UNESCO

Chair on Heritage Futures

Climate Heritage Breakthrough

2024-09-28

Congrats to the Climate Heritage Network has achieved a major breakthrough by securing a total of $ 1.5 million in private funding for a series of initiatives.

Most notably, the “Imagining Low Carbon, Just, Climate Resilient Futures through Culture and Heritage” Project” will address two complementary problems. While contemporary climate planning suffers from a pervasive failure to help people imagine plausible ways of living that are not wedded to the carbon economy and the systems that support it, cultural heritage practice is not sufficiently attentive to address the climate change crisis at a large enough scale. By increasing culture-based climate action, transforming climate policy via cultural heritage, and supporting a range of partner communities, funding from the Mellon Foundation will address both issues at once.

The new funding for this and a number of additional smaller projects, means that the Climate Heritage Network is not only able to scale-up its activities but also continues to extend its agenda towards finding new roles for cultural heritage in the context of the climate change crisis. It is a good example why cultural futures can make us hopeful!

The UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures is a sustaining member of the Climate Heritage Network.

Heritage Futures for World Heritage Cities

2024-09-25

In the context of the 17th World Congress of the Organisation of World Heritage Cities (OWHC) in Cordoba, Spain, 24-27 September 2024, Cornelius Holtorf ran a Heritage Futures Workshop for 21 elected politicians and world heritage managers from the Belgium, Hungary, Germany, Korea, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, and the US.

Two days before the workshop, UN member states had assembled in New York for the UN Summit of the Future where they passed a joint Pact for the Future. The Pact does not only acknowledge culture as an “integral component of sustainable development” but also calls for more “evidence-based planning and foresight” to improve the wellbeing of current and future generations. That makes developing modes of long-term governance and futures literacy even more urgent for the cultural heritage sector and World Heritage.

In our participative workshop (one group pictured at work above), we were together exploring in detail how cultural heritage relates to specific futures and how futures thinking can enhance the management of World Heritage Cities today. Participants enhanced their capability of imagining alternative futures and reflected on how their World Heritage Cities can contribute to finding innovative solutions for a better tomorrow.

During the Congress we also enjoyed a festive occasion in the Mezquita-Catedral de Córdoba including speeches by local, regional, and national politicians and a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony #9.

Why Cultural Futures Make Us Hopeful

2024-09-19

I chaired and presented in a session entitled “Why Cultural Futures Make us Hopeful” at the Building Hopeful Futures Festival, a virtual side-event in the run-up to the UN Summit of the Future in New York (19 September 2024).

I was joined by the global artist Kai Altmann (XLE.LIFE) and the heritage professional Alison Heritage (ICCROM, Rome, Heritage Foresight initiative). Almost 40 people attended the session live.

This session explored the role of culture in anticipation and futures thinking. We discussed why a global Pact for the Future should take culture seriously, what we can learn from transcultural futurisms, and how cultural heritage can be a tool for future-making.

In my presentation, I argued that building better futures for human beings benefits from acknowledging the importance of culture for being human.

I gave three reasons why culture is so important in relation to future-making: it helps us (1) thinking across generations, (2) understanding how people are making sense of the world which informs how they act, and (3) asking in what future we all want to live.

Wicked Problems for Archaeologists

2024-09-01

John Schofield’s new book Wicked Problems for Archaeologists. Heritage as Transformative Practice (OUP, 2024, 300pp.) was prompted by Shadreck Chirikure’s 2021 question: “Why is it that archaeology—a discipline that deals with human experience over the long term—is failing to achieve its potential in tackling global challenges?” (259). Schofield’s discussion and answer to this question reflects a view that is rather innovative, and it constitutes a watershed for archaeology.

Although, over the years, there have been quite a few book-length accounts of archaeology’s aims in society and how to reach them, Schofield takes leadership now and offers a new mission and direction for the entire team of Archaeologists. The take on archaeology advocated by Schofield, whose battle cry is “Archaeologists assemble!” (298), is not Marxist but it nevertheless is critical, in the sense that the discipline is meant to address some of the world’s most wicked problems such as climate change, environmental pollution, health and well-being, social justice, and conflict: archaeologists and heritage practitioners can help make the world a fairer, safer, and healthier place for everybody (299).

The volume presents a critical overview of where archaeology is positioned right now in relation to these wicked problems and how archaeologists could enhance their own contribution to solving them in the future. Schofield’s agenda is intellectual but in equal measure it is also about policy, leadership, social-planetary boundaries, and sustainable development goals (SDGs)… In his perspective, key terms that should guide archaeologists include transdisciplinary collaboration, the imagination, small wins, and policy entrepreneurship.

This is an agenda I like a lot, and it is close to my own approach to archaeology using labels such as ‘applied archaeology’ and ‘heritage futures’. As Schofield asks his student readers (302): how can archaeologists do more to persuade doubters that archaeology is central to helping understand and resolve many of the world’s greatest challenges? Is archaeology not about the past, but about the present and the future?