UNESCO

Chair on Heritage Futures

World Futures Day 2 December 2022

2022-12-02

Let the future begin today – the importance of futures literacy is highlighted on the new international day “World Futures Day”

Today, December 2, the international day “World Futures Day” is celebrated for the first time. The day has been instituted by UNESCO to draw attention to an area that is growing in importance – futures literacy. Read the interview with Cornelius Holtorf (In Swedish) at the website of the Swedish National Commission of UNESCO here

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youtube.com/@HeritageFutures

UNESCO Chair Symposium

2022-11-24

On 24 November, Anders Högberg, Professor of Archaeology and member of the UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures, represented our Chair in a Global Symposium arranged by Ted Fuller at the UNESCO Chair on Responsible Foresight for Sustainable Development at University of Lincoln. The symposium was arranged ahead of UNESCO World Futures Day 2022.

Presentations were made by researchers from all over the world, dealing with aspects on social entrepreneurship, sustainability and futures literacy. It was interesting to see researchers from various academic disciplines can coming together to discuss future related topics.

Anders Högberg

Anders Högberg, Professor of Archaeology UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures

EU´s heritage work and policies

2022-11-16

Anders Högberg participated at “Höstmötet”, an annual conference arranged by the Swedish National Heritage Board https://www.raa.se/evenemang-och-upplevelser/hostmotet/program/

Anders was invited to present and discuss at a workshop on EU´s heritage work and policies and how it can change to accommodate new knowledge and actions needed for future social sustainability.

Anders Högberg

Anders Högberg, Professor of Archaeology, UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures

Progress Report 09/2021-08/2022

2022-11-15

A new report covers the fifth year of the UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures at Linnaeus University. Among the highlights of the year were several global initiatives to which our Chair could contribute with a distinctive perspective on heritage futures. The Chair’s membership of the Climate Heritage Network provides an important context for some of this work.

Among others, Cornelius Holtorf has been advising a Pilot Foresight Study of the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM). As foresight and cultural heritage are now more frequently being discussed it is of great importance that we can explain clearly the significance of heritage futures – which is what the team behind the Chair has been working with in a new animation.

Animation: What are Heritage Futures and why do they matter?

Animation: What are Heritage Futures and why do they matter?
The basic idea is explained for everybody in this animation. Understand why futures thinking matters for cultural heritage management (2 min, English with subtitles, 2022). Available on the Chair’s YouTube channel: ‘Heritage Futures’ youtube.com/@HeritageFutures

Please get in touch if you have any comments or suggestions!

View the Report (issuu)
Download the Report

Team of the UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures

Team of the UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures

Workshop: Inclusion and diversity in the heritage field – developing participatory approaches for the future

2022-09-30

Monday 26 September Anders Högberg was involved in arranging a workshop in Kalmar. At a well visited event (c. 25 persons) with students from Archaeology and Heritage Studies and also Leila Papoli-Yazdi and Emily Hanscam from the Heritage Futures chair in the audience, aspects of ´Inclusion and diversity in the heritage field’ was discussed. Sarah May presented on ‘Heritage, negotiating change, negotiating power’ and Cornelius Holtorf presented on the theme ‘From diversity to variation: human identity reconsidered’.

The intellectual set-up for the workshop was this:

Top-down initiatives aimed at promoting social inclusion within the Scandinavian heritage field have created dominant narratives of community cohesion, by drawing upon notions of unity presented as pre-existing. Essentialistic ideas of ‘rooted’ cultures, linked to shared histories and places of origin, provide individuals and groups with a sense of continuity and belonging. Embedded with assumptions concerned with nostalgia and consensus, such concepts work to construct and divide society into assumed homogeneous collectives. Efforts over the last two decades to extend the span of how cultural heritage is typified to recognize diversity, have not in themselves challenged inbuilt power relations, traditional narratives or the processes by which heritage is defined and given meaning. Recent strategies of minority inclusion involve an increased emphasis on the recognition and valorization of alternatives ‘from below’. Central is the notion that official heritage institutions and practitioners should act less like experts with authenticating authority, and instead adopt roles of facilitators and enablers. In this workshop we investigate how we can further develop such approaches.

The workshop was initiated and organised by Kaja Hannedatter Sontum from The Future Past: Bridging Public Administration, Academia and Schools, a research and dissemination project within HEI: Heritage Experience Initiative at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo, Gustav Wollentz from The Nordic Centre of Heritage Learning and Creativity in Östersund, Sweden, and Anna S. Beck from the project The Timeline. Applied Archaeology in Køge Nord at Museum Southeast Denmark, together with Anders Högberg at the Department of Cultural Sciences and the UNESCO Chair of Heritage Futures, Linnaeus University. The event was hosted by The Centre for Applied Heritage, Linnaeus University.

Gustav Wollentz, Anders Högberg, Sarah May and Kaja Hannedatter Sontum.

Animation explains: What are Heritage Futures and why do they matter?

2022-05-17

Watch the animation on YouTube!

Cultural heritage reminds us of the past and has present values and uses, but how will future generations benefit from it?

– This short animation explains the need for futures thinking among cultural heritage professionals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe0aMQXzqLI

More information about the Chair https://lnu.se/en/unescochair 

Follow our work: @UnescoChairLNU

 

 

 

Dynamic team! UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures

2022-05-09

UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures, team

UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures, from left: Leila Papoli-Yazdi, Annalisa Bolin, Sarah May, Cornelius Holtorf, Emily Hanscam, Helena Rydén, Anders Högberg.

Missing from the photo: Claudio Pescatore and Ulrika Söderström.

For the first time in two years, the members of the UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures assembled in Kalmar 11-14 April 2022, for joint discussions, presentations about completed and on-going work, and for socialising. We finished off with an excursion to the World Heritage City of Karlskrona.

Photocredit Joakim Palmqvist/Linnaeus University

Check out more information on the team here: https://lnu.se/en/unescochair

Mångårigt SKB-samarbete med viktiga resultat

2022-03-10

När regeringen i januari 2022 sa ja till att bygga ett slutförvar för använt kärnbränsle i Forsmark i Östhammars kommun, lyfte flera aktörer frågan om hur informationsbevarande till framtida generationer ska utformas. Många menade att det nu är dags att växla upp forskningen om hur minnespraktiker och informationsöverföring till framtida generation ska organiseras och ske.

Sedan 2011 har jag och Cornelius Holtorf arbetat med dessa frågor. Det har vi bland annat gjort tillsammans med Svensk Kärnbränslehantering AB (SKB). Med anledning av regeringens beslut blev jag nyfiken på vad SKB uppfattar att vårt arbete tillsammans har givit dem. Sofie Tunbrant är en av våra närmaste samarbetspartners på SKB. Under ett kort samtal med henne frågade jag vad hon ser som viktiga resultat från vårt samarbete.

 

Här är Sofie Tunbrants svar:

Under dessa lite mer än tio år har vårt samarbete bidragit på många sätt och jag vill speciellt lyfta fram två aspekter: ni har breddat våra perspektiv och ni har gett oss nya kontakter och därmed möjligheter att introducera frågan i flera sammanhang.

Ni har tagit med SKB in i många nya konstellationer där vi fått tillfälle att arbeta tillsammans inom områden och med personer som vi inte kände sedan tidigare. Ett av många exempel är att ni öppnat upp för oss att brett möta forskarvärlden, så vi har kunnat inleda samarbete med forskare och forskningsmiljöer. Ett fint exempel är vår medverkan i projektet Heritage Futures vid UCL, där vi blev inbjudna som partner. Ett annat exempel är tillfällen då vi kunnat mötas i gränslandet mellan forskning och konstnärlig gestaltning för att diskutera gemensamma frågor, som när ni arrangerade en workshop med rundabordssamtal i samarbete med kuratorn Ele Carpenter och Malmö Konstmuseum i anslutning till utställningen Perpetual Uncertainty.

Sammantaget har detta fått effekter hos oss på SKB. Vi har fått ett omfattande nätverk, som vi inte kunnat få till på egen hand. Det har hjälpt oss att utvecklas i våra sätt att se på och förstå frågan om informationsöverföring. Vi har också kunnat skapa en mer fördjupad kunskap om vad komplexiteten i frågan handlar om. På så sätt har vårt samarbete gett oss många nya insikter, kunskaper och möjligheter.

Ni har också tagit med SKB i nationella och internationella konstellationer som vi inte kunnat delta i utan vårt samarbete. Det gör att SKB har kunnat berätta om sitt arbete med informationsbevarande i nya sammanhang. Ett exempel är konferensen Information and Memory for Future Decision-Making i Stockholm 2019. Här kunde vi under tre dagars seminarier och diskussioner arbeta med frågan tillsammans med representanter från bland annat kommuner, miljöorganisationer och myndigheter.

Genom våra samarbeten har SKB kunnat introducera frågan om informationsbevarande i anslutning till slutförvaren med radioaktivt avfall i en mångfald av sammanhang. Det finns flera aktörer som arbetar med informationsbevarande på lång sikt, men som inte tidigare kopplat sitt arbete till SKB:s slutförvar. Att fler personer och aktörer känner till och reflekterar över frågan gör att den hålls levande. Det är avgörande för att samhället ska kunna arbeta med de lösningar som krävs för att framtiden ska ha de kunskaper och verktyg de behöver.

av Anders Högberg

Prof Anders Högberg UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures

Professor Anders Högberg UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures

 

Heritage Futures, webplats HÄR

Perpetual Uncertainty, info HÄR

Information and Memory for Future Decision-Making, rapport HÄR

Strålsäkerhetsmyndigheten har nyligen publicerat en rapport där vårt arbete lyfts fram, den nås HÄR

Cultural Heritage in War: Making Ukraine’s Past and Future

2022-03-03

Recording available here! Cultural Heritage in War: Making Ukraine’s Past and Future youtu.be/CpOwrDecaxI Thursday, March 3, 2022, 1:30 pm – 2:40 pm

Russia’s ongoing military campaign against Ukraine causes progressively more damage in all walks of life, including cultural heritage. Monuments, archaeological sites, museums, archives, industrial heritage complexes, old and new residential districts, urban spaces, all part of local, national, European, and world heritage, are being destroyed in Ukraine. The Hague Convention and the related protocols contain specific measures on how to deal with cultural property in war, but heritage is so much more: it is how individuals and communities connect to, feel about, and identify with these sites. Heritage is all those assets from the past that people value and care for in the present, to be able to pass it on to their children for generations to come. When heritage is destroyed, the cohesion and future of the communities is destroyed. CEU CHSP invited three experts in various aspects of cultural heritage to discuss how the ongoing war impacts heritage in Ukraine, what role the politics of heritage and memory plays in the present conflict, and how heritage, heritage experts, and heritage organizations can contribute to a peaceful future.

Panelists:
Sofia Dyak is a historian and sociologist, director of the Center for Urban History in Lviv, Ukraine. Her research focuses on post-war urban recovery and transformation in Eastern Europe, heritage infrastructures and practices in socialist cities, and their legacies.
Kateryna Busol is a Ukrainian lawyer specialising in international human rights, humanitarian, criminal law, transitional justice, gender and cultural heritage protection.
Cornelius Holtorf is Professor of Archaeology and holds a UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures at Linnaeus University in Kalmar, Sweden.

Moderators:

Dóra Mérai and Volodymyr Kulikov, CEU, Cultural Heritage Studies Program

https://events.ceu.edu/2022-03-03/cultural-heritage-war-making-ukraines-past-and-future