Recently, the Electronic Science and Technology Museum(ESTM) of University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC) has initiated a project “Imaginations from FUTURES” within the scope of the global universities museums, which seeks dialogues with young scholars from different university museums around the world. It aims at jointly exploring university museums’ current development situation, problems and challenges, and future development trend in this post-pandemic era. Besides, it tries to promote the development of the university museums on behalf of China. This project is hosted by Dr. Zhao Ke, Co-chair of UMAC FUTURES.

“‘Imaginations from FUTURES' provided a channel for us young scholars to send our voice. I am also very happy to see the efforts of young people for the construction of university museums through this project. Meanwhile, I learned that university museums across the globe are all now actively motivating more young students to inject new vitality into the museum cause." said Dr. Federica, a researcher at the History of Science Museum at Oxford University and the first full-time curator of the Islamic collection.

Ayumi Terada, an associate professor of the University of Tokyo, said that it is a common problem for most university museums to save a large number of large collections and attract students who are strange to university museums. In the dialogue with ESTM, the voice from different museums provided a new solution: the problem facing museums is both a challenge and an opportunity. At the same time, Ayumi learned that there are 292 museums and 12 first-class museums at the national level in Sichuan, ranking the third in China. She hoped that she can come to Sichuan, especially Chengdu, to figure out the diverse museum culture and experience the heritage of the famous cultural city.

So far, we already have young scholars from Oxford University, Yale University, Tokyo University, South America, and Oceania involved in this project. Others from France, Australia, Spain, Israel, Pakistan are willing to join in. The dialogue is not only a discussion between two university museums on their current situation and future development during the pandemic, but also an opportunity for them to explore new ideas, new measures from the perspective of young people. Young scholars learn from others’ strong points and close the gap, and develop their respective unique features according to actual conditions. In addition, this project prompts university museums to learn the progress of other university museums in collection protection, display innovation, teaching and education, and academic research, to understand the profound historical heritage of Sichuan culture. The diverse and special museum culture in Sichuan attracts the attention of the world.

The project has been complimented and supported by the Committee for University Museums and Collections (UMAC). Other than releasing information on the official website, all the dialogue videos were also uploaded to the official YouTube account for promotion, calling on more young people to join it.