The impact of the unprecedented rate and scale of change in the 21st century is being felt in al areas of personal and professional lives across the world. Despite the informative and transformative potential of natural and cultural heritage to both challenge and contribute work in this area remains piecemeal, lacking focus and cohesion and therefore any sense of its effectiveness. If archaeology is to fulfil this potential, then a critical assessment of current practice is required. Are we asking the right questions? Working with the right people? Using the right approaches? Do we have the data, tools, funding, roles and structures we need?
This half-day, inter-disciplinary workshop aims to bring together a broad, representative group of archaeologists and heritage practitioners and will follow the ‘Futurescaping’ speculative design protocol (CoHERE, 2019) developed specifically for innovation and change the Cultural Heritage Sector by Areti Galani and Gabriella Arrigoni (Newcastle University) and their partners at the Copenhagen School of Design and Technology.
Grounded in critical theory and while future-oriented, speculative design is not about predicting the future. Leveraging collective intelligence its purpose is to suspend present-day constraints in order to ask questions about the politics and values in the sociotechnical systems that we currently experience (or might want to experience in the future) by creating an imagined world configured differently from our own. It is speculative in that it re-imagines the world to be organised into different social, political, economic, and technological configurations, or what Auger (2013: 12) terms “alternative presents”.
However, speculation alone is insufficient. The final action in this workshop will evaluate what is needed to deliver the desired future outcomes, against current capabilities and capacities to provide a starting point for a strategic sectorial response to unprecedented change.
2:00pm | N/A | N/A
Full paper abstracts available here: https://tag2024.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/tag-2024-session-abstracts-1.pdf
