School of Social & Political Sciences

 

Introducing the Felt Experience Resource Kit

The Felt Experience Resource Kit features practical, adaptable methods that demonstrate how emotional and sensory responses to heritage can be collected, interpreted and used to inform successful, community-led projects. Developed in partnership with the AHRC Place Based Research Programme, Historic Environment Scotland and The National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Resource Kit is designed to support heritage projects to work more closely with their communities.

In 2023, alongside Historic Environment Scotland, The National Lottery Heritage Fund awarded funds to North Lanarkshire Council’s Rediscovering Airdrie project. It used techniques from the resource kit, such as emotional mapping workshops, to make sure voices from a wide cross-section of the community were factored into its heritage-led regeneration plans. In Glasgow, the City Council’s Govan Heritage: Remarkable Past, Bright Future project used the techniques in the resource kit to capture people’s feelings of pride, loss, resilience and hope about the former shipbuilding area. These insights are helping ensure regeneration efforts honour the community’s emotional landscape as well as its physical one.

The research team was led by Professor Rebecca Madgin, of the University of Glasgow’s Urban Studies team. It draws on The Place Programme’s research across heritage studies, psychology and design, and its six-year project to create people-centred placemaking strategies.

 She said: “We are delighted to introduce the Felt Experiences Resource Kit. This work is based on a substantive amount of academic research that suggests there is an evidenced relationship between felt experiences of place and positive socio-economic outcomes including wellbeing and economic growth. “We have distilled academic theories and evidence into a tried and tested set of emoji-based methods that can both surface how people feel in and about place and use this information to improve place-based decision making. “Working with partners across Scotland has demonstrated how felt experiences can shape more inclusive place-based decision making in ways that lead to improved outcomes for people in place.”

Caroline Clark, The National Lottery Heritage Fund Director for Scotland said: “Understanding the feelings people have about the places they live, work and cherish is absolutely vital to making good decisions about Place and change, yet very difficult to assess and measure.

“With the Felt Experience Resource Kit this project has delivered range of very effective tools and methods to help people express those feelings about place, and for them to be measured and recorded. The Felt Experience Resource Kit provides a valuable bridge between the history of a place, as measured in buildings and official records, and what makes its heritage meaningful to the people who live and visit, including all those intangible elements that contribute to how we feel about somewhere special to us.”

Dr Susan O’Connor, Head of Grants at HES, said: “This project challenges us to think about heritage and places not just as bricks and mortar, but through living memories and emotions. By looking through the lens of felt experience, communities can tell us about their needs more meaningfully and help project delivery teams deliver impactful projects that honours both people and place. Recognising the emotions that shape identity and people’s feelings about their places allows us to deliver regeneration that more inclusive, sustainable and truly meaningful.”

Professor Christopher Smith, Executive Chair of the Arts and Humanities Research Council said: "Places are more than physical structures; they hold the memories, feelings, and experiences of those who live in and around them. That's why it's vital that we consider how people feel about their environment when considering planning and development.

“This valuable research will help to ensure these intangible yet extremely important considerations are given appropriate weight in those processes.”

 

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First published: 17 December 2025