The Eden Project is one of the partners on the AAFH project. It was built in the pit of an old clay mine. Credit: Eden Project.

On Friday Dr Nadia Bartolini from the Assembling Alternative Futures for Heritage project (AAFH or Heritage Futures) came to talk to us about the theme of Managing Material Transformations within the project. AAFH is a four year AHRC funded project involving UCL, the Universities of Exeter and York and Linnaeus University (Sweden). The wider project aims to develop a broad, international and cross-sectoral comparative framework for understanding heritage in its most expansive sense. Its goals centre on sustainable heritage management, encouraging sharing of knowledge across domains and creating toolkits that can be used in management briefings.

The Managing Material Transformations theme specifically looks at how memory persists in a changing landscape, aiming to achieve more sustainable practices of heritage. Their methodologies are based in the social sciences and use visual techniques to represent data.

The vision for the Rewilding Europe project in West Iberia. Credit: Rewilding Europe.

Dr Bartolini mentioned three examples of projects that the team are working in partnership with – the clay mining legacy in Cornwall, Orford Ness and a rewilding project in Portugal. all of these examples showcased different tensions in heritage management stemming from ideas to ‘fix’ or commemorate the past and to plan for the future. Highlighted throughout the talk was the idea of the ambiguity of heritage.

We look forward to seeing the results of the Heritage Futures project – you can follow them on twitter for more updates.