Preservation without Representation: Making CLG Programs Vehicles for Inclusive Leadership, Historic Preservation, and Engagement
College of Architecture, Texas A & M University, College Station, TX 77840, USA
Societies 2020, 10(3), 60; https://doi.org/10.3390/soc10030060
Received: 15 July 2020
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Revised: 2 August 2020
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Accepted: 4 August 2020
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Published: 11 August 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Enhancing the Role of Government, Non-Profits, Universities, and Resident Associations as Valuable Community Resources to Advance Equity, Access, Diversity and Inclusion)
This article examines public historic preservation agencies’ ability to support social inclusion aims within the context of the Certified Local Government (CLG) program. Though administered by the Texas Historical Commission, Texas’ State CLG program is federally-funded and makes available special access to technical assistance, grants, and loans to qualifying communities contingent on compliance. Program surveys the state staff administered to city and county historical commissions with the CLG designation indicate challenges around diversifying their leadership and identifying training opportunities. This article reviews those surveys to detect insights into how the state CLG program can create spaces in which local commissions can increase their “representativeness” through changes in assessment and training content. Specifically, I analyze two government assessment tools used to evaluate local CLGs’ ability to meet federal and state training and participation expectations. I compare these survey results to self-assessment activities and questionnaires collected during a pilot training on implicit bias, outreach, and cultural resource surveying I conducted with multiple CLGs in Gonzales, Texas. Findings suggest more creatively designed training and capacity building is necessary around inclusion, identifying structural barriers to participation, and foundational knowledge of historic preservation and planning practice, and ethics.
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Keywords:
public administration; historic preservation; public history; cultural resource management; storytelling; urban planning; social inclusion; structural racism; implicit bias; engaged research
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MDPI and ACS Style
Roberts, A.R. Preservation without Representation: Making CLG Programs Vehicles for Inclusive Leadership, Historic Preservation, and Engagement. Societies 2020, 10, 60. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc10030060
AMA Style
Roberts AR. Preservation without Representation: Making CLG Programs Vehicles for Inclusive Leadership, Historic Preservation, and Engagement. Societies. 2020; 10(3):60. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc10030060
Chicago/Turabian StyleRoberts, Andrea R. 2020. "Preservation without Representation: Making CLG Programs Vehicles for Inclusive Leadership, Historic Preservation, and Engagement" Societies 10, no. 3: 60. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc10030060
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