Lost Innocence and Land Matters

Abstract

This paper explores the community regeneration dynamics of the Heartlands Project in Cornwall, UK. It is grounded in our autobiographical and experiential participation as artist consultants on the project during much of 2008. The paper addresses the issue of how landmarks of tin and copper mining are important spatial icons that generate some cohesion amongst the ambiguous constructions of culture and identity politics. The value of these derelict landscape features, which exist predominantly because of a large-scale shifting of matter, is of local, national and international significance. As emblems of heritage, such ruins provide a link with the past and equally a link with western industrialisation, capitalism and migration.