#hoops #basketballhistory @Hoops_Heritage: examining possibilities for basketball heritage within the context of higher education, critical museology and digital redirections

Abstract

Until recently, investment into sport heritage in the United Kingdom has been sporadic, variable and inconsistent. This is particularly the case for sports conventionally not considered significant to popular national interest. In the UK, this classification extends to basketball. The situation is changing, and development of the nation's sport heritage is progressing. However, support for sport heritage cannot be guaranteed and continued efforts need to be individually and collectively made to advance its causes. Taking the development of the National Basketball Heritage Centre (NBHC) located at the University of Worcester in the United Kingdom as its focus, this paper interrogates how sport heritage practices and progress might align with the nexus of shifts in higher education (in which the NBHC resides), critical museology and digital redirections. This intersectional paradigm may yield exciting opportunities for sport heritage thought, production and action. Namely, by generating spaces of analysis, reforming modalities of production, and inspiring critical advocacy in representational praxis. Focusing on community identity and youth development, we envision the NBHC as a more than archival tome/ tomb, but as a site of transformative social inquiry that (virtually) connects the physical practices of the past with politics of the present and beyond.