Abstract

This article is a call for public historians to re-evaluate their understanding of nostalgia and to embrace its attributes to engage a wide range of people with the past in different ways as contributors, co-creators, and consumers, within the museum context. It argues that if there is innovation in the way the past is thought about, collected, and interpreted, by embracing nostalgia, it is possible to offer new perspectives on well-covered historical topics and to enhance the experience of engaging with public history in all its forms (Hunt, 2013). This can only be positive because without the general public in Britain engaging with history as consumers it has little meaning and its survival is threatened. Perhaps most importantly it highlights the need for universities and museums to work collaboratively to better represent the past in the public context.