isle of Man to greet the new Millennium. We have formal links with a number of Universities and, for the first time in our history, Manx students can gain formal University qualifications in Manx history in a Centre for Manx Studies based on the Island.

The vital quality in this success is the way Manx National Heritage is managing the development of the Story of Mann strategy to specifically involve the local community in a long-term plan for community, educational and commercial benefit.

The fundamental community support we have engendered, changing the previous perception of what “the museum” was and what it could contribute, will provide for the long-term protection and retention of the Island’s cultural and natural assets. It will do this because the community has a new pride in its cultural achievement and a firm understanding that, if it is not corrupted for short-term gain, it will provide lasting and tangible benefits for all sectors of the community.

The message is that the role of culture permeates at all levels of the community and the economy. It is an holistic agency of care and respect for the past as a dynamic and useful quality for the future. In other words, if the community thinks it's worthwhile and can see personal benefit in its retention, they'll help you protect and develop it.

If we provide a service of recognised value for the various communities we serve, local and tourist, those communities will unite to provide a sustainable, reciprocal agenda which, in turn, will permanently sustain our core assets and our new initiatives and, maybe, our jobs!

It is a very attractive, prestigious and effective strategy for both politicians, cultural professionals, and, above all, for the local community.

In my view, if it is applied “appropriately” in other areas of Europe, it will help to give a new and dynamic portrayal of cultural assets throughout Europe, building on our unique local culture and providing the economic base which we all need to endow culture in our communities with unquestioned viability for the future.

This article was published on Insula - International Journal of Island Affairs, April 1999

Stephen Harrison is Director of Manx National Heritage, Isle of Man, UK.
His email address is: s.harrison@mnh.gov.im