Canonical Charges in Flatland

In this series of lectures we give an introduction to the concept of asymptotic symmetry analysis with a focus on asymptotically flat spacetimes in 2+1 dimensions. We explain general ideas of quantizing gauge theories and then apply these ideas to gravity both in the metric as well as the Chern-Simons formulations. This enables one to compute the asymptotic symmetries of given gravitational configurations that in turn act as the basic underlying symmetries of a possible dual quantum field theory in the context of holography. We also briefly elaborate on the concept of "soft hair" excitations of black holes in this context.