Culture, Heritage and Learning Futures is a 10-credit elective course on the MSc in Education Futures programme at EFI. It ran for the first time in autumn 2022, with 23 participants from three different programmes: Education Futures, Creative Industries, and Narrative Futures. The course, led by Dr Jen Ross, examines the role of cultural heritage in developing rich futures for lifelong learning – drawing on speculative method and heritage and anticipation studies. In 2022 the course engaged with three lifelong learning themes: learning in later life, young people and social activism, and workplace learning.

The assignment for the course took the form of a ‘story from the future‘. Each story assignment built on at least one key issue in informal and lifelong learning, some heritage materials, and the speculative methods students engaged with during the course. Students were asked to bring their knowledge together with their creativity to tell a speculative story about what lifelong learning could be like in the future. Their story needed to show the influence of literature on lifelong learning, and include at least one cultural heritage object in a substantive way.

This exhibition of stories show some of the brilliant ways students responded to this assignment brief. All students from the course were invited to include their story in the exhibition, and the stories here are ones that people wanted to share with a broader audience. Please note that the versions here may not be identical to the ones that were assessed for the course.

The 2022 stories:

If you have any questions about the course or these stories, please contact the course organiser, Jen Ross.