It seemed as if the rock and castle assumed a new aspect every time I looked at them, and Arthur’s Seat was perfect witchcraft. I rambled about the Bridges and Calton Height yesterday, in a perfect intoxication of the mind.

Washington Irving, an American writer and author of ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’, wrote this on his visit to Edinburgh in 1817. Two centuries later, we still look out onto Edinburgh Castle from Arthur’s Seat, go up Calton Hill and walk the Old and New Towns, a UNESCO world heritage site. So whose world heritage is it? How do we learn to manage and preserve it (so, for example, we could burn Arthur’s Seat less and climb it more)? And what does it have to do with student work in the technology sector?

My name is Elisa Smirnova, and my ISG internship has helped me begin to answer some of these questions, and ask more. For the past 11 weeks, I’ve worked as a Curious Edinburgh Digital Tours Intern. I migrate the Curious Edinburgh educational project from its original WordPress website to a geographic information system called ArcGIS. Namely I use one of its toolboxes, ArcGIS StoryMaps, to incorporate interactive maps into the project’s storytelling. In a series of digital tours, Curious Edinburgh guides its readers across Edinburgh, Lothian and sometimes further outwith (one of the tour stops is in Wick, far north of Scotland), shedding light on these areas’ cultural and scientific heritage. The project is crowdsourced and personal. People who contribute to its tours – academics or enthusiasts – do so in their own words and spare time, shaping stories about neighbourhoods and topics significant to them.

Map of contents for the newly migrated Tidal Pool tour, one of the digital tours housed by Curious Edinburgh, showing a further away tour stop (Wick, Caithness)

Student workers within and without the heritage sector

When I proofread and edit the tours, this personal significance permeates through its webpages to me, too. In a month I will be a second-year studying History and Politics, and my role has made me think about my relationship, historical and political, with the place where I live – Edinburgh in particular and Scotland in general. As the UK tightens the screws of its immigration system, international students feel larger pressure to dash as far into their career as early as possible. Interning opportunities within ISG offer a rare and valuable chance to gain this professional experience. My personal opportunity has led me to learn about the very place where I have found it; having little previous experience in the heritage sector, I have since contributed to it. Just like many other international residents of Edinburgh, over time I have got to know the city, and with student worker opportunities, I have absorbed, formulated and transmitted knowledge about its history.

ISG internships famously include end-of-summer presentations. Interns, on the verge of completing their twelve or more weeks of hard and compelling work, recount their biggest challenges and brightest achievements to fellow interns, managers and directors. It was uplifting and inspiring to see how other student staff all found ways to relate their current tasks to their vision of themselves in the future, in pursuit of their plans and aspirations. The diverse range of student employment opportunities in ISG, specifically its Learning, Teaching and Web directorate, have created a fruitful, constructive environment, showcasing what happens when young people are given opportunities to do real work within fields that attract them.

Learning the ropes

In early June, the very beginning of my internship, my ideas around heritage were reduced to abstract categories: tangible and intangible, local and global. I have since migrated and reshaped digital tours themed on an array of topics from Jewish history to birdwatching, from history of astronomy to Edinburgh’s links to India and the United States. Suddenly the local and hyperlocal heritage incarnated itself in day-to-day places – a nature reserve, a park, a close, a wellhead. On High Street, near St Giles’ Cathedral, brass markers outline the foundation of a building demolished two centuries ago that had seen generations of women accused, tried, tortured and convicted for witchcraft (see the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft in relation to this). On Blackford Hill, white metal stars on water pipes remind us we are by the Royal Observatory – closer to the sky and the site of a suffragette bombing.

My time in ISG is a stepping stone on a longer climb, and it’s an immensely worthwhile one. I now navigate several ArcGIS products, like StoryMaps and Survey 123, and dabble in Experience Builder and Hub. Offering map visualisation and data gathering tools, these platforms can support archaeological research and help us devise policy around preservation of scheduled monuments.

The wealth of ArcGIS products organised into 54 toolboxes. I have only used 4 of them so far.

I am also improving user experience and accessibility of an educational resource. This is important for two reasons: because navigability and presentation, not just contents, play a huge role in the success of an open access project; and because communal memory should be at the disposal of any inquirer. Besides, my own knowledge about Scottish history has broadened – something easy to do, as I was barely acquainted with it to begin with, but nevertheless deeply appreciated. Ultimately, this internship has so far presented me with a more meaningful way to engage with my living space and introduce others to it, be they visitors or fellow residents.

So whose world heritage is it which we map, tour and try to preserve? Every single person’s. How do we look after it? In the broadest strokes, my personal impression has been that conservation is done by taking genuine interest in and caring for the place you live in, engaging in the opportunities it offers in return. Interest and awareness, in turn, arise from discoverable, navigable and accessible informational resources. Also from walking the 25 and counting Curious Edinburgh tours, if you feel so inclined.

Bottom line

We all have responsibility over our heritage and living environment. Similarly, our living spaces can generate opportunities for us to flourish, feeding into the giving-and-receiving cycle of memory, appreciation and conservation. The right to work and learn, particularly in and about local history, is a possibility for all to continue to construct with our minds, because this is all we can do, and preserve our buildings, arches and causeways, because this is all we have.

Sundry links

• Bomb Attack at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh
• Curious Edinburgh (NB: this is the original version of the site. The new one isn’t live yet.)
• Edinburgh Jewish Studies
• Geographic Information Systems (GIS) support at the University of South Carolina (for ArcGIS products base image)
• The Survey of Scottish Witchcraft
• The Tolbooths, Guard House and Weigh House – Parliament Square, Edinburgh
• Tour in Scotland, 1817, and Other Manuscript Notes, book by Washington Irving