Making History
Design-led heritage across generations, from access to authorship
Heritage is not neutral. It carries power: who creates and shares stories, who touches the objects, who is allowed inside historical sites. Making History asked: how might young people from disadvantaged communities move beyond passive “access” to co-author heritage futures?
We nurtured connections between RAG archaeologists and the youth projects by leveraging their shared creativity. We foregrounded the imaginative, inductive, and discursive elements of making histories, allowing young people to lead the conversation through their own curiosity. We were fortunate to be able to bring a group of young people onto a live archaeological dig, allowing them to uncover genuine Roman artefacts with the support of the community in Redesdale, Northumberland.
Digging at Bremenium Roman Fort, with RAG
Over a year, participants from rural and urban groups co-designed speculative devices that bridge geographies, map stories, and invite agonistic interpretations. Occasional misfires of AI (weird captions, hallucinated detail) became creative provocations rather than failures. Participants sketched, shaped, critiqued, and rewrote what the machines offered to their relationship with the museum, resulting in three novel devices: ('Logiscope' cameras, 'Heliograph' viewfinders, and 'Echograph' printers).
Exploring the co-created interactive technologies
Co-creation and community participation led our involvement with a small rural heritage site, the Roundhouse Museum at Rochester. In addition to the technologies, our young participants designed and built three custom display-furniture pieces to be explored, crawled on, peeked through, and fiddled with.
Three furniture pieces for Roundhouse Museum created by our young participants
Our project questions systemic inequities in heritage: the spatial exclusion of rural youth, the technical and narrative gatekeeping of 'expert' and resource barriers in sustaining interventions. It gestures toward more democratic futures: kits and code meant to be open, prototyping practices that foreground reflexivity, and youth capacity to query, modify, and own their inclusion in community heritage.
In short: Making History is a co-creative experiment in shifting not just who visits heritage, but who makes it— and who holds its tools.
Kids Kabin, North Tyne Youth, and RAG Members celebate at The Roundhouse Museum
With thanks to all of our participants from RAG, Kids Kabin, and North Tyne Youth. Thanks also to all of their families, youth workers, and project volunteers. Thanks for support, Rochester Relish Cafe, Annabel Lee, the community & Parish Council of Redesdale and Lord Rupert Redesdale.
Senior Technician in Design: Mike Skinner
Research funded by EPSRC, part of Centre for Digital Citizens project code EP/T022582/1.