Toward a Conservation Otherwise: Learning with Ecomuseums in a Time of Social and Ecological Fragmentation

Abstract

This paper explores what heritage conservation might become when it listens differently—when it opens itself to relational, situated, and community-led practices of care. Beginning with the provocation “Museums? I don’t think this is for us. Museums are far too clever for us,” voiced in the context of an ecomuseum, I interrogate the assumptions that underpin conventional heritage conservation: expert authority, linear temporality, and the desire to stabilize. Drawing on new materialism theories, I question the disciplinary logics that produce heritage as a human centred practice that look at objects as static and conservation as a neutral act. In contrast, I present ecomuseums not as policy model but as conceptual disruption—territories of care that emerge from entanglements of memory and place, becoming, therefore, an active force that are engaged in sustainable practices. In thinking with ecomuseum practices, I consider how conservation would look if shifted from colonial to liberative practices, from control to attention, from fixity to fluidity. I explore conservation as a field of relations—affective and unfinished. Finally, I offer a call for heritage practitioners to reimagine conservation not as the act of keeping things the same, but as an ongoing negotiation with change in a pluriversal world.

1. Situating the Inquiry

In this article, I propose a provocation that opens new possibilities for heritage conservation, drawing on research conducted using postqualitative methods at the Ecomuseum of Scottish Mining Landscape in the United Kingdom between April and October 2025. This study is grounded in ethical, participatory, and ethnographic methodological approaches. The data includes unstructured interviews, transactional walks, and other emergent methods that developed responsively during fieldwork, shaped by participants’ preferences and the contingent circumstances of the site. Additional data sources include fieldnotes, audio recordings, artifacts, and mapping activities. This research was approved by The College Research Ethics Committee, University of Glasgow in February 2025.

Working within a new materialist paradigm, I foreground the relational entanglements between people, practices, and environments. Rather than adhering to fixed procedures, its purpose is to experiment and generate new ways of thinking—what St. Pierre refers to as “immanent inquiry” [1]. I begin by interrogating the contemporary role of heritage conservation, proposing the concept of the ecomuseum as a productive disruption that may generate alternative possibilities for conservation practice, while presenting initial insights from this study. I conclude by offering a provocation intended to encourage further reflection and sustained inquiry.

2. A Rupture in Conservation

“Museums? I don’t think this is for us. Museums are far too clever for us.”

This was a comment from a former miner when the word “museum” was mentioned by the Scottish Mining Landscape Ecomuseum facilitator as she was explaining the concept of an ecomuseum. She immediately said:

“Oh, you do not know that this kind of museum is different. Ecomuseums actually exist because of the community—because of people like you.”

The former miner stopped to listen to what she was saying with interest.

This moment took place during my first fieldwork visit to a mining community in Ayrshire (United Kingdom), as part of the Ecomuseum of Scottish Mining Landscapes, which supports the rich—though often hidden—heritage of coal mining across the Scottish Midland Coalfield. Mining in Scotland was an important industry in the 19th and 20th century and produced around 15% of the British annual output [2] (p. 50). After its collapse in the 1960s, the areas that used to be taken by collieries were left as derelict areas, producing landscapes that “are not just understood and experienced in an oppositional context but in a more complex and ambivalent manner, that is largely dependent on their specific histories” [2] (p. 51). In the UK, the connection between mining, society, and politics is defined by a legacy of strong working-class solidarity and political power, which can be sensed up to now when visiting and speaking with former miners.

The Eco-Museum of Scottish Mining Landscapes was chosen because of its connection with the geological mining areas in Scotland (areas through which I frequently cycle). It celebrates the rich industrial heritage of Scotland’s Midland coalfield, stretching from Fife to Ayrshire. The site was also selected for its profound connection to social and local legacies, “where memories of past industry may linger, and powerful legacies can still be imagined and brought to mind” [2]. Walking through the mining villages, one can sense how the communities were built and established to support the local mining industry. It was also of particular interest to me as a textile conservator, since banners from mining unions are often brought in for conservation, and I used to enjoy examining the hand-stitched details and the stories behind them while working on many of them. Therefore, working with the miners in this new context was especially appealing to me.

I am sure the anecdote mentioned above will not surprise many readers, yet I must admit that it was painful to hear how exclusive museum-related work can be. Practices tied to museum institutions, conservation among them, often reinforce the idea of the museum as a “cultural authority” [3] and sustain assumptions that museums hold a civilising role, responsible for giving culture to the public [4]. These concepts are deeply entwined with colonial dynamics grounded in beliefs about cultural hierarchy, control, ownership of knowledge, and the construction of the “other.”

In this sense, I understand colonialism not only as a historical project imposed by foreign powers, but also as a dynamic that generates hierarchies, regional inequalities, and situations in which dominant cultural groups impose their values, knowledge systems, or development models on others (see Coloniality of Power, Quijano, 2000 [5]). Colonial patterns can therefore emerge within nations themselves, reproduced through internal power structures that perpetuate exclusion, marginalisation, and control; an issue clearly present in the context of UK mining.

The idea that museums are “too clever” reflects an underlying power dynamic that reinforces divisions, for example, between the educated and the non-educated individuals. This perception is not neutral; it reveals how museum spaces both produce and are produced by relations of power. Rather than being imposed from above or outside, power is continuously reconstituted through the material-discursive environment of the museum itself. Liisa-Rávná Finbog, a Sámi scholar, duojár, writer, curator and editor, states that “the inclusion of people and cultures–by way of their objects–into easily accessible boxes is a method to deprive the agency of those who are categorized” [6]. Museums are not passive containers of knowledge, but active sites where authority, legitimacy, and exclusion are enacted and sustained. Efforts to decolonise museums have increased in recent years, driven by both institutions and museum professionals (see Giblin, Ramos & Grout 2019 [7]; Pitman 2021 [8]; and Vergès, Gilroy & Thackway 2024 [9]). However, there remains significant room for further change.

This, along with my experience shaped by nearly 15 years of learning conservation through research and practice in international contexts, has informed my perspective and led me to ask: If we are not actively listening to communities, what is actually being conserved? Who decides what is worth conserving? Who are we excluding with these practices? Is there a way that these communities can feel they belong to the practices of conservation and museums? Perhaps we, as heritage professionals, need to acknowledge that it is not our role to bring culture to people. People already have culture—rich, lived, and meaningful—even if they do not engage with museums.

But if we do not need to bring culture to people, what, then, is our role? The concept of the ecomuseum offers a compelling framework for rethinking our roles, our practices, what we conserve, why we conserve what we conserve, whether we are only conserving objects, and how these processes can be carried out within and/or by communities. The ecomuseum context also raises important questions about the meanings constructed through conservation and the power dynamics involved— particularly when such efforts seek to depart from Western paradigms but should instead ground themselves in community agency, environmental responsibility, land, local knowledge and culture.

Ecomuseums offer an opportunity to engage conservation practices with the pluriverse by establishing what La Cadena and Blaser describe as a “practice of a world of many worlds”: “heterogeneous worldings coming together as a political ecology of practices, negotiating their difficult being together in heterogeneity” [10] (p. 19). This perspective reframes heritage and conservation not as a singular, universal narrative to be protected and carried out, but as a constellation of multiple, coexisting understandings of value, memory, and identity—negotiated through the entanglements of community participation and cultural dialogue.

Drawing on the powerful vision of the Zapatistas, pluriversal theory points to efforts aimed at honouring different ways of living, doing and understanding the world—realities and forms of knowledge grounded in distinct ways of being, knowing, and doing, shaped by diverse worldviews and philosophical foundations [11]. While pluriversal theory critiques the values rooted in Western traditions, it does not dismiss or reject Western thought. Instead, it recognizes Western knowledge as one part of a broader plural reality—without accepting it uncritically. It is through the resurgence and insurgence of re-existence today that new avenues and paths for decolonial conviviality are opened—paths that move us beyond, while simultaneously undoing, the singularity and linearity imposed by the West [12].

Within this context, heritage conservation can shift from an expert-driven discipline to a collaborative and political process in which many histories, places and knowledge systems are acknowledged and fostered, generating alternative ways of relating to land and culture. The ecomuseum becomes a mediating space where conflicting yet coexisting “worldings” navigate their being-together—not through domination or erasure, but through ongoing negotiation and mutual recognition. In a rapidly shifting social and environmental climate, such an approach offers alternative pathways for heritage to contribute to resilience, care, and sustainable futures beyond extractive or colonial models.

3. Thinking Conservation Otherwise

“The objects are not important—the memories and people are what truly mattered.”–former geologist who was a mining worker.

Material, typically in the form of physical objects, is often seen as the primary focus of heritage conservation. But what happens when a community decides that other aspects are more worthy of conservation? What if we consider that the object exists within an entangled dynamic where other elements are equally important? What if the community understands that conserving something from the past involves more than conserving physical items?

During my time engaging with various communities and former miners, I encountered several situations that challenged the conventional standpoint of conservation, which I will describe below.

While walking with a geologist through a former mining site, he described how the work team once felt like more than just colleagues—they were a close-knit community, looking out for one another. When I asked him how the tools and objects they used related to those memories, he did not hesitate: “The objects are not important —the memories and people are what truly mattered.”

In another conversation with a group of former miners, who came from different pits but shared mining as a background, their collective memories were vivid and often triggered by each other’s stories, even when recalled in different settings. These shared recollections created strong social bonds. It was powerful to witness the pride they took in belonging to that community. When I asked about objects, the participants were not convinced that these alone held the essence of their heritage. The only item they mentioned was the safety lamp—important for its life-saving function—but they were quick to stress that the lamp itself would carry no meaning without the memories and the people connected to it. Heritage, for them, resides in lived experience and human relationships, not in objects alone.

On another occasion, former miners from Fife told me about a project involving a museum returning objects that once belonged to them. The miners themselves had requested to keep these objects in their homes or original sites. They wanted to tell their history, but not only through objects. They believed those items would be more meaningful within the context of their own lives and spaces, and that the museum should instead provide stories about their lived experiences.

While I participated in actively listening to these communities, they prompted a deeper reflection on the purpose of conservation for me as a conservator, which sometimes felt unsettling. They raised questions about whether the objects themselves and their materiality are truly the most important focus. Moreover, I began to question whether conventional conservation practices are universally applicable—especially as a Brazilian working in the UK and realizing that what I routinely do in the UK may not be appropriate for communities elsewhere. Perhaps in a time of social and ecological fragmentation, it is time to reconsider the foundations of conservation practice.

To rethink this conventional logic of conservation, it makes sense to acknowledge the long standing focus on material permanence which often ignores the fact that many communities engage with heritage as something living, relational, local, dynamic, and experiential. There is also the idea that the concept of a separation between nature and heritage may not even exist beyond modernity. Furthermore, conservation, as traditionally understood, has often been about fixing the past—preserving material heritage to prevent decay and ensure transmission to future generations. This view assumes stability, permanence, and clear boundaries between past, present, and future.

All these concepts that underpin our understanding of heritage and conservation are deeply rooted in Western paradigms and shaped by power systems. The use of the word heritage is an intrinsic part of this framework, and its associated discourse promotes and legitimizes values that “undermine alternative and subaltern ideas about heritage” [13] (p. 11). Critical Heritage Studies acknowledge that there is “enough dissatisfaction with this way of thinking about heritage that its critics can feel confident in coming together to promote a new way of thinking about and doing heritage” [14]. According to the Association of Critical Heritage Studies, [14] heritage studies must be fundamentally rethought through rigorous critique, recognizing heritage as a political act deeply intertwined with power relations that often uphold existing inequalities. Scholars in the field of conservation [15,16,17,18] also acknowledge that conservation is shaped by a “colonial legacy that simultaneously reinforces the authority of the academy and the subservient positioning of other worldviews” [19] (p. 31) and should question its origins.

Holtorf [20] offers a suggestion to move beyond Western practices, power structures, and a singular approach to conservation by proposing that heritage can be understood as an evolving process of becoming, where destruction and loss “are not necessarily threatening heritage; in fact, they may make heritage” [20] (p. 280). Before exploring the process of becoming, we should examine how these processes are entangled. Destruction and loss here do not simply refer to the physical damage of an object at a specific time, but rather to how social, material, political and other processes are integral to this transformation, producing heritage. Consequently, this process offers an opening to connect with the concept of becoming as explored by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari [21] and Barad [22], which views becoming as a non-linear, transformative process that moves beyond fixed identities creating new possibilities. In other words, the value of conserving an object—for example, a miner’s safety lamp—isolated in a museum aims for a stable, permanent and linear perspective. However, if we consider the object as part of an interconnected process that includes the miners themselves, their families, communities around it, the pit, related artefacts, agency, affection and collective memories, we begin to see how heritage and conservation open up a broader conversation emphasizing the importance of the evolving process of becoming. This wider perspective acknowledges that heritage involves many possibilities and is deeply connected to intangible elements that conservation efforts should also notice and address.

Through this lens, heritage and conservation can be seen as an active, evolving force participating in change, rather than something merely impacted by it. Heritage, therefore, is part of a connection with other living beings and structures with conservation as an integral element of this dynamic unfolding across time, space, and even species—something continually renegotiated in response to social and environmental change.

Within this context, if we adopt a dynamic and relational perspective—such as that proposed by Karen Barad [22]—conservation can move beyond mere safeguarding and instead become an active participant in the ongoing process of becoming within an entangled world. Building on Barad’s theory (2007), matter and meaning mutually shape one another in the process of knowledge creation [23], which challenges the separation between artefacts and intangible heritage, for example. Knowing this, Barad sees matter as active and agential, entangled with meaning in the ongoing becoming of the world, emphasizing that how we know and how things exist are inseparable and carry ethical implications.

Therefore, by thinking with Barad’s theory, conservation can be approached as an entangled and co-constructed process, one that does not prioritize the materiality of an object over its intangible meanings but instead considers conservation practice as a process that is fundamentally interconnected, plural and inseparable. Meaning, therefore, is not fixed or imposed from above but emerges through the entanglement of humans, objects, affects, and environments—dissolving rigid boundaries that are ultimately socially constructed and therefore boundaries become blurry. Conservation, then, can be reimagined as a process-based, contextually adaptive, and collaborative practice, responsive to the multiplicity of actors and forces involved.

But what if inheritance—whether of a life, a story, or heritage—is not solely about the past, but about how we engage with relational thinking (people, places, histories, materials, animals, etc.) and continually reconfigure it? From this perspective, heritage is always partial, shaped by language, and narrated from a present standpoint that inevitably interprets, filters, and repositions what has been. There is no singular or complete past or heritage; instead, its meaning is constantly formed and re-formed through our evolving relationship with it. This allows us not only to reinterpret the heritage but to reshape how we position ourselves in relation to it and therefore conserve it.

From this view, interactions—whether with objects, stories, places, materials or communities—are not about closing down meaning into fixed interpretations, but about opening up possibilities. Heritage and its conservation, then, are not a closed set of truths to be protected, but a dynamic field of potential through which new understandings and relationships can emerge.

In this scenario, conservation can participate in the process of becoming as something alive, situated, relational and responsive. Rather than aiming for authenticity through material permanence, conservation can focus on fostering meaningful relationships between people, places, and stories. It becomes an ethical and creative practice—one that acknowledges change, reinterpretation, and multiplicity as integral to heritage.

4. Ecomuseum as a Disruptive Practice

“What is the framework you use to work with the communities?”–I asked the ecomuseum facilitator

“There is none. Each community requires a unique approach, depending on its members’ diverse skills, levels of confidence, and the information they wish to share. In many ways, that is the beauty of this work: it is shaped by and with the communities themselves-we are here to hear them, learn with them, not to speak.”–answered the ecomuseum facilitator.

The development of new museology emerged in the 1970s and 1980s as a critical response to the traditional, object-focused model of museums. It called for a shift from collections and preservation toward more socially engaged, community-oriented practices. Key figures in this movement include Peter Vergo, whose influential 1989 edited volume The New Museology provided a foundational critique of conventional museological approaches. Scholars and practitioners began to challenge the idea of the museum as a neutral, authoritative space and instead emphasized its role as a site of power, interpretation, and cultural negotiation [24].

New Museology as a critical movement inspired the development of the ecomuseum—a concept introduced by French sociologists Georges Henri Rivière and Hugues de Varine (1985). Rivière described the ecomuseum as a “mirror” [25] (p. 182) that reflects a community’s identity, history, and relationship with its territory, fostering self-recognition and intergenerational learning. This concept shifts the focus from static collections to dynamic, lived experiences rooted in place (land) and community. Rivière also characterizes an ecomuseum as “a way of interpreting a place,” implying that it extends beyond a single building and encompasses the entire area it identifies as its territoire [25] (p. 80).

Ecomuseums in France played a major role, integrating local communities into the preservation and interpretation of their own heritage. The International Council of Museums (ICOM) through the Natural History Committee [26] (p. 81) also contributed to this shift by encouraging participatory models and ethical frameworks that support inclusivity, representation, and social responsibility. The Committee also emphasized that an ecomuseum aims to achieve change by using the language of everyday life, working with communities to understand, critique, and address the issues faced by the territory [26] (p. 81).

New museology aligns closely with developments in critical heritage studies, postcolonial theory, and feminist theory, foregrounding collaboration, intergenerational dialogue, and the inclusion of historically marginalized voices. It reconceptualizes museums not just as custodians of the past, but as active agents of cultural transformation and social justice in the present.

Unlike traditional museums, ecomuseums are often without walls or conventional collections and open to take a diverse sense of shape and work responding to the demands of the territory. They can take any form concerning the local context and land. Their purpose lies in the engagement and agency of local communities, who co-create and interpret culture, heritage and the environment in a way that reflects their lived realities.

René Rivard [27] expanded on the concept into a workable definition in 1988, contrasting traditional museums (building + collections + experts + public) with ecomuseums (territory + heritage + memory + population). Ecomuseums, Rivard argued, interpret human-environment relationships and support environmental and cultural sustainability through community involvement. Hugues de Varine rejected the idea of the ecomuseum as a miracle solution. Instead, he presented it as an opportunity to test ideas, be creative, and develop new ways of working—essentially an observatory for change that offers insights into what an ecomuseum could become [28] (p. 83).

There are many ways to define an ecomuseum. Peter Davis highlights ideas like identity, continuity, and the creation of a sense of place as especially important in our current ecological crisis, suggesting that ecomuseums can serve as platforms for engaging with these issues. [26] Contemporary projects like EcoHeritage [29], a project carried out in Spain, Portugal, Poland and Italy, further develop this thinking by framing ecomuseums as collaborative approaches to managing cultural and natural heritage. Institutions like EcoAmgueddfa (Llŷn Peninsula, Wales) [30], the Ecomuseu Campos de São José (São José dos Campos, Brazil) [31], the Ecomusee Tata Somba (Benin, Togo) [32] and the Ha Long Ecomuseum (Hanoi, Vietnam) [33] underscore holistic heritage interpretation and community agency as central to their missions.

Modern understandings of ecomuseums embrace flexibility, fluidity and diversity. Borelli et al. [34] describe them as having “limitless diversity,” which is especially valuable when reimagining conservation. By rejecting fixed models, ecomuseums offer a framework that supports adaptable, context-specific approaches, embraces the pluriversal, allows both heritage and conservation practices to be more inclusive, decentring authority, ethical, non-linear, participatory, responsive and situated. This research does not seek to claim the superiority of ecomuseums over traditional museums. Rather, it presents the ecomuseum as a possible framework for understanding relational heritage practices, in alignment with the pluriversal theory discussed in the first section of this article.

5. Conservation Learns to Become-With

“Community members from different mining backgrounds united by shared culture, stories, and memories created an immediate, strong community and deep interest in being part of the ecomuseum.”–fieldnotes

The concept of the ecomuseum can offer a powerful starting point for reimagining what conservation can become. Rather than functioning as a closed, fixed framework, the ecomuseum can emphasise the dynamic entanglements between communities, land, cultural practices, intergenerational knowledge, and heritage itself. It can reflect a relational network in which heritage emerges through ongoing interactions, rather than being isolated or objectified. It can promote situated knowledge instead of marginalizing or othering those who are different from the status quo. This localised, fluid approach give agency to communities to define conservation on their own terms, according to their values, interests and specific contexts.

“Beings do not pre-exist their relatings” [35] (p. 69). Maria Puig de la Bellacasa highlights this quote from Donna Haraway’s relational ontology as a way to “take on the situatedness of knowledge”[36] (p. 69) in thinking with care. Relations of thinking and knowing require care, and they shape how we care; therefore, care is relational. This is a helpful starting point to think conservation as a requirement of care, attention and responsibility from situated and affective relationships. This also aligns with Barad’s idea of intra-action [22], where entities do not pre-exist their relations but are constituted through them. de la Bellacasa [35] also urges us to remain within the tensions of care—not only as emotional affection or maintenance work, but as an unresolved, ethically demanding practice, which often arises when working with others. This echoes Donna Haraway’s (2016) invitation to “stay with the trouble” [36]—to inhabit complex, entangled realities without seeking to resolve them prematurely.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s (2009) influential critique of “the danger of a single story” [37] is equally relevant. She demonstrates how power shapes narratives by flattening cultural complexity into singular, repeated images—images that often become dominant truths. This dynamic mirrors how heritage conservation, grounded in Eurocentric frameworks, has historically privileged certain material and aesthetic values while marginalizing others, as previously mentioned. Conservation has often reinforced a binary and exclusionary view of culture by defining “authentic” heritage through colonial lens.

Although recent decades have brought efforts to shift conservation and museum practices toward more inclusive and participatory models, the field continues to grapple with the inertia of its own foundations. As Avrami (2021) notes, while pluralism and public engagement are increasingly discussed, actual conservation policies often still prioritize “the longevity of resources over the continuity of engagement” [38] (p. 198). Material preservation remains central, limiting how conservation adapts to the diverse ways communities relate to heritage. Institutions, such as the Getty Conservation Institute [39] (p. 69), have pointed out that conservation work is shaped by social interactions and therefore must address and reconcile diverse viewpoints. However, authors such as Sanchita Balachandran [40] and Jane Henderson [41] highlight how slow the conservation profession has been to acknowledge that “intangible values may in fact be as important, if not more important than tangible heritage” [40].

This exposes a core tension: conservation seeks permanence and stability, but the meanings and values it aims to protect are inherently fluid. Avrami [38] identifies this as a systemic issue—the structures of conservation are ill-equipped to accommodate changing or conflicting values, largely due to their dependence on fixed designations and the centrality of material fabric. If we challenge the traditional binaries between subject and object, human and non-human, culture and nature, we can view heritage not as a static entity to be conserved, but as something co-constituted through ongoing relational encounters. The conservator, in this system, is not a neutral expert, but an active, situated participant in meaning-making processes with others.

If we consider an encounter I had with a former geologist from a former pit, who described the process the earth undergoes after the coal is removed, we can have a sense of how this works in practice:

“When they strip the coal out, the seam might only be about a metre, maybe a metre and a half thick. Right after that, the automatic props push forward, and the ground behind them starts to collapse. But it does not all fall at once. No, it comes down slowly, in a series of small, deliberate moves—jump, jump, down.

It settles into this strange rhythm, almost like the rhythm of breathing. When the lights go out deep underground, all that is left is this sound— constant noise, as if the earth itself was breathing—slow, steady, and alive, almost like the underground itself is alive. Then come the creaks, the groans, the moans. It is eerie, really—it sounds almost human.”

The way he shared that memory with me, and the way he spoke about the people who were with him at certain points listening to the “earth breathing”, had a deep emotional impact on me. While he was trying to show that the pit was more than just a place of work, I could sense that it was a site of deep affection, where even the earth itself seemed to interact with those who worked within it.

Rather than viewing the mine as a static, stable, inert space that humans act upon, this account reveals a dynamic entanglement between human, labour, machinery, and the earth itself (the land). The rhythm of the collapsing ground, compared to breathing, evokes a sense of co-existence and mutual responsiveness: the miners do not simply extract coal from a passive landscape—they live, work, and become with the underground environment. Although I had no prior connection with that specific place, I felt deeply embedded in the community and the entangled complexities of its heritage. In many ways, it resonated with my own memories, and through the sharing of his memories and experiences, he extended a sense of belonging—drawing me into that space through affective connection.

In this sense, conservation in a mining context can move beyond the quest for stabilization and preservation of objects, machinery, or even oral histories. Instead, it can attend to the relational processes and shared rhythms through which people, landscapes, affect and materials co-evolve. Conservation, then, becomes not about fixing the past in place and stability, but about recognising the ongoing, situated processes of becoming that shape identity, memory, and meaning in post-industrial communities. The living memory of the mine—the soundscape, the movements, the embodied knowledge—continues to resonate, inviting a more relational and affective approach to what we conserve and how.

As professionals we become response-able [22]—able to respond ethically and attentively to these entanglements—which then reframes conservation as a relational, accountable practice. It is not about retrieving an “original” state, but about engaging with the heterogeneous histories that emerge through interaction: narrative, emotional, spiritual, political, and material. It involves reading ideas through one another, attending carefully to how meanings are shaped, transformed, and co-produced.

So, what might conservation become if it truly listens to and is inspired by ecomuseum practices?

Ecomuseums, grounded in participation and place-based knowledge, can offer a radical alternative. They can decentralize expert authority, foreground local voices, and treat heritage as living, dynamic, and co-created. Conservation becomes not about stabilizing material for the future, but about nurturing relationships, transmitting values, and sustaining cultural vitality by preserving also the land, where everything stands.

If heritage conservation were to fully embrace ecomuseum principles, it would shift from a logic of preservation to a logic of care and attention in an ongoing system. It would prioritize dialogue over finality, fluidity over fixity, and process over product. Conservation would transform into a shared ethical practice embedded in everyday life—not merely a professional discipline, but a form of world-making.

This idea offers us the opportunity to deconstruct conservation—push its boundaries—which might offer a more meaningful approach, one that better reflects what truly matters to people and the complex entanglements involved.

6. Unfolding Conservation: Not a Conclusion

Following the ideas shared, I deliberately refuse closure; there is no final conclusion here. Instead, I invite the reader to reflect on what would be their role on a form of conservation practice that listens differently—one that moves away from authority and towards humility; one that connects. This signals a shift from traditional conservation towards genuine participation, from rigidity to fluidity. Drawing on Haraway’s theory of “Staying with the Trouble” [36], perhaps conservation is not about preserving things exactly as they are and or materiality but about remaining with the complexity and uncertainty of their change, and process of becoming. Conservation becomes less about controlling and more about responding attentively to the dynamic relationships that shape heritage and environments. It acknowledges the entangled nature of the world and the multiple possibilities that emerge from these connections. By embracing these entanglements, conservation can become a richer, more inclusive, and more relevant endeavour—one that honours complexity rather than seeks to tame it.

For my work with the Scottish mining community, conservation to become-with can be seen as a way to open their heritage to connection with others through a broader network of people, affect, and beings beyond humans—and I include myself in it. I participated on the very first day of my fieldwork, where individuals—many of whom had not previously interacted—came together through shared memories, stories, and experiences. The places, the community, and the presence of objects and documents that evoked the past played a powerful role in encouraging dialogue, deepening awareness of their surroundings, and fostering reflection on place and memory. Moreover, the network supported them to restore a sense of worth, drawing on the deep pride many feel in having contributed to a once-prosperous profession. Although the shift toward more environmentally sustainable energy sources has transformed the landscape, their work remains part of a rich, locally rooted heritage—one that continues to be shared not only across Scotland but also further afield. It also challenges the community to think more deeply about the possible opening that heritage can have by connecting the present, intergenerational collaboration and other agents to ensure this heritage continues to evolve and be relevant.

Within this, conservation to become-with challenges us to rethink our professional practice not as a static goal but as an active, ethical engagement with change, uncertainty, and relationality—a practice that remains open to transformation and responsive to the world’s evolving conditions.