Did you know DCMS is running an open consultation on its proposed Cultural Protection Fund? Gov.uk’s consultation search doesn’t.

Heritage gets everywhere. The story of Pillars of Eternity begins when trespass near an ancient and sanctified site arouses a violent reaction from the local population, who have appointed themselves the ruins’ guardians in place of their long-vanished builders; and now the game’s had me wondering what to do about an artefact taken from such ruins, …

An article (login possibly required) has been doing the rounds that tries to anticipate the significance of an altered sky:

The BBC recently ran a short article on the ethics of leaving stuff on the Moon. It draws mainly on environmental ethics and space law; not much on space heritage, although it does note the historical value of the remnants at the Apollo landing sites.

Here’s a piece of guesswork about moral psychology. Suppose you are aware that purchasing antiquities without a clear provenance might result in money going to organisations like Hamas and ISIS/Islamic State. Suppose you've seen remarks like this one from Conflict Antiquities:

What the Hunterian Art Gallery presents: ‘This major new exhibition features a spectacular array of Scottish gold items from the Bronze Age to the present.’

‘Who owns the past?’ (or some variation) is a common question in debates and disputes involving heritage. Here’s a similar question from the world of intellectual property law: ‘Who owns a family’s history?’

Another rumour that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport may close? Or at least, lose responsibility for media policy, leaving it perhaps fatally weakened. When the Culture Secretary was appointed, despite having no evident suitability for the job, there were rumours (which reached the pages of Private Eye, if memory serves) that her secret mission …

I’m currently reading Appropriating the Past, the second essay collection linked to the Centre for the Ethics of Cultural Heritage. One of the essays, by Cornelius Holtorf (who’ll be one of the editors of the third collection), talks about cases like

Even to a Briton, it can sound like something one might find in the Dictionary of Imaginary Places:

You can learn surprising things at academic conferences, and at one of them some comments on Stonehenge gained a contribution from a delegate in the audience who had had experience of negotiating with druids. Also, if memory serves, with other druids who were disinclined to talk to the first lot of druids. This is doubtless not …

What must cultures be like for this to be possible...?

When culinary traditions can be formally recognised as significant cultural heritage, it was only a matter of time before U.N.E.S.C.O. found itself having to consider the possibility of digital world heritage. Assuming that a website occupies a suitable level of individuation to begin with, I’d have favoured Archive.org, but in fact it’s Wikipedia that’s being proposed …

Can completing a book affect or reflect its cultural ties?

When you see an artwork ‘in context’, how expansive is that context? How far can a work move before it becomes ‘decontextualized... in a different space’?