UNESCO

Chair on Heritage Futures

Various activities October – December 2023

2023-12-29

Cornelius Holtorf attended a zoom seminar on Hur kan vi framtidssäkra vår verksamhet? organised by the Museum of Västernorrland in Härnosand (3 October 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf took part in a lunch sponsored by the Friends of Sandbyborg at Linnaeus University’s training excavation site of Gamla Skogsby, followed by participating in a discussion panel to discuss ‘future archaeology’ in relation to the ongoing excavations (4 October 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf took part in the annual meeting of the Academic Advisory Board of the Leibniz Centre for Archaeology (LEIZA) in Mainz, Germany. He also contributed to the Board’s retreat held one day later near Mainz (14-15 October 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf, Anders Högberg, Sarah May, Emily Hanscam, and Helena Rydén discussed their present priorities with colleagues at Malmö University interested in learning more about the work of the Chair with a view towards future collaboration (17 October 2023).

Anders Högberg presented a paper on “Participatory futures making and heritage processes” (co-authored with Gustav Wollentz) for colleagues at Malmö University (17 October 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf lectured for three hours on “Cultural and heritage tourism – making choices for the future” for 3 students taking the advanced-level course on Tourism and Sustainability in the Anthropocene 15 credits in Tourism and Recreation Studies at Linnaeus University, Kalmar (24 October 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf co-run a full-day workshop in Stockholm with 12 national heritage experts attending, forming part of a project on cultural heritage compensation for the Swedish Transport Adminstration (25 October 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf presented a talk entitled “Varför hantering av kärnavfall behöver kunskap om kultur” for almost 30 attendants of the Culture Breakfast organised by the Municipality of Kalmar (14 November 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf was interviewed about Heritage Futures for TV station Dubai One in Dubai, UAE (27 November 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf signed the “Global Call to Put Cultural Heritage, Arts and Creative Sectors at the Heart of Climate Action.” This is a global call to the UNFCCC to include cultural heritage, the arts and creative sectors in climate policy, at the time of COP28 held in December 2023 in Dubai.

Cornelius Holtorf attended of the Resilience Hub programme at COP 28, held in Dubai, the following sessions

  • Preserving Our Legacy: Climate resilience for culture and heritage, hosted by the Climate Heritage Network (CHN) and the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD)  (3 December 2023)
  • How Creativity Can Build Resilient Communities (9 December 2023)

Cornelius Holtorf, Anders Högberg, and Ulrika Söderström attended a lecture by Marcy Rockman on “The Radical Importance of Now in Linking Archaeology and Climate Change” organised by the Swedigarch project (6 December 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf, Anders Högberg, and Gustav Wollentz contributed to an informal meeting of a small group of international specialists in heritage and foresight convened by Alison Heritage of ICCROM (8 December 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf participated in a meeting of ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on Interpretation and Presentation (ICIP) to discuss future strategy addressing contemporary conflicts (13 December 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf took part in the virtual informal consultations on the UN Summit of the Future arranged by the Co-facilitators of the preparatory process, the Permanent Representatives to the United Nations of Germany and Namibia (13 December 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf lectured for a class of undergraduate students in Archaeology on “Archaeology, Climate, and Sustainability” (15 December 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf lectured for a class of undergraduate students in Cultural Policy on “Global Cultural Policy” (19 December 2023).

Pact for the future

2023-12-16

Our Chair made a written submission today for the UN Pact for the Future, to be drafted this spring and due to be accepted next September at the UN Summit of the Future.The full submission is available online (https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/sof-unesco-chair-heritage-futures-input-zero-draft-pact-for-future.pdf). It stated among others:

“The Pact of the Future’s Chapeau should explicitly recognise the cultural condition of humanity.

“Climate change, world peace, artificial intelligence and other major challenges facing present and future generations are affected by, and affect, the way human beings, as members of specific communities, live their lives and make sense of the world, of themselves, and of each other. This is the important realm of human culture—going far beyond the attention sometimes given to cultural rights, indigenous cultures, the cultural and creative sector, and culture-driven development.

“To date, the cultural condition of humanity has seldom been harnessed, or comprehensively addressed, in global policy documents. This should change with the Pact for the Future, defining the world’s agenda for the future.

“Culture guides people’s goals, the values and ideas that govern their behaviour, and how they communicate and to whom. Culture and cultural heritage inform human trust, felt loyalties and senses of belonging, whether that is to specific places, to specific communities, to higher beings, or to their own species.

“Understanding culture is a key capacity for increasing human well-being in the future. Culture must be guiding all actions inspired by the Pact for the Future. We welcome a UN Special Envoy for Future Generations and an Inter­governmental Forum for Future Generations which must have a strong mandate to work with culture and adequate cultural expertise in their teams of experts.

“Culture, including cultural heritage, is located at the intersection of past legacies and tomorrow’s possibilities. It changes – and needs to change – as the world changes: different futures imply new ways of being human and new narratives about the human past. Culture is therefore a key competence to be included explicitly when humanity unites to address the challenges for the world in a global Pact for the Future and in a Post-2030 Agenda.”

Dubai Future Forum

2023-11-28

Cornelius Holtorf was invited to attend and speak at the Dubai Future Forum in Dubai, UAE. (27-28 November 2023). A total of 150 invited speakers presented in some 70 sessions, with ca 800 participants from close to 100 countries. The conference ended only two days before the start of COP28 and some participants stayed on.

As you can see on the image, I was wearing my UNESCO badge for global peace. Otherwise, various ongoing wars did not feature much during the entire event.

Close to 100 people attended our session, which was entitled Heritage Futures: How Does Culture Shape Tomorrow? In the session we wanted to introduce the concept of heritage futures to the global futurists:

This session is about ‘Heritage Futures’ which stands at the intersection of past legacies and tomorrow’s possibilities. We will discuss how culture shapes the world of tomorrow. Heritage is not just about conserving relics and memories of the past, but about making them resonate in an evolving world – and learning new ways to approach the future through care.

A recording of the session is now available on YouTube.

Other highlights of the conference included otherwise the experience of futures thinking in Dubai where the leadership has been developing ambitious futures programmes for many decades. This includes not only infrastructure and technology projects but also the Dubai Future Foundation and the Museum of the Future where the conference took place. Much of this rests on the income from oil which was discovered here as late as 1958 and enabled the country to have a stunning development. By 2071, the UAE aspires to be “the best country of the world,” as Ohood Al Roumi, the country’s Minister of the Future put it.

Although people were mentioned frequently, the themes of most of the keynotes and general panels revolved around technology (incl space and AI), energy (but not much on oil!), business, policy-making, health and food. There was very little about understanding people and appreciating various cultural ways of making sense of the world.

Some memorable quotes:

“We need to have the future at the table as well as on the menue,” Angela Wilkinson, World Energy Council

“Most countries don’t have long-term goals,” Sophie Howe, first Future Generations Commissioner for Wales

“What matters is not the assets but their value,” Michael Clark, Mastercard

“Create the future, not just adapt!”, Adam Kahane, Reos Partners

“Our best futures need your magic as an alchemist,” Sarah de Vanzo, Pierre Fabre

“The future belongs to those who dare to imagine it,” David Alabo, digital artist

“If we are following trends, we are too late,” Benjamin Moncrieffe, Jaguar Land Rover

Perhaps most importantly, at least from my perspective, we were briefed in one session on the run-up to the UN Summit of the Future in September 2024. If anybody else is interested, click here for more information and the chance to sign up for continuous information provided by the School of International Futures and Foundations for Tomorrow.

Archaeologies of the Near Future

2023-10-27

Jim Leary published in April 2023 three creative essays on “Archaeologies of the Near Future” in Epoiesen: A Journal for Creative Engagement in History and Archaeology. This relates to his TAG session in 2021 with the same title.

Leary’s aim was to imagine the role of archaeology in the year 2223 of the common era. His goal:

“to project yourselves, not into the past, as archaeologists are wont to do, but into the near future – a future still two centuries away. To think about a future world in which we are the past. A future none of us will ever know, but one not so distant, I think, to be completely unimaginable.”

Did he succeed in what he calls “extreme horizon scanning” and “archaeo-futurology”? Only partly. The essay Brushstrokes questions a number of archaeological practices as we know them today, and it certainly does revolve around a fascinating idea not known from the present. The Site diary of an Interplanetary Heritage Officer is set on Mars (a bit as in the movie The Martian). 

But much of the scenarios presented are less “unimaginable” and “extreme” than I was expecting and hoping for. Archaeology is still about discoveries about the past. Even on Mars there are interplanetary heritage officers maintaining the Martian Historic Environment Record, identifying interplanetary heritage sites (IHS), and designating Sites of Importance under the Outer Space Treaty. The narrator of the story did his PhD on the archaeology of starships and writes reports about a level 2 robotic survey recommending designation.

Time travel it may be, but not necessarily to the future.

 

Various activities July – September 2023

2023-09-26

Cornelius Holtorf and Gustav Wollentz attended the Naturkulturworkshopen Waste-in-progress (organised by Timo Menko as part of Smålandstriennalen 2023) held at the illegal waste deposit site in Marhult. During the event they were interviewed by Mathilda Johansson for “Eftermiddag i P4 Kronoberg med Henric Bingström”, broadcast on the same day and available at https://sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/eftermiddag-i-p4-med-henric-bingstrom–9 (27 July 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf participated actively in a brainstorming session for the planned UNESCO Chairs Forum at the World Heritage Committee meeting, convened and chaired by Heba Aziz, UNESCO Chair for World Heritage and Sustainable Tourism Management in the Arab Region at the German University of Technology in Oman. Also participating were five additional UNESCO Chairholders in Egypt (2), Germany, Greece, and Switzerland and three representives of further UNESCO Chairs in Germany, Italy, and Peru (15 August 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf and Anders Högberg participated in several preparatory meetings ahead of the Joint UNESCO/Futures Literacy-OECD/NEA/IDKM Capacity Building on Futures Literacy Training Workshop in Stockholm on 25 September (16 August, 17 August, 6 September, 19 September 2023). 

Cornelius Holtorf co-organized (with J. Schönicke and B. Butler) and chaired a session on “The Mushroom Speaks: An Archaeology of Fungi Entanglements” and presented on “Excavating the Future? Towards a (Field) Archaeology of Growth and Regeneration” at the 29th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists held at Belfast, UK (1 September 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf met up in Sydney, Australia, with Helen McCracken, Principal Adviser (Delivery) at the Manatu Taonga Ministry for Culture & Heritage, Government of New Zealand, to discuss her recent work leading to the first Long-Term Insights Briefing in which the Ministry fulfilled its statutory duty to enhance public debate on long-term issues and usefully contribute to future decision making, according to the New Zealand Public Service Act 2020 (4 September 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf met up in Sydney, Australia, with Riin Alatalu,  UNESCO Chair of Cultural Heritage Studies at the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn, Estonia, to discuss mutual collaboration in the context of our respective UNESCO Chairs and related to the ICOMOS University Forum initiative (4 September 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf took part in a Roundtable at the ICOMOS GA2023 in Sydney, Australia, addressing “Aerospace Heritage and Sustainability” (7 September 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf participated and intervened digitally in the first UNESCO Chairs Forum on Heritage, held as a side event of the Extended 45th Session of the World Heritage Committee in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with the Director of the World Heritage Centre, Lazare Eloundou Assomo, 30 people in the room, and 27 UNESCO Chairs from around the world attending, either physically or digitally (18 September 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf participated in the international symposium “Multidisciplinary Overview of the Situation in Fukushima“, held at l’Humathèque Condorcet, Paris, France (21 September 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf met to discuss Culture in the Post-2030 Agenda with Paola Leoncini Bartoli, Director of the Cultural Policies and Development Unit, UNESCO, Paris, France (22 September 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf participated in the first day of the Meeting on “The Medium and the Message: Challenges and Solutions in Selecting and Preserving Records of Radioactive Waste” by the Expert Group on Archiving for Radioactive Waste Management Activities (EGAR) of the Nuclear Energy Agency (OECD) held at the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority (SSM) in Stockholm (26 September 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf offered comments on a draft concept note on “Climate Actions for Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage” (26 Sept 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf attended an online “Future Wednesday” session, organised by VINNOVA (27 September 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf contributed to revising the draft of the “Venice Call to Put Culture at the Heart of Climate Action” ahead of COP28 (27 September 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf attended the European Heritage Hub Community of Practice Forum “Reimagining the Anthropocene: Putting Culture and Heritage at the Heart of Climate Action” held as part of the  European Cultural Heritage Summit 2023, broadcast from Venice, Italy (28 September 2023).

Futures Literacy Laboratory

2023-09-25

Cornelius Holtorf and Anders Högberg co-organized and co-ran (with C. Kavazanjian, UNESCO, Paris, N. Christophilopoulos, UNESCO Chair on Futures Research, Greece, and M. Packer, OECD/NEA, Paris) the first Futures Literacy Laboratory in collaboration between UNESCO and OECD/NEA.

Picture: Rebecca Tadesse, Head of Radioactive Waste Management and Decommissioning Division at OECD Nuclear Energy Agency, welcomes participants

Dedicated to exploring “The Future of Human Responses to Deep Geological Repositories” a total 17 international participants were present at the Lab which was held at the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority (SSM) in Stockholm (25 September 2023).

The Lab established the usefulness of the skill of futures literacy in the context of awareness preservation concerning long-term repositories of nuclear waste. Futures literacy encompasses both an awareness of the large significance of present-day assumptions about the future and an understanding of multiple alternative futures lying ahead of the contemporary world.

 

Heritage Changes

2023-09-05

Cornelius Holtorf has been organizing (since before the pandemic!) and chaired a Roundtable Dialogue at the ICOMOS Scientific Symposium “Heritage Changes” during the ICOMOS General Assembly 2023 held in Sydney, Australia addressing the question “What does it mean to manage heritage for the future? How will heritage (have to) change”?  (4-8 September 2023).

The organisers of the symposium had framed the theme HERITAGE CHANGES like this:

The GA2023 theme seeks to examine the tumultuous changes taking place in the first years of the 2020s. Climate emergencies, conflict, COVID-19, lockdowns, closed borders, virtual meetings, and the Black Lives Matter movement have profoundly altered the ways in which the world is experienced. What has been the role of heritage in these events? What is changing in the field of heritage and what needs to change? What does heritage change – for example, in civil society, the environment, the economy, and in politics? And, in what ways is heritage a force for change and integral to creating a sustainable future?

During the roundtable we discussed among the panel and with an audience of 150+ how heritage changes and how heritage needs to change, whether or not the future can be decolonised, what the possibility of societal discontinuities and extinction might mean for managing heritage, and whether heritage holds liabilities for achieving sustainable development.

The participants included

  • Cornelius Holtorf (Chair)   UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures, Linnaeus University, Sweden
  • Vanicka Arora   University of Stirling, UK
  • Gabriel Caballero  Focal Point, ICOMOS SDG Working Group
  • Kate Clark   Public Value Consulting, Australia
  • Carolyn Hill  University of Waikato, Aotearoa New Zealand
  • William Megarry   Focal Point, ICOMOS Climate Change & Heritage Working Group

 

 

Taking care of nuclear waste

2023-07-21

Now published and available in open access:

Cornelius Holtorf (2003) Taking care of nuclear waste. In: Toxic Heritage. Legacies, Futures, and Environmental Injustice. Edited By Elizabeth Kryder-Reid and Sarah May (Routledge). 

This visual essay contains impressions and reflections about long-term communication concerning long-term storage of radioactive waste and was inspired by a visit to the nuclear facilities at Olkiluoto, Finland. The site is known from Michael Madsen’s 2010 documentary Into Eternity. The images refer in various ways to selected aspects of climate change, public acceptance, uncertainty, world heritage, and the art of forgetting.

World Heritage for the Anthropocene

2023-07-19

Now published:

Holtorf, Cornelius (2023) Towards a World Heritage for the Anthropocene. In: N.Shepherd (ed.) Rethinking Heritage in Precarious Times: Coloniality, Climate Change, and Covid-19. Routledge.

The 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention was created to contribute to peace and security in the world. However, contrary to the original intentions, world heritage sites are in practice not considered as the world’s shared heritage but frequently championed by their respective nation-states which focus on distinguishing ‘our’ from ‘their’ heritage and thus reinforce existing divisions. In this chapter, I discuss what could be done to adopt a more people-centred approach to world heritage. One approach is to introduce participative decision-making in the selection process. Another is to adopt new criteria for selecting global world heritage that serve better the interests of humanity and indeed the original intentions of UNESCO with the Convention. I present some concrete suggestions for such criteria and three examples of world heritage that might then be selected.

Various activities April – June 2023

2023-06-30

Gustav Wollentz co-managed and Cornelius Holtorf participated, together with ca 90 others, in the online Foresight Workshop “Insight into the Future” organised by ARCHE, the EU-funded Alliance for Research on Cultural Heritage in Europe (4 April 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf and Anders Högberg participated in the third meeting of the Expert Group on Awareness Preservation (EGAP) within the project on Information, Data and Knowledge Management (IDKM) at the Nuclear Energy Agency, held at the OECD in Paris, France (17-19 April 2023). They held presentations on “Heritage Processes” and “Futures Literacy” respectively. Cornelius Holtorf undertook among others to prepare for the EGAP Task Force on International Mechanisms a short document on the opportunities for long-term memory provided by the 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention.

Cornelius Holtorf had an informal meeting discussing ongoing priorities and shared interests with Mikael Schultz (Deputy Permanent Representative for UNESCO) and Louise Oscarsson (Attaché for UNESCO) at the Delegation of Sweden to the OECD and to UNESCO in Paris, France (17 April 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf had an informal meeting with Christin Pfeiffer, Head of Futures Literacy and Foresight, at UNESCO, Paris (20 April 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf had an informal meeting with Berta de Sancristobal, Head of Unit, and Stefanie Grüssinger, Junior Professional Officer in the Unit for Europe and North America, at UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre, Paris (21 April 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf had an informal meeting with Beate Strøm, Directorate for Cultural Heritage of Norway, currently seconded to the Unit for Europe and North America at UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre, Paris (21 April 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf presented a lecture on “Conflict Resolution, Conflict Prevention and Cultural Heritage” to the Student Society Linnaeus Kultura at Linnaeus University, Kalmar, Sweden (26 April 2023)

Cornelius Holtorf submitted a response in the Consultation of UNESCO Chairs and Category II Centers on the implementation of the United Nations’ 76/214 Resolution on Culture and Sustainable Development (Reporting period: June 2021 –June 2023) conducted under the aegis of UNESCO in view of the preparation of the United Nations Secretary-General’s report on the implementation of Resolution 76/214 on Culture and Sustainable Development, to be presented at the 78th United Nations General Assembly in September 2023 (5 May 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf attended a webbinar organised by the Swedish Foresight Network on “Where do Imagined Futures come from?” featuring Riel Miller, formerly Head of Foresight and Futures Literacy at UNESCO (8 May 2023). Among other things he said, Riel Miller encouraged the audience to “be good compost” in the future.

Anders Högberg attended a half-day seminar at Malmö Museum on the topic ”Nuclear Cultural Heritage: How are we to remember the Barsebäck nuclear power plant in the future?” (10 May 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf submitted comments on the draft Key Information File (KIF) containing essential information on the spent nuclear fuel repository in Forsmark, Sweden, prepared by Thomas Keating as part of a project at the University of Linköping funded by the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company (SKB) (12 May 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf attended virtually the 2023 Annual Meeting of the American Institute for Conservation in Jacksonville, Florida, USA attended by some 900 registered participants. For the conference, he had co-organized (with W. Wei) a General Session on “Preserving the Legacy of Humanity: What Is It That We Want to Preserve?” (19 May 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf assisted Bill Wei in running a Socratic Dialogue on the question “Was würdest Du auch für die Nachhaltigkeit nicht aufgeben wollen. Warum nicht?” at the Conference Angst. Ekel. Scheitern. Ein Symposium zu den blinden Flecken der Nachhaltigkeit, at Oberhafen Hamburg, Germany (25 May 2023).

Anders Högberg presented a research seminar on “Futures Literacy: what it might mean for archaeology and heritage practices” at the Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark (26 May 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf and Tomas Nilsson held a conversation on “Storytelling, hope tourism, and future-making after the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011” in a research seminar at the Department of Marketing och Tourism Science, Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden (7 June 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf presented the annual Alumni Lecture on “Why cultural heritage is about the future (not the past)” for the Masters students in Archaeology and Heritage Studies at the University of Aarhus, Moesgård, Denmark (9 June 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf discussed future collaborations with Adam Gordon, UNESCO Chair in Anticipatory Leadership and Futures Capabilities at the University of Aarhus, Aarhus (9 June 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf participated in the 5th virtual UNESCO Chairs Seminar on “Science Benefitting Society: the role of the right to science” featuring not only Keith Holmes, UNITWIN/UNESCO Chair Programme Team at UNESCO and Helle Porsdam, UNESCO Chair in Cultural Rights at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark (14 June 2023).

Cornelius Holtorf presented for an audience of almost 50 conference participants on “How can culture and heritage contribute to empowering futures?” at the 23rd Futures Conference 2023 Empowering Futures – Long-term Governance, Democracy and Futures Research, Finland Futures Research Centre and Finland Futures Academy of the University of Turku, Finland (16 June 2023).