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Paper short abstract:

Cultural heritage is often perceived to be about the past, and its role in the present. This paper argues that an equally important aspect of cultural heritage preservation is the future. What role and effect does different perceptions of the future have on preservation ideas and practices?

Paper long abstract:

Many decisions and actions within heritage preservation are motivated by the future, legitimised by future scenarios, and is aiming for specifically expressed future outcomes. How we think about the future affect the choices that are made in the present. Likewise, the future, in this case heritage futures, are also directly made by our choices, actions and ideas in the present.

This paper is based on the results of a survey in Norway, directed to people engaged in volunteer work in local historical organisations. What ideas of, and motivations for, preservation informs the interests and action of people not professionally employed within the heritage sector, and who often concerns themselves with local cultural heritage?

The paper discusses four discourses of future-thinking based on the responses: the stability discourse, where the future is much or less regarded as being very similar to the present and today’s preservation practices and ideas can be upheld. The discourse of change, which concerns a future that are believed to involve change, for example climate change, and its possible and predicted effect on cultural heritage. The discourse of uncertainty, that contains expressions about the difficulty to think and act with regard to the future, due to the impossibility of knowing it. Finally, responsibility, where no specific futures are imagined, but an overall sense of responsibility toward the future to preserve cultural heritage is fundamental.

The paper discusses how these different ways of relating to the future is expressed in the survey, and what their implications may be.