Creative heritage: An approach for research and practice integrating heritage and the performing arts

ABSTRACT

This article explores issues relating to interdisciplinary work between heritage and creative practice. In particular, issues in conceptualising music heritage are raised through an example of research integrating heritage and creativity in a project aimed at highlighting jazz heritage in Queensland, Australia. The project, titled ‘Trading Fours’, was an extension of heritage research that sought to add oral histories, recorded music and ephemera to the Queensland Jazz Archive. The Trading Fours project, based in artistic practice, archival and heritage work, sought the creation of new music from composers and musicians interacting with newly recovered jazz heritage. The aim of the project was to better connect artists and communities with local cultural histories. This article problematises the usefulness of existing conceptual and methodological approaches to the combination of music, heritage, memory, and performance within the project. In reviewing the project methodology, the article suggests that a new approach, termed ‘creative heritage’, could prove valuable for producing and understanding artistic works based around and within heritage work, with the potential to provide greater insight into connections between the arts, creativity and heritage.

KEYWORDS:

• Music
• heritage
• creativity
• memory
• performance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The title ‘Trading Fours’ draws on the improvisational device of the same name, in which two or more players swap solos over the same number of bars, often four.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Griffith University under the New Researcher Grant Scheme 2018.

Notes on contributors

Lauren Istvandity

Dr Lauren Istvandity researches at the intersections of music, heritage, and memory studies. She is the author of The Lifetime Soundtrack: Music and Autobiographical Memory (2019, Equinox) and co-author of Curating Pop: Popular Music in the Museum with Sarah Baker and Raphael Nowak (2019, Bloomsbury). Dr Istvandity is currently a Lecturer in the School of Business and Creative Industries at the University of the Sunshine Coast and an Adjunct Member of Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre, Griffith University.