Rough Edges

Our sense of belonging and emotional attachment to both each other and our geographic surroundings is not only human nature, it is vital to our existence, because without it we don’t just feel deeply alone, we are alone.

When we feel like we belong to somewhere, something or someone, it gives our self-esteem a shot in the arm and helps us take action by giving our lives meaning – we know where we are, we have structure all around us, even if we don’t always notice it. Belonging is a safety net that catches us all.

The sense of truly belonging somewhere is incredibly powerful: it can have a continuing influence on a person’s quality of life, mental and physical health, education, employment, relationships and social connectedness. Whilst research acknowledges that a feeling of belonging is essential in order to live a good and happy life, its importance is often overlooked or persistently underestimated by the systems that surround us.

In modern times, we need new ways of understanding heritage in all its rough and ready behaviours, analysing both its values and consequences. We have to challenge traditional frameworks in order to understand and identify heritage and heritage making.

Wouldn’t it be great to trace the history of those working-class heroes that have gone before us, to be in possession of a map or app that pinpointed landmarks, locations and local legends, a shared record that belongs to all of us?

Whilst upper-class and middle-class ‘Britishness’ is always celebrated and recorded in great detail, the blunt narratives of our working-class traditions have all but crumbled and fallen away, our stories and authentic voices overlooked, misheard and ignored, and then forgotten.

This is how, and why, the heritage of our people [the working-class] is so easily overlooked, because most people don’t recognise it as being there in the first place.

Education, often seen as a pathway towards upward mobility, has unintentionally become the gatekeeper of it. In my mind, this is mainly because so much of what is seen as
‘success’ is allocated to folk based on whether or not they have a degree, which may inadvertently define class when using this metric. The class gap can of course be seen from any angle – family, upbringing, employment, etc. – but education is the widest.

Education is complex, it comes to us at all angles and at differing speeds, but every child, especially those whose starting line is one of disadvantage or neurodivergence, has a right to access it. That’s why we owe it to children to listen to them so that we might find solutions together.

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There are two sides to every coin, and I know that one side of my coin was tarnished and barely legible. It’s all very well telling those in poverty that education is the key to success in all these wonderful ways, but sometimes that bloody key can be hard to find, or those who have it either don’t want to share it with you for whatever reason or they simply forget that you need to be shown how to use it.

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History centres, free museums and heritage centres not only provide us with an insight into humankind’s history, but they connect us with our own heritage and bring communities together. This kind of local knowledge, support and encouragement – regardless of the age or ability of the visitor – is exactly what communities need, especially those in less affluent areas.

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This is why education is perhaps the single most important thing for our working-class communities to strive for, because without it there is not much hope for the future. We must fight for our children’s right to a suitable level of education, just like everyone else, and not have them pushed back because they have an accent, or their big brother was disrup-tive, or they are a bit jiggy in the classroom, or sad because they’re trying to process something that’s happened at home, like a parent losing their job. These are the moments when we must recognise barriers to learning and hold the gates to education open.

Education is what a better future looks like – it is aspiration served with a steady aim. Anything that pulls us out of poverty is progress, and progress, more than anything, gives us hope to keep at it.