Organized session: Making more ‘just’ futures through cultural heritage - Coping Strategies, Resilience and Wellbeing - Organised by Beverley Butler, Cornelius Holtorf, Mike Rowlands This session addresses the relation between ‘heritage wellbeing’ and the making of more ‘just’ futures. We argue that the core to understanding the dynamic potential of creating more just futures through cultural heritage is to explore the intimate links between two realms: on the one hand, ‘past/tradition/memory’ as complex resources for constructing/re-constructing self and world and on the other hand, the repertoires of resilience, cosmologies of care and emergent coping strategies that derive from attempts to define, control and sustain future wellbeing. In the session we use various diverse case-study contexts that bring together research on the topic of heritage wellbeing. We welcome especially papers that centre heritage and wellbeing in the making of alternative futures. Abstract: Heritage, health and the ageing population The societal norms of ageing and old age are changing in society today, due to demographic changes that favour a pedagogicalization of society, focusing on the management of human resources throughout the entire lifespan. The challenge of the ageing population poses not only socio-economic challenges – resulting from a situation where too small cohorts of workers will have to support large, and ever growing cohorts of retirees – but also challenges which have more to do with the individual’s need for a meaningful and rewarding pursuit. At the individual level other values – such as health, well-being, dignity and attitude – calls for our attention. Heritage and health – as personal experiences – should therefore be of crucial importance whenever the challenge of the ageing population is discussed. Heritage institutions and older adults are both keepers of memories and the relation between them should therefore be of a dynamic kind. Older adults have experiences – accumulated competences, skills and attitudes – which are of importance for the heritage sector. Older adults are thus resourceful to the heritage sector and the heritage sector can be of importance for older adults in enhancing their capacity to remember and make sense of certain aspects of their life. In meeting with heritage, long forgotten memories may come to life and, sometimes, make important changes to how the individual interprets and structures his or her experiences from life. In this sense, both the heritage institutions and older adults can be regarded as learners – who learn from the past in order to make an alternative future. The paper elaborates the key points in the publication: “Creativity, lifelong learning and the ageing population” (http://nckultur.org/english/) and discusses the alternative futures in ageing societies departing from the heritage sector. The work in progress on the concept of ‘site specific ageing’ is going to be presented as a framework for future studies regarding heritage, health and the ageing population.