UNESCO

Cornelius Holtorf presented a talk entitled “Lessons for the Preservation of Records, Knowledge and Memory (RK&M) from Heritage Futures” at a Workshop on Information, Data and Knowledge Management of the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) attended by some 70 international specialists at the OECD, Paris (23 January 2019).

He suggested, among others, to explore two issues deriving from a perspective interpreting nuclear waste as cultural heritage:

1. How do we manage futures that in significant ways differ from the present and cannot be sufficiently predicted or controlled by us? What does it mean to allow for construction, change and renewal in the context of RK&M?
2. How do we manage future controversies among stakeholders as an asset for RK&M? What does it take to retain or regain relevance as a result of conflicts related to radioactive waste management?

He also recommended for the Working Group on the Preservation of RK&M across Generations at the Nuclear Energy Agency to keep reaching out, both intellectually and in society: broad collaborations addressing cross-sectoral challenges benefit everybody and attract broad support, not the least in the context of the global Agenda 2030.

Even Claudio Pescatore attended the Paris Workshop.

The Call is out for ICOMOS members (in particular emerging professionals) to participate in our planned meeting on “Thinking and planning the future in heritage management”, Amsterdam, 11-14 June 2019.

How do we perceive the future? Which future do heritage professionals work for? What heritage will be needed in the future (and how do we know)? How can we build capacity in future thinking among heritage professionals worldwide?

Information and Memory for Future Decision Making

Claudio Pescatore, affiliated researcher at Linnaeus University and associated with our UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures, completed a vision and discussion document on preserving information and memory over centuries and millennia in the context of sustainable development and the future human environment, available here.

The document will provide a basis for discussion at a workshop to be held in Stockholm, 21-23 May 2019, on understanding and improving practices for preserving information and memory of projects that may entail long-term legacies for land use and the future human environment. Pescatore’s document will help starting a broad-based reflection in Sweden and elsewhere on how to aid future generations maintain or regain awareness of some of the most relevant environmental legacies that they will inherit – notably nuclear waste. 

Stephen Stead of the University of Southampton in the UK believes that archaeological data may be useful to the future and has been inspired by our work.

Here is a short clip about his vision for the future, offering a motivation for current practitioners to engage in a process of thinking about integrating access to existing archaeological documentation into a strategy for engaging with the future.

Cornelius Holtorf gave a presentation about the work of the UNESCO Chair for 15 students and their teachers visiting from the University of Stockholm as part of their education in museums and cultural heritage (12 October 2018).

Cornelius Holtorf presented a 6 min Pecha Kucha presentation on innovative cultural heritage that never happened to inspire a public audience of ca 70 at Kalmar Castle in the spirit of Leonard de Vinci, and again for an audience of ca 60 cultural heritage planners and civil servants associated with the “Unique Kalmar and Öland” project at Kalmar County Museum (18 October and 11 December 2018)

Cornelius Holtorf organised and chaired a discussion on creative tourism featuring David Ross at the conference of the ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on the Interpretation and Presentation of Cultural Heritage Sites on Critical Issues in Heritage Interpretation and Sustainable Tourism held at Florence, Italy, 23-25 October 2018 (23 October 2018)

Claudio Pescatore organised a planning meeting in Stockholm, in which even Cornelius Holtorf and Anders Högberg took part, for a conference on “INFORMATION AND MEMORY FOR FUTURE DECISION MAKING Radioactive waste and beyond” to be held in Stockholm in May 2019 (25 October 2018).

Cornelius Holtorf taught “The heritage of the future” for a group of 10 students taking the introductory course of our undergraduate degree programme in Cultural heritage in present and future societies on (26 October 2018).

Cornelius Holtorf chaired a panel debate on Critical Heritages of Europe at the conference Who is Europe? of the CoHERE project in Warsaw, Poland (23 November 2018).

Cornelius Holtorf attended a meeting of the Swedish UNESCO Chairs at the Swedish UNESCO Commission in Stockholm (29 November 2018).

Cornelius Holtorf and Ulrika Söderström welcomed Nupur Prothi Khanna for a seminar at Linnaeus University on “Weaving the historic narrative in contemporary development” and a study visit to the World Heritage site of Southern Öland  (3-4 December 2018).

Cornelius Holtorf presented a lecture entitled “Framtidens natur- och kulturarv” (The natural and cultural heritage of the future) for Västarvet’s annual staff day, addressing ca 150 employees in Göteborg (6 December 2018).

Cornelius Holtorf held a seminar on “Bör vi tänka nytt kring kulturarv i samhället och dess roll i integration” at a national conference for civil servants entitled Migration and Establishment, in Växjö (10 December 2018)

Cornelius Holtorf visited Manchester Museum which had recently opened its Heritage Futures exhibition and spoke about the exhibition, the work of the UNESCO Chair, and possible future collaborations with Henry McGhie (Head of Collections at Manchester Museum), Dr James Hopkins (University Historian and Heritage Manager, University of Manchester), Dr Kostas Arvanitis (Centre for Museology, University of Manchester)  and Professor Peter Knight (School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, University of Manchester). Hopkins is involved in the management of the Jodrell Bank Observatory at the University of Manchester which was nominated in 2018 as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Knight is involved in the management of Manchester as a City of Literature in the global UNESCO Creative Cities network (19 December 2018).

Cornelius Holtorf advised a group of 3rd year students at Linnaeus University taking a degree in Visual Communication +Change for their design project on nuclear waste, which formed part of the art exhibition “Traces” at Teaterhörnet +Change Project Space in Kalmar (open 20 December until 5 Jan 19).

Humpodd Live with and about Cornelius Holtorf, his research and the UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures — recorded (in Swedish) in front of ca. 120 employees at the Faculty Day of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden (12 December 2018).

Cornelius Holtorf was the invited keynote lecturer at the 40th Annual Meeting of the Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG), one of the biggest archaeological conferences in the UK, held this year at the University of Chester. In front of an audience of ca 250 students and academics from the UK and abroad he presented on 17 December 2018 The Antiquity Lecture entitled “Applied Archaeology: From Historical Development to Sustainable Development“.

The Prezi of the presentation is available here.