Cite this as: Croucher, K., Bates, C.R., Booker, O., Evans, A., Gaffney, C., Ichumbaki, E.B. Jennings, B., Moore, J., Ogden, J., Ritchings, J., Simpson, S., Sparrow, T., Snaylam, S., Sutton-Butler, A., Walker, A. and Wilson, A.S. 2026 Place, Identity and Wellbeing: Bradford and Beyond, Internet Archaeology 73. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.73.4
This paper presents ongoing collaborative, place-based research between the University of Bradford and partner organisations, exploring the importance of identity, and the role of heritage and culture, for wellbeing, cohesion and resilience. It discusses three 'parent' projects: Fragmented Heritage; Virtual Bradford; and Continuing Bonds, and seven interlinked subsidiary projects: Curious Travellers; Building Resilience through Heritage (BReaTHe); Saltaire: People, Heritage and Place; Dying to Talk; Continuing Bonds: Creative Dissemination; the Continuing Bonds Toolkit, and Reimagining Tanzania’s Townscape Heritage, showing how digital heritage, alongside arts-based creative methods, is crucial to the role that the past can play for communities today. For instance, Saltaire: People, Heritage and Place (AHRC Place-based programme) has used digital twin technologies to explore heritage, alongside creative workshops with school learners, exploring their journeys, routes, and narratives, work which is also being developed with our partners at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, in response to the UN year for the Creative Economy.
Key to our approach has been a focus on ensuring legacy, with reuse of data to address local needs. Faithful 3D reconstructions of heritage sites, drawing upon the Curious Travellers methodology, were developed as part of the Fragmented Heritage project (AHRC Digital Transformations Theme Large Grant). Examples include the use of this work to inform the physical reconstruction of monuments by conservation architects in the aftermath of natural disasters or conflict. Furthermore, when reconstructions are used as a focus for collating intangible heritage through cultural heritage festivals, they help communities to use their cultural heritage to build resilient futures, such as in the Bagamoyo Festival in Tanzania, and in Building Resilience Through Heritage (BReaTHe) cultural heritage festivals in Azraq, Jordan.
Separately, in Continuing Bonds and Dying to Talk, we have used funerary archaeology and creative methods to build resilience around death, dying, bereavement and loss, with audiences ranging from health and social care professionals and students, to school children, the latter co-producing resources with and for young people, used in Festivals of the Dead (with Continuing Bonds methods also now being used to explore topics of gender, identity, and diet/ eating disorders). These projects work towards normalising talking about death and loss, building resilience.
Collectively, these projects have resulted in participants building and reflecting on their senses of identity and belonging, while valuing routes and origins. Through experiential and creative methods, they have enriched connections: to people, place, and our pasts, and thus have helped to improve wellbeing.
Corresponding author: Karina Croucher
[email protected]
University of Bradford 
C. Richard Bates
School of Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of St Andrews
Olivia Booker
University of St Andrews
Adrian Evans
University of Bradford
Chris Gaffney
University of Bradford
Elgidius Ichumbaki
Dept. Archaeology and Heritage Studies, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
School of Archaeology, University College Dublin
Division of Cultural Heritage Divergence, Korea University, South Korea
British Institute in Eastern Africa, Kenya
Benjamin Jennings
University of Bradford
Joe Moore
University of Bradford
Joe Ogden
University of Bradford
Joe Ritchings
City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council
Sydney Simpson
City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council
Tom Sparrow
University of Bradford
Sharon Snaylam
Art educator
Aoife Sutton-Butler
University of Bradford
Adrian Walker
City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council
Andrew S. Wilson
University of Bradford
Figure 1: Visualising Heritage's first application of mobile mapping technologies to document the cityscape of Bradford, with a perspective showing City Hall and the Mirror Pool in the foreground looking towards the University of Bradford. This first use in Bradford was the catalyst both for Virtual Bradford - a Digital Twin of the City Centre - and the creative potential of this contextual data for reimagining the cityscape. Image credit: Visualising Heritage, University of Bradford.
Figure 2a/Figure 2b/Figure 2c: Saltaire: People, Heritage and Place. Local school pupils exploring Saltaire heritage (a); Digital recreations by pupils (b); Pupils from different schools working together on the topic of 'routes and journeys' (c). Image credit: Saltaire: People, Heritage and Place, University of Bradford
Figure 3a/Figure 3b/Figure 3c: Children's artwork and the Soluis Reality Portal each seen alongside David Hockney's A Year in Normandie artwork at the Saltaire Arts Trail, in the roof space of Salts Mill in 2023. Image credit: Visualising Heritage, University of Bradford.
Figure 4: Process for Saltaire: People, Heritage and Place. Image credit: Croucher et al. 2025)
Figure 5: Continuing Bonds results - thinking differently about death, dying, bereavement and loss (see 'Findings' in Croucher et al. 2020, table 1b.).
Figure 6: Pathway to impact, Continuing Bonds (after Croucher et al. 2020, fig. 4).
Figure 7: Dying to Talk, Festivals of the Dead, responses of school learners (after Booth et al. 2023, fig. 3).
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