The fifth year of the UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures
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?
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
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About the UNESCO Chair
The UNESCO Chair Programme addresses pressing challenges in society. The Chairs serve as think tanks and bridge-builders between the academic world, civil society, local communities, research and policy-making, generating innovation through research, informing policy decisions, and establishing new teaching initiatives. The UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures at Linnaeus University is one of eight UNESCO Chairs in Sweden and the only one in Sweden in the area of culture.
Heritage futures are concerned with the roles of heritage in managing the relations between present and future societies, e. g. through anticipation, planning, and prefiguration. We build global capacity for futures thinking (and futures literacy) among heritage professionals and develop strategies that can enhance how heritage shapes the future. We ask questions such as: Which futures do we preserve the heritage for? Which heritage will help future generations most to solve important challenges?