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Paper short abstract:

This presentation is based on fieldwork conducted in the schools and kindergarten in a deindustrialised community in South-eastern Norway and investigates how local World Heritage is understood, ritualised and performed in creating belonging and identity in the education of future generations.

Paper long abstract:

Rituals may function as ways of managing an uncertain world/future. In 2015, two de-industrialised towns, in South-eastern Norway, was give World Heritage status due the industrialisation that took place in the early 1900s. Wealth and prosperity arrived at two rather marginalised areas, but by the end of the century, prosperity was taken away, as industrial production moved to low-cost countries. These communities went from facing a bright future to a rather grim one. For the longest time, the main coping mechanism seemed to be clinging to an industrial golden past and finding ways of reinventing the industrial revolution that once took place. In some sense, the inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage list cemented this coping mechanism to a permanent state. This time around, new industry was directed towards tourism, museum exhibitions and education, and in lesser degree towards traditional industry.

Here, I show how, in local education, the future seems to be ritualised as performances of an industrialised past in educational programmes directed to local children from the ages 5 to 18 years old. I draw on extensive fieldwork for the past 4.5 years in local kindergartens, schools and Cultural schoolbag-programmes. I investigate how the local community (re)interpret the past and past heritage. In turn, the past is utilised to (re)invent the future as uncertainties faced two struggling post-industrialised communities. To some extent, this presentation cast light on how and why, these communities go about protecting tangible and intangible heritage in unstable times.