The Future Heritage theme recognises heritage as a rapidly evolving field of contemporary cultural practices. It has a focus on research that maps and describes changing forms of practice and participation, and on practical collaborations with cultural institutions and communities that conserve and enliven tangible and intangible heritage, build new forms of heritage and create new knowledge.
Under the banner of Future Heritage, our projects each engage with cherished archives and collections, communities and digital media, to enchant, explore, critique and understand the past/ present entanglements of people, places and things.
Future Heritage aims to make an early and important impact on scholarship, heritage practice and cultural policy, recognising the relationship between heritage, community wellbeing and sustainability.
The Australian Research Council Everyday Heritage linkage project aims to uncover everyday but overlooked forms of Australian heritage.
This project seeks to record and contextualise Indigenous and non-Indigenous carvings and inscriptions on ancient Australian boab trees (Adansonia gregorii) growing in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
The aim of this project is to develop a digitally captured site and multilayered database of the OGNR for its enhanced understanding, promotion, participation, conservation and climate-wise resilience and adaptation.
Heritage of the Air is a three year Australian Research Council Linkage project that investigates how aviation has transformed Australian society over the last 100 years. In the lead up to Australia’s centenary of civil aviation, our focus is on people rather than planes and we seek to tell the broader story of diverse Australian communities and aviation. The project aims to engage with the public’s enduring fascination with aviation through innovative analyses and interpretation of little known aviation heritage collections, to produce exciting exhibitions, accessible digital collections and heritage resources, as well as scholarly publications.
The project is based at the University of Canberra and our research partners include Airservices Australia, the National Museum of Australia, the SFO Museum in San Francisco, the Queensland Museum and the Civil Aviation Historical Society in Melbourne. Academic investigators are based at the Australian National University, University of Sydney, University of New South Wales and the University of New England in Armidale.
The University of Canberra has partnered with the Australian Academy of Science to research and develop an innovative sustainability plan for the renewal and replacement of environmental systems to work towards a net-zero emissions future for the National Heritage Listed Canberra landmark, the Shine Dome.
Led by the Faculty of Arts and Design, in collaboration with the Academy of Sciences, GML Heritage and GHD Engineering this multidisciplinary team will investigate innovative approaches to ensure progressive energy and emissions reductions while protecting and sustainably managing the Shine Dome’s national heritage values.
As part of the project, there will be series of events that will seek to initiate conversations around heritage values and how can these values be managed with sustainability in mind.
This project aims to develop innovative laser cleaning processes to conserve the structural integrity and iconic status of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. New laser technologies offer the opportunity to remove lead-based paint and clean the bridge’s metal structures and granite pylons offering advantages unavailable with current techniques. The expected outcomes will be new best-practice laser conservation techniques usable for both hand-held and automated systems to preserve one of the most iconic bridges in the world. This will reduce maintenance frequency and cost, restore the beauty of the bridge, retain its engineering significance and provide a baseline process for cleaning of other historical large scale metal and stone heritage objects.
The project aims to discover, document, and analyse a comprehensive overview of client-sponsored, instructional and government-departmental filmmaking in Australia in the post-WWII years prior to the rise of widespread video production in the late-1970s.
We are examining purposeful films that were made and distributed outside the well-studied systems of entertainment, ‘theatrical’ exhibition and visual arts installation; films that were produced, distributed and exhibited to a wide range of (as-yet under-investigated) audiences in ‘non-theatrical’ contexts and spaces. These were films produced in significant numbers worldwide (including in Australia) for the functional purposes of instruction, surveillance, quantification or record-keeping rather than principally for reasons of commercial entertainment or clearly-contextualised artistic and aesthetic appreciation. Although such films represent a large proportion of film production during the years 1945 - 1980, very little scholarly work has been done on such titles in the Australian context.
Contact us
Centre for Creative and Cultural Research
11 Kirinari Street
Bruce ACT 2617
cccr@canberra.edu.au
Higher Degree by Research enquiries:
artsanddesignhdr@canberra.edu.au
