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This paper explores the community regeneration dynamics of the Heartlands Project in Cornwall, UK. It is grounded in our autobiographical and experiential participation as artist consultants on the project during much of 2008. The paper addresses the issue of how landmarks of tin and copper mining are important spatial icons that generate some cohesion amongst the ambiguous constructions of culture and identity politics. The value of these derelict landscape features, which exist predominantly because of a large-scale shifting of matter, is of local, national and international significance. As emblems of heritage, such ruins provide a link with the past and equally a link with western industrialisation, capitalism and migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This exploratory paper examines the role of food tourism in developing and sustaining regional identities within the context of rural regeneration, agricultural diversification and the creation of closer relationships between production and consumption in the countryside. It focuses on Cornwall, South West England, an area with rural development issues, increasing tourism impacts and contested issues of regional identity. A literature and policy analysis, and in-depth interviews with 12 restaurateurs, were undertaken in four popular tourist locations. Correlation was found between increased levels of food tourism interest and the retention and development of regional identity, the enhancement of environmental awareness and sustainability, an increase in social and cultural benefits celebrating the production of local food and the conservation of traditional heritage, skills and ways of life. The paper draws attention to three issues: the role of food tourism in increasing tourist spending, the potential role of food tourism in extending the tourist season, and the re-examination of food tourist typologies within a sustainability framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses cluster analysis, a form of a posteriori market segmentation, to understand the attitudes of tourists and the local community towards using the Looe Valley Branch Railway Line. The research revealed five segments of users distinguished by their attitudes towards using the train. Following this, the paper discusses the implications of the survey findings for attracting more people to use the Looe Valley Line. It sets its findings in the context of the sustainable tourism aims of reducing transport congestion and emissions, as well as recent work on assessing the scope for sustainable transport development in the leisure and tourism markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper challenges superficial views of ‘recyclia’ (or recycled art) so to consider more conceptual, holistic perspectives. In questioning how the ‘cultural and visual art world’ invests a new imagination and creativity onto abandoned possessions and derelict artefacts, the paper explores the recovery of social memory and the recycling of the past. With an emphasis on the conversion of Cornish shipping and fishing artefacts into recyclia and recycled narrative, the paper thus addresses the recycling of identities, histories and social relations. It does so from an interdisciplinary approach grounded in social anthropology, human geography and material culture studies. My main concern is to map out the journeys that certain tangible markers of prosperity and socio‐economic hardship take through official and low‐key recycling initiatives. Hence, the aim is to look at how Cornwall's historically significant nautical relics and waste are transformed into works of art and therefore into solid metaphors of cultural distinction. In this way, issues pertaining to cultural resurgence are knotted into the creative production for an ‘afterlife’ of things. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1984 two roundhouses within the Bronze Age settlement at Bosiliack were partially excavated byjeannette Ratcliffe and Charles Thomas on behalf of the Institute of Cornish Studies. Six radiocarbon determinations have now been obtained on charcoal from these. The dates fall into two groups, with three in the later part of the Bronze Age in the centuries between 1390 and 1000 cal. BC, and three in the Iron Age between 750 and 200 cal. BC. The radiocarbon dates are important because, although settlements of roundhouses are well known in west Penwith, none had been scientifically dated. They are also significant because they demonstrate the longevity and changing character of occupation within the roundhouses, and demonstrate the differing biographies of adjacent structures. This paper outlines the results from the excavations and the radiocarbon dating programme before moving on to a discussion of settlement on the west Penwith uplands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Welcome to Tintagel, the birthplace of King Arthur' is a phrase often repeated at this small village on the north coast of Cornwall where legend, childhood stories and merchandise all serve to attract thousands of visitors per year. As 'a place to go', the area provides stunning coastal scenery, a romantic ruined castle and a highly commercialised village. Tintagel Island, owned by the Duchy of Cornwall but managed by English Heritage, plays centre stage as the 'birthplace' in question. On-site, the character of Arthur is largely debunked as a literary phenomenon and, furthermore, a survey of day-trippers revealed that visitors were left in an interpretive limbo -- arriving with ideas of Arthur and leaving knowing little about Tintagel. Whilst the aesthetics of the castle and scenery go some way towards mitigating against disappointment, on site encounters with kitsch representations of the past combine with more amorphous senses of pseudo-spiritual atmospheres as well as experiences of walking, eating and drinking to ultimately provide a 'grand day out'. The marketing ephemera and heritage presentation all serve to create, reinforce and suppress different identities of place which are revealed as being a fairly cohesive package of Celtic-Arthuriana. This paper questions the ways in which visitors' expectation and imagination are mediated through experience of place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a small building of humble origins but in a dominant position at the centre of a picturesque riverside village in Cornwall. It had been at risk for some years before the owners declared that they wished to sell. At this point, the local community (through the parish councils for each side of the river) combined to preserve the building for general use. Despite the modest scale of the project, significant volunteer effort resulted in grant aid from a variety of sources including the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) and the Regional Development Fund (RDF). The building was in a state of considerable disrepair; roof failure and regular tidal flooding from the river had caused the original timbers to rot, which had led to some stonework movement. Thus the aims were twofold: to conserve the original building, and to create a useful functional space for the benefit of the local community. This paper describes how the Red Store was conserved and converted to a resource centre and craft workshop for community use. It includes the flood mitigation measures taken to prevent damage from regular tidal flooding and potential future climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT. This paper discusses some well-known legends and hagiographic stories, and explores the context of their production and consumption. From an examination of Welsh foundation legends and Cornish hagiographical accounts, we focus on the methods by which versions of history were used in the Middle Ages to provide a context for fundamental changes in the way in which society was organised. It is found that, far from abandoning traditional versions of history, accounts of the past were promoted that sought to couch newer territorial notions of organisation within existing constructions of identity and mediations with the past. In an examination of the production and reception of these popular stories, we attempt to relate the legends to the generation of communal identity and memory. Consequently, drawing on Bourdieu's notion of habitus, we argue that pre-existing beliefs and customs were an important part in the development of newer institutional structures. Rather than initiating new practices that had no grounding in any particular past, institutional developments gained social currency by being inherently grounded in existing facets of cultural identity. In essence therefore, changing societal and institutional structures were unintentionally couched in the language and understandings of existing structures, so that in many ways a concept of continuity was at the very heart of actual change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]