How do museums and people in their homes decide what to keep in the face of mass production and consumption?
The Profusion theme addressed the challenge presented by the abundance of material and digital stuff for assembling the future archive. Expanding mass-production and consumption have resulted in more things to potentially save for the future. We have looked at what is and what is not kept for posterity. We do so by investigating two domains in the United Kingdom that face the prolific past and present in particularly acute ways: homes and museums. Taking an anthropological approach using ethnographic methods, we investigated what is selected for long-term keeping and why. What are the complex yet often unacknowledged motivations, emotions, and judgements that shape what makes it into the future? Our research addressed these questions, while facilitating crossover of insights between homes and museums to hopefully produce new understandings of and responses to profusion.
Heritage Futures at the 2018 Association of Critical Heritage Studies Conference
06/09/2018
Members of the Heritage Futures research team will be convening and presenting at seven sessions at the Association for Critical Heritage Studies 2018 conference at Zheijang University in Hangzhou, China from 1st-6th September.
If you’re heading there, come check out (at least) one of our sessions. Or follow our twitter @Future_Heritage and website for updates resulting from these sessions.
The 100,000 Year Question
Uncertainty
Transformation
Profusion
Diversity
Nuclear Waste Management
Deep Space Messaging
Built Heritage Management
Museums
Biodiversity
Rodney Harrison, Caitlin DeSilvey, Cornelius Holtorf, Sharon Macdonald, Nadia Bartolini, Esther Breithoff, Harald Fredheim, Antony Lyons, Sarah May, Jennie Morgan, and Sefryn Penrose. 2020. Heritage Futures Comparative Approaches to Natural and Cultural Heritage Practices. UCL Press.
28/07/2020
Rodney Harrison
Cornelius Holtorf
Sharon Macdonald
Caitlin DeSilvey
Caitlin DeSilvey and Rodney Harrison. 2019. Anticipating loss: rethinking endangerment in heritage futures. International Journal of Heritage Studies 26 Special Issue
09/01/2020
Transforming Loss: Knowledge Exchange at Orford
Uncertainty
Transformation
Profusion
Diversity
Natural Heritage Management
Built Heritage Management
Museums
Biodiversity
The Story in the Object
13/09/2017 — 17/09/2017
Heritage Futures collaborators Encounters are to present a new work, “The Story in the Object” inspired by the archaeological memoir “Come Tell Me how you Live” by Agatha Christie. The work will take shape throughout the week long International Agatha Christie Festival 2017 in Torquay, as you are invited to bring an object that you would want to keep for the future.
