“A nation built on coal”: transcalar memory work at the Big Pit

Abstract

Welsh and coal heritage may seem synonymous in the context of Welsh identities. One of seven national museums, Big Pit and its associated memory work reflect and shape the intertwined dynamic discourses of Wales and coal for visitors. We explore these discourses through a mixed methodology, highlighting the changing and transcalar nature of Wales itself, particularly the devolution of the tourism, heritage, and culture sector in 1997 from the UK Government to the Welsh Government. How have the discourses of National Museum Wales and Big Pit shifted in conjunction with devolutionary power transfers? This paper reflects upon the complicated and fluid discourses of Welshness within the museum’s landscapes. Migration, the dialectic of capital industrialization, and the romanticization of the banal activity of work are all central to these discourses at the Big Pit. Transcalar relationships of tourism and heritage fuel and challenge these discourses as the Big Pit sits on the edge of a UK National Park, on the European Route of Industrial Heritage, and as a central institution of the Blaenavon Industrial Landscape UNESCO World Heritage Site. These interscalar and geopolitical relationships of memory, heritage, and tourism emerge from our multisensory analysis and speak to questions echoing across the United Kingdom and other multi-nation states navigating spatial and temporal shifts in the geopolitics of their tourism sectors. All industrial heritage sites navigate national identities in overt and covert ways. The relationships between resources, heritage sites, the state, and visitors shape the landscapes of industrial heritage sites and their embeddedness into community and national narratives. As Big Pit has transitioned from a small industrial heritage site managed by the UK-overseen National Museum of Wales towards a major tourist attraction and equal member of the seven-site Welsh-overseen National Museum Wales, we identify geopolitical shifts in coal and national heritage.

Keywords:

• Wales
• memory
• landscape
• tourism
• heritage
• museums
• scale
• coal
• national identity
• National Museum Wales

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The mine itself if fully operational in that it is still open, maintained, and inspected, and many former miners are employed as tour guides and maintenance workers, however no coal is currently or projected to be extracted from the mine. Extraction, however, following arguments from critical tourism studies (i.e. Azcárate, 2020), is ongoing as labor is extracted from industrialized workers for the growing and significant Welsh tourist industry.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mark Alan Rhodes II

Mark Alan Rhodes II is an Assistant Professor of Geography in the Department of Social Sciences at Michigan Technological University. As a cultural and historical geographer focused upon memory, heritage, and landscape, they use cultural and spatial contexts to better understand historical plurality for sustainable and equitable futures. They also advise and teach across the department’s interconnected MS and PhD programs in Industrial Heritage, Sustainable Communities, and Environmental Policy.

William R. Price

William R. Price is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Meteorology at Ball State University. He teaches multiple tourism focused courses in the department’s Tourism and Human Geography concentration. His primary research interests center on interpretation, visitor experience, and development associated with industrial tourism.