Conclusion: Co-producing futures – directions for community heritage as research

This concluding chapter explores future directions for community heritage as research. These directions are indicated through reflections on, and for, some of those who will bring the futures of heritage into being: funders, universities, schools, and activists and communities. In the open future for funders of heritage projects and programmes, funding agencies would have built on the many successful experiments for developing co-produced and collaborative research. Research on heritage would be recognised as being at the vanguard of universities' roles in their communities, both local and global. Schools that can find the curriculum in heritage, rather than in learning facts about the past, would create space for pupils and teachers to play an active role in researching the past in partnership with community and other heritage groups. Meanwhile, activists and communities would be enabled to have a much greater role in researching and telling their own heritage stories.