We are a group of 15 PhD students working on a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (ITN) project titled ‘Critical Heritage and the Future of Europe’ (CHEurope). The CHEurope project aims to explore the processes by which heritage is ‘assembled’, through practice-based research on themes where cultural heritage is undergoing profound change, such as wellbeing or participation. We will take part in PDC2018 with a work-in-progress exhibition which will present our current research concerns and findings while critically engaging with different viewpoints on participation and participatory ways of working with heritage. This growing exhibition is being developed through several participatory design (PD) workshops which allow us to create and curate it together, with the help of several designers experienced in heritage-related PD.

As part of the PDC2018 Situated Actions strand, the visitors will take part in our fableing experiment: a discussion on our research material narrated in five fables related to the five topics we are working on: Heritage and Wellbeing, Curating the City, Participation and Management, Digital Heritage and Heritage Futures. Fableing is a method where design fiction is used for ‘narrativization and possible world explorations’ (Engberg and Linde, 2018) in order to support public debates performed with historical material as a starting point. Our fables will narrate our collective research material, its challenges and dilemmas, while inviting the visitors to take part in a debate on heritage related to the participatory design framework.

Project by Moniek Driesse, Mela Zuljevic, Anne Beeksma, Lukasz Bugalski, Carlotta Capurro, Vittoria Caradonna, Marcela Jaramillo Contreras, Khaled El Samman, Nermin El Sherif, Marcia L. Hattori, William Illsley, Nevena Markovic, Katie O’Donoghue, Janna Oud Ammerveld and Hannah Smythers