Heritage Futures: A Training Programme for Makers and Archivists
Archives are everywhere: in major institutions preserving the legacies of well-known companies and designers, as well as in the studios of artists and designers, the workspaces of architects, in online spaces, in the hands of dedicated collectors, and in basements or attics. These smaller, personal archives are just as vital as large or well-known archives. They hold the processes, experiments, and stories that shape creative work across generations. So how do we support these archives when time, money, and resources are limited?
The answer is to put the tools directly into the hands of designers and makers. Building and maintaining your own archive might feel daunting, especially without formal training. You can also think of it as an opportunity to define how your work is remembered, shared, and reactivated. Archiving doesn’t have to follow rigid rules. It can be flexible, creative, and deeply personal across both physical and digital spaces.
At the same time, many practices rely on technologies that are constantly changing. File formats, software, and hardware all have limited lifespans, and what is accessible today may become unreadable tomorrow. Archiving therefore means not only storing work, but considering how it can persist, be migrated, or re-experienced over time. Archiving then goes beyond preservation, becoming an extension of making—an active process where designers shape their own histories and create resources for others to learn from and build on. This track focuses on the following questions:
- What parts of your practice are at risk of being lost if you don’t capture them now?
- What factors put them at risk, e.g. environmental factors, time, or technological change?
- What tools or formats feel most natural to start documenting and archiving your work?
- Who do you want your archive to speak to, now and in the future?
- And how will you keep it accessible as technologies evolve?
This project was made possible thanks to:
RCE