Designing ‘Critical’ Heritage Experiences: Immersion, Enchantment and Autonomy

Colin Sterling

doi:10.5334/ai-401

Abstract

This article investigates the critical potential of newly emerging approaches to heritage experience design. Moving away from a familiar critique of heritage experiences as inauthentic or overly commercial, I consider three aspects of the experiential that might (re)shape critical engagements with the past in the present. Building on the work of Kidd (2018), the first engages with the growing trend for ‘immersive’ experiences in museums and heritage sites. The second draws on Perry’s notion of archaeological ‘enchantment’ (2019) as a new ‘moral model’ for the field. The third applies Bishop’s (2012) reading of artistic ‘autonomy’ to specially designed heritage experiences. These concepts are then explored in relation to Critical Heritage Studies and tested against four micro case studies that engage in different ways with the experience of heritage. The theorisation put forward here serves as a point of departure for the two-year research project New Trajectories in Curatorial Experience Design (Feb 19–Jan 21), which aims to document and analyse emerging trends in experiential design within the heritage sector. In particular, this position paper highlights specific points of intervention where new forms of critical-creative practice might open up heritage interpretation to alternative experiential strategies and outcomes.

Highlights

In recent years so-called ‘immersive experiences’ have become a prominent feature of the cultural calendar across the UK
This paper has provided an overview of the different ways in which critical heritage research and practice might profitably engage with emerging approaches to experiential design
Rather than reject the logics of the experience economy outright, I suggest that critical heritage thinking might work along the grain of the experiential to uncover the affective, educational, entertaining, escapist and political resonances of these emerging interpretive design practices

Summary

Colin Sterling

This article investigates the critical potential of newly emerging approaches to heritage experience design. The third applies Bishop’s (2012) reading of artistic ‘autonomy’ to specially designed heritage experiences. The theorisation put forward here serves as a point of departure for the two-year research project New Trajectories in Curatorial Experience Design (Feb 19–Jan 21), which aims to document and analyse emerging trends in experiential design within the heritage sector. This position paper highlights specific points of intervention where new forms of critical-creative practice might open up heritage interpretation to alternative experiential strategies and outcomes

Introduction

Conclusion