Historic England. Report Naming.

Challenge: Historic England is the public culture body tasked with protecting the historical environment of England. Including its historic monuments. But what will that look like in the future? We live in a time when the monumental landscape is under question. Statues are being torn down. And there are fierce debates about the historical figures and events. How should we memorialize the past? How do we treat monuments put up by past generations? And what does it mean to memorialize? Those were the questions at the heart of the report on the memorial landscape Historic England were creating. But what should that report be named?

Solution: The report was complex and nuanced - as it aimed to bring together multiple threads and perspectives. In our naming document we focused on a range of those threads within it and used them to provide a series of lenses through which the ongoing debate could be viewed - to engage fruitfully in the present with the complexities of the past and the possibilities of the future.