PURPOSE
We help people communicate, connect, and learn where cultural memory is under pressure.
Communicating & Connecting
Some of our work is reflective and companionable: visiting places, noticing stories, writing field notes, and attending to the small gardens of memory close enough to see well.
Accord Building
Some of it is more structured: building resources for people who want to understand heritage conflict in Australia and respond with care, courage, fairness, and practical wisdom.
Across both fields, our purpose is not to win arguments about heritage. It is to help people attend more carefully to what is at stake, what has been inherited, what may be harmed, and what might still be repaired or carried forward.
Country & Place
Based in the Scenic Rim region of South-East Queensland, Heritage People works from a strong sense of place while looking outward to questions of cultural memory, heritage conflict, public care, and community life across Australia and beyond.
We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the Country on which we live, work, write, visit, and learn–the Mununjali People of the Yugambeh nation.
We recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ continuing connection to land, waters, culture, memory, story, law, and community.
We pay our respects to Elders past and present, and to all First Nations people who continue to care for Country and cultural memory.
Current projects
View Projects [ -> ]
JUN-14-2026
Accord Building Learning Commons
Accord Building
JUN-14-2026
Writing
JUN-14-2026
Cases & Materials on Heritage Conflict
Conflict in Context
You are welcome here
We welcome companions in this work: heritage workers, community advocates, researchers, public servants, writers, visitors, and people who care for places and memory.
Contact us to share what you are noticing, suggest a resource, point us toward a story or case, or begin a conversation about cultural memory, heritage conflict, and public care.
An Open Question
How can heritage writing become a companionable practice of care?
We ask this through our own field notes, visiting, reflection, and public memory work. We also invite others to ask it with us.
What might change if heritage writing became more than commentary or record-keeping?
What might it make possible if it became a way of noticing, welcoming, remembering, and caring well?
Latest Posts
View Archive [ -> ]
-
This field note captures some of our thinking from our perspective of The Imaginative Visitor and from some of our… Read more.
4–6 minutes
Who tends this work?
Heritage People is tended by Colleen and Andrew. Together, we bring experience in heritage, museums, law, mediation, writing, administration, public-interest work, and cultural care.
Colleen
Heritage Projects Lead
Colleen founded Heritage People and brings experience in museums, heritage, interpretation, exhibitions, preparedness planning, city sanctuaries, and heritage ministry, with a lifelong interest in memory, story, family, and place.
Find Colleen on LinkedIn
Andrew
Writing & Accord Building Lead
Andrew is a mediator, writer, learning designer, and former lawyer whose work explores accord-building, post-law peacemaking, governance, cultural memory, heritage conflict, and how people may respond wisely when cares are under pressure.
Find Andrew on LinkedIn
Collaboration Partners
Heritage People undertakes its work in collaboration with Field Notes from Post-Law Peacemaking:
Field Notes from Post-Law Peacemaking is Andrew’s companion practice inquiry into accord-building, post-law peacemaking, mediation, care ethics, advocacy, and conflict.
That work has helped shape the Accord Building field of this site. Heritage People brings those questions into conversation with cultural memory, place, public care, and heritage conflict in Australia.
The two projects are distinct, but they share a common concern: how people may communicate, connect, learn, and respond more wisely when important things are under pressure.
F.A.Q.
Are the Accord Building resources a “course”?
No. We use learning design principles to assemble and arrange the resources, but the Accord Building resources are not part of an undergraduate, postgraduate, accreditation, MOOC, or career-entry course. They provide a learning commons for people who choose learning as part of how they live, care, think, and act.
Are the Accord Building resources “legal advice”
No. The site discusses heritage law, public power, process, advocacy, conflict, and public care, for general learning purposes; but it does not provide legal advice. If you need legal advice, you should seek it from a practising lawyer.
Does Heritage People offer mediation services?
Not presently – not through this site as a standard intake service. Accord Building is presently a learning commons and practice-development field. That may change once we have developed the accord-building model and adapted to the field of herirage conflicts and disputes.
Why has Heritage People chosen to focus on heritage conflict?
Because heritage conflict often brings memory, place, identity, law, planning, community life, loss, care, advocacy, and public power into tension.
Heritage People 
Leave a comment