Co-Designing for Inclusive Heritage to Explore Well-being and Resilient and Inclusive Communities: Choosing Mentors and Building Relationships

Abstract

This chapter offers a reflection in the form of a three-way dialogue, exploring how peer mentoring supports our aim to contribute to the delivery of two interconnected Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): 3 (Health and well-being) and 11 (Sustainable cities and communities). These goals have been a constant in our practices (as heritage, public health and education professionals), and working together has been pivotal to achieving goals. The reflection is based on the collaborative experience of the three authors since 2016, recognizing how mentoring has shaped the different projects we have imagined and delivered together. Our reflection and experience engage with the notion of ‘authentic mentoring’, whereby we support each other and contribute to each other's gaps in knowledge and practice. This has occurred in a very informal and organic way, outside of more traditional definitions of mentoring, where a certain hierarchy of knowledge transmission is usually expected. This chapter narrates our collaborations across various projects and focuses on the most recent one, Outreach to Ownership (O2O) (2023), delivered for Historic England using Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Student as Partners (SaP) as our main philosophical and methodological frameworks. The O2O project allowed us to reflect on how we worked together and with our students. The students' role has evolved from peer mentors and mentees to authentic collaborators.

Citation

Souto, A., Siebert, P. and Ullathorne, A. (2023), "Co-Designing for Inclusive Heritage to Explore Well-being and Resilient and Inclusive Communities: Choosing Mentors and Building Relationships", Blaj-Ward, L. (Ed.) Mentoring Within and Beyond Academia, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 57-76. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83797-565-520231004