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.
From the Vault to the Archive
Uncertainty
Transformation
Profusion
Diversity
Nuclear Waste Management
Deep Space Messaging
Built Heritage Management
Museums
Biodiversity
Cultural Diversity
What Museums (can) do
27/10/2015
Talk by Sharon Macdonald at ‘Wissensort Museum. Traditionen – Positionen – Perspektiven’ at the University of Gottingen.
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
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.
Afterlives Salon
02/03/2017
This salon to accompany the current Octagon exhibition Cabinets of Consequence will explore how heritage and other related forms of conservation practices (including nuclear waste management) make futures. How do we use material culture to stitch futures from pasts? What do we conserve? What do we get rid of? What do we allow to change? This Salon will be staged as a series of conversations across various themes currently being explored within the Heritage Futures research programme,Event held at Haldane Room, Wilkins Building , Gower Street WC1
Rodney Harrison
Cornelius Holtorf
Caitlin DeSilvey
Sefryn Penrose
Sarah May
Jennie Morgan
Nadia Bartolini
Antony Lyons
Kyle Lee Crossett
Uncertainty
Transformation
Profusion
Diversity
Nuclear Waste Management
Deep Space Messaging
World Heritage Site Management
Natural Heritage Management
Built Heritage Management
Homes
Museums
Biodiversity
Cultural Diversity
