UNESCO

Cornelius Holtorf presented a talk on “Applied heritage and the need to increase ‘futures literacy’ in the heritage sector” for ca 15 international heritage specialists attending a JPI-CH expert meeting on Heritage Management in Dynamic Environments held at the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands in Amersfoort, Netherlands (9 October 2019).

Cornelius Holtorf and Anders Högberg took active part in a meeting at middle management level at SKB in Stockholm discussing current and future collaborations concerning the preservation of records, knowledge and memory of nuclear waste (25 October 2019).

Cornelius Holtorf discussed future collaboration with Maja Heuer who is developing a new World Heritage Museum for Blekinge Museum, Karlskrona (4 November 2019).

Cornelius Holtorf attended the meeting of the World Heritage Council for the World Heritage site Agricultural Landscape of Southern Öland, in Mörbylånga (8 November 2019).

Cornelius Holtorf participated in a 6-day course on “Perspectives on collaboration – on the roles of academia in society” in Lund, Växjö and Linköping (November – December 2019).

Cornelius Holtorf taught 13 students in the Graduate Studies Programme in Antiquity Studies at the University of Basel, Switzerland. He had responsibility for half of the Research Seminar Course on “‘Cultural Heritage’ in Antiquity Studies”. The intensive 2-day workshop entitled “Das Kulturerbe und wie es uns in der Zukunft von Vorteil sein kann” (Cultural heritage and how it can be of use to us in the future) contained elements of text-based seminar discussion, lecture with discussion, structured futures workshop and open group discussion (18/19 November 2019).

Annalisa Bolin gave a talk entitled “Material Mediation: Heritage Politics Across Rwanda’s Borders” for the Critical Heritage Studies Network at Stockholm University (21 November 2019).

Cornelius Holtorf chaired a panel discussion with 5 experts on the significance of research in museum archaeology during an audience of ca 35 attending the Annual Meeting of the Swedish Association of Museum Archaeology (M-Ark) in Kalmar (28 November 2019).

Cornelius Holtorf chaired the second project workshop of the “Memory Across Generations” project dedicated to culture heritage, held at the National Archives of Sweden, Stockholm (29 November 2019). Claudio Pescatore contributed actively and acted as Secretary.

The American artist and philosopher Jonathon Keats has been creating an ingenious little camera that documents the flow and passage of time over a century or a millennium. It is a simple device that involves black paper gradually bleaching in response to the light let in through a pinhole and thus producing something like a single-frame movie.

Keats explains:

“Anything that stays in place will look sharp. Anything moving quickly, like cars and people, won’t show up at all. And anything that changes slowly, like a growing tree, will be ghostly. You’ll also be able to see bigger changes, like the ghost of a house that’s been knocked down haunting the apartment building that takes its place.”

There are many reasons why this camera may not work but the camera is cheap to build and an exhibition of each camera’s picture is already set to be opened in 3015 at the Art Museums of Arizona State University. Keats knows that “[m]ost likely it will take multiple attempts, spanning tens of thousands of years, to get the exposure right.” But this prospect does not daunt him:

“The ongoing iterative process of trying to perfect this technology can provide countless generations with a sense of connection and collective purpose.”

For the first time, Sweden has adopted a World Heritage Strategy, for 2020-2030 (not available in English yet). Earlier this year, the UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures had submitted comments on a draft text.

The Strategy emphasises that the underlying idea and aim of World Heritage is the promotion of peace, international collaboration and human rights, and that all who work with World Heritage need to keep this in mind in everything they do. The Strategy also states that additional capacity needs to be built in understanding how World Heritage can contribute to societal development and to reaching the Sustainable Development Goals.

Background information is provided by the Swedish National Commission for UNESCO (in Swedish): https://www.unesco.se/sveriges-forsta-varldsarvsstrategi-ska-starka-de-svenska-varldsarven/

Today, the Cultural Heritage Network has been launched, both in Edinburgh and with remote participation from around the world.

The Climate Heritage Network (CHN) is a voluntary, mutual support network. Despite profound connections between climate change and culture, today there are thousands of arts, culture and heritage actors and advocates whose talents have not yet been mobilized on climate change issues. The UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures recently joined this network.

Cornelius Holtorf submitted the following suggestion for future work of the CHN: “Don’t forget the power of research and help us at the Universities to find resources to advance our understanding of climate change in relation to heritage.”

The UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures at Linnaeus University is growing. Dr Annalisa Bolin will research the significance of cultural heritage in international relations, with focus on Rwanda, East Africa. She will spend two years at Linnaeus University.

Read more here.

The campaign to strengthen culture among sustainable development goals has reached an important landmark: the new “Culture in the Implementation of the 2030 Agenda” report by Ege Yildirim of ICOMOS:

“We need parties involved in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs to consider culture as an invaluable driver and enabler to help communities thrive and be sustainable. We need the cultural communities, sectors, actors and agents, to come closer together for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs.”

The field of heritage can lead the way for culture. Cultural heritage is widely recognised for its potential to contribute to development for the future. Lets build on that!