Custodians at the Crossroads: Managing Change at Institutionally Significant Places

Custodians are integral to institutional maintenance, and instrumental to preserving institutionally significant places. Yet when institutional decline impacts institutionally significant places, we do not know how custodians manage the tensions between preservation efforts aimed at saving these places and the need for adaptation. Using a rich qualitative dataset of interviews with custodians from and participant observation at 26 rural church buildings in England, we examine custodian responses when institutional decline in belief in Christian religion impacts sacred church buildings. We find that in response to experiencing place materiality, relational, and practices tensions, custodians are torn between preserving the institutional role of place and the need to find resources to maintain such places. Custodians manage these tensions by deliberatively evaluating materiality alterations and adopting innovative practices within the bounds of institutional appropriateness and resource constraints. The process we flesh out leads to distinct outcomes: place augmentation, practices augmentation, and, in a few instances, no augmentation. Our model portrays the pathways followed by institutional custodians that are rooted in the tensions they experience between the attachment to the institutional role of place and the need for change in response to institutional decline. Our study contributes to research on custodianship and place by uncovering divergent custodian responses when institutional decline impacts institutionally significant places and place as an institutional carrier and the locus of custodian place work.