"Tradition turned to Heritage"
Changes in an Industrial Community

Tradition - a custom, opinion, or belief handed down to posterity
Heritage - a nation's historic buildings, monuments, countryside, when regarded as worthy of preservation. The Pocket Oxford Dictionary

"The city has always been celebrated in terms of its central icons, and many of these plot a visual hierarchy; if not of skyscrapers, then of church spires and towers. The camera has followed these, and indeed, such icons remain the basis ofow own tourist maps through the city as we construct our individual geographies of urban space. "
Graham Clarke (1997) The Photograph, Oxford University Press

Our perceptions of a place come from the writing and images that have been used in the media or from reputation. These may be stereotypes, which could be either positive or negative. While some countries will use known icons to promote themselves to a worid-wide market Places will also become known because of the famous people that may have been bom there, their success in sporting events or because of historical pedigree. However the true identity of a place can only be reviled by closer examination of the traces that run through its heritage.

A recent report commissioned by the Sunday Times and carried out by analysts Experian, used eight key issues to define quality of domestic life in 2001. It represented each town in England by a set of statistics and then placed them in a rank order. Uttlesford, in Essex, was identified as the place with the best quality of life, while Stoke on Trent came at the bottom of the list. Built on a tradition of pottery, steel making and coal mining, the city is actually six towns brought together to form the City of Stoke on Trent, commonly known as the Potteries. While the city's image is one of an industrial heritage and illustrated in the novels of Arnold Bennett. It is known worldwide as the home of fine china. The report showed the city as a set of figures but for its population it is not a representation that is easy to recognise or come to terms with. This work investigates the threads that hold a city together and how pressures from outside the community have changed its industrial history. Comparing and contrasting personal experiences of the city with the elements that identify it. Exploring representation and personal conflict in contemporary life.
Andy Biggs 2003