June 2015: Town Museum Evaluation and Feedback

Students, Berkeley Castle and community participants provided feedback that demonstrate a measurable effect on their archaeological learning and level of engagement. All feedback was reviewed and reflected on by the Engagement Team and its coordinator (me!). Key lessons learned included:

• Placing trust in both students and community develops better relationships between stakeholders
• Within a supervised and supportive framework, students can take creative charge of managing a project effectively to produce impressive and professional results
• Inviting community participation in both private and commercial venues leads to better engagement

It has also been importance to us to respond to what the community wants. The project emerged from community comments that they can’t always attend our public talks and free tours. By bringing the archaeology to them, we creatively deliver engagement that suits them, in a way that is feasible for us.

Second-year student, and mini-project manager, Rebecca Saunders writes:

… it’s been a lot of work but really rewarding. It’s been great to put into action some of the things that I’ve learned in the lecture hall about public engagement. I was given space to be creative in designing how the trays and the posters looked. I really appreciated the fact that my vision came to light and it has been so inspiring for me as a student to see this project from its first days to where we are now. It really gives me hope for what I can achieve once I’ve graduated. I’m really passionate about people engaging with archaeology, especially here, because residents can be curious about what we’re finding. One of the most common questions I got asked by locals was ‘are you finding anything good?’ This is why I think the Town Museum project is a fantastic idea not just in terms of engagement with the community but also as a project that is student led.

Local resident Chris Stokes says:

Previously … you’d be there for a few weeks and then you’d go away, job done and we didn’t know much more than that. [Now I feel] absolutely more connected. One of the main reasons [to be involved is that] I live locally to where you’ve been digging and it’s just interesting to know what you guys are up to up there. And to be part of displaying some of the artefacts that you’ve been finding I think is good for the local people to know about it, and to be involved as a local person in supporting what you’re doing up there.

Local business owner, Rose, from La Lune Art Gallery and Shop says:

It’s nice to bring something different to Berkeley, with the history of Berkeley and the castle, it’s definitely good…This is nice because it involves everybody, different businesses, all together.

Statement from our heritage stakeholder, Berkeley Castle:

We are delighted that the University of Bristol has engaged with the residents of Berkeley to set up the Town Museum Project this year. It’s wonderful that the students have had such a good response from those living in the town of Berkeley and it’s very reassuring that so many locals were keen to get involved.

We always look forward to welcoming the team back from the University each year and to seeing a new group of students, they are always a pleasure to have around. It’s very exciting when the students excavate new areas, their discoveries tell us more and more about the history of Berkeley and of course, the Castle itself!

It’s also a great added attraction for our visitors, we really appreciate that the University team are happy to provide guided tours of the excavation area and its associated finds, to those who are interested in finding out more about the site.

Formal feedback forms were provided to the twenty local participants. Of the 18 collected responses, 100% said they enjoyed it, 100% said they would do it again, 100% would recommend it to others, and 100% said they learned more about archaeology because of it. Likewise, the positive response from our students was overwhelming and they really loved getting involved. They also identified a wide range of skills developed just on this aspect of engagement at Berkeley (based on 6 responses from those most involved in the Town Museum project):

• Critical Thinking  50%
• Teamworking  100%
• Career Networking  66.7%
• Public Engagement  100%
• Adaptability  83.3%
• Project Management  33.3%
• Independence  66.7%
• Creativity  83.3%
• Marketing & Social Media Expertise  50%
• Improved Confidence  100%
• Improved Professionalism  66.7%
• Transferable Skills  83.3%

 

The students responded 100% positively (yes) to the following questions too:

• Do you think the skills encountered on this project will help your future career prospects?
• Do you plan to include this experience on your CV and in interviews?
• Did you enjoy engaging with the local community?
• If you had the opportunity, would you partake in a similar engagement effort again?
• Would you recommend this experience to other students?

Further evaluation of the responses is underway and there are lots of plans to further develop engagement at Berkeley in the 2016 season!

Contact: Aisling Tierney a.tierney@bristol.ac.uk

www.facebook.com/digberkley ¦ www.twitter.com/digberkeley ¦ www.instagram.com/digberkeley

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June 2015: Designing the Town Museum Project

Recap

The Berkeley Castle Project (BCP) began in 2005 and set out to excavate and explore the archaeology of Berkeley Town, Gloucestershire.The annual excavations are tied to the formal curriculum. Within the BCP sits the “Engagement Team”, which students can elect to join, and which I manage in parallel to excavations. Engagement is fundamentally embedded within research, and teaching and learning efforts of the Department. Over the past three years, engagement efforts have placed students at the heart of community and public engagement, through free tours, artefact handling sessions, social media, etc.Students take their knowledge of archaeological research and hands-on fieldwork experience at Berkeley Castle, combined with their classroom learning, and transform it into a tangible engagement output. This is an excellent example of research-led teaching taken into engagement activity. The Town Museum Project is one of the many ‘mini projects’ co-run by students.

The project aims to take artefacts out of storage and into the public sphere

The Town Museum project

The aims of the project were:

• to identify an effective way to bring archaeology to the community of Berkeley
• to provide opportunities for students to enhance their engagement skills
• to showcase the archaeological research undertaken by the Department of Archaeology & Anthropology

The objectives were:

• to design a temporary exhibition of artefacts, (ensuring that each piece is properly labelled, catalogued, and photographed) for public display around the town of Berkeley
• to invite the community to participate in hosting a temporary display of excavated artefacts
• to place students at the heart of all activities (choosing artefacts, labelling and designing trays, creating poster content, one-to-one engagement directly with the community participants)
• to evaluate all aspects of the project, including student, stakeholders and participant reflections and feedback
• to work with our heritage stakeholder (owner of the artefacts), Berkeley Castle, and consider what activities could support their efforts and concerns
• to share the project model, outcomes and impacts as widely as possible

Regarding the stakeholders:

• Berkeley Castle, have facilitated and supported the project since its inception, giving permission for artefacts to go on public display and printing information materials as requested by the Engagement Team
• Twenty community participants include both private residences and commercial businesses throughout the town. They have signed an agreement to place display trays in their window and take care of them for up to two weeks
• The Department of Archaeology & Anthropology, through Dr. Stuart Prior, ensures the accuracy of the archaeological information shared by the project
• Our students, working electively on the project, volunteer their own time to ensure delivery

All students are welcome to join the Engagement Team!

Students are drawn from all levels, including first, second, and third year, and masters students. This provides an excellent opportunity for students to learn from each others, regardless of academic level. Of great importance is the chance for students at all levels to develop practical real-world skills.

Contact: Aisling Tierney a.tierney@bristol.ac.uk

www.facebook.com/digberkley ¦ www.twitter.com/digberkeley ¦ www.instagram.com/digberkeley

June 2015: Preview – Berkeley Engagement Project

The Berkeley Castle Project began in 2005 and set out to excavate and explore the archaeology of Berkeley Town, Glous. Over the past ten seasons of digging, the project directors delivered numerous public talks and tours, and we received media attention at home and abroad.

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Previous engagement

In 2013, I spoke with the directors about the possibility of starting engagement efforts to build further on this work, to include social media and more diverse engagement projects. This would benefit the profile of the dig, improve student skills relating to public engagement, and help ensure that the local community felt part of the project.

A community engagement event in 2014 was the start of welcoming the community’s comments on the project and was a great success (supported by a grant from the University of Bristol’s Green Apple Scheme). We also created more blog and video content, fun online quizzes and even archaeology top trumps! This sat alongside the free “artefact handling” sessions offered to every visitor (a selection of artefacts that students talk through with visitors and allow them to touch and explore).

Fun, downloadable archaeology Top Trumps – another student idea!

One of our students used specialist skills to develop a 3D model of one of the excavated buildings!

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Engagement embedded within teaching

In 2015, we aim to continue these offerings and go even further. We incorporated engagement training into two undergraduate courses in November 2014; Post-Excavation Techniques (2nd year) and Managing the Past (3rd year). These units are tied the excavation and every student who takes them must partake in two weeks of fieldwork.

• In Post-Excavation Techniques, we explored communication strategies, covering the nature of final archaeological publications, types of report strategies, grey literature, open source content, public consumption of research materials, future proof publication and interpretation. This included assessing how findings and elements of research papers and publications are re-interpreted in the press and via social media. The sessions covered ethics on a global scale, as social media engagement with the public is an ethical concern for heritage, academia and general archaeological practice.

• In Managing the Past, students reflected on how social media is used within different areas relating to their discipline and how it can enhance their employability. They assessed museums, archaeological companies, universities, international bodies like UNESCO, etc., critically reflecting on the content and stylings offered by these bodies. They also considered their own public profile and what steps they might take to utilize social media to enhance their employability and professional profile, thus supporting career skills development.

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Student Feedback

Feedback provided by students identified the following:

• Post-Excavation Techniques: Students improved their learning in a number of fields, but particularly: (75-100%) public engagement; social media, planning engagement strategies, skills that you can take into future careers, benefits and drawbacks of public engagement, and how to be careful with your personal and professional online profiles. Other comments: “Really enjoyed lecture, would be great perhaps to see a future unit on archaeology and the media” / “I really do think better engagement with the university community could be good, … Perhaps in a year or so, it can be something the university is collectively proud of!”
• Managing the Past: Students improved their learning in a number of fields, but particularly: (87-100%) credibility; press releases and the press association; critically assessing how archaeology is presented in the media; and (67%) communication strategies; ethical issues; social media; and public engagement.

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Student ideas

Within both units, student ideas for engagement at Berkeley were explored within three informal seminar sessions. Here’s a snapshot of the student suggestions.

Engagement ideas developed by University of Bristol undergraduate students

The above suggestions will be incorporated into the Engagement Team planning stages. It is hoped that many of the ideas can be worked in to implementation, so as to ensure all students feel involved in engagement, even if they do not elect to join the Engagement Team. Inviting student ideas ensures that they feel part of the project and know that their voice is respected. This can also encourage personal investment and dedication into the department’s efforts.

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Next steps

Following teaching, the next stage is recruitment for the Engagement Team who work alongside the excavation at Berkeley. Here, students practice the skills developed in the classroom in a real world environment.

Induction meetings have been completed for all current applicants. Applicants are drawn from all levels, from 1st year to MA level. During induction, students reflect on what aspects of engagement they are most interested in and every effort is made to place them in a team accordingly. Project planning is already underway and includes:

• Developing downloadable key-stage learner packs for teachers and school children
• An innovative “Town Museum” community project. This places excavated artefacts on display in homes and businesses alike to create a town exhibition where the community become curators of their own past.

Both projects transform University research into outputs that deliver tangible educational and engagement impacts, and ensure that students gain valuable experience of project planning, management and delivery.

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Health & Safety prevents public access, but we try to work around it!

Over the next month, I’ll be reporting on what the students and I get up to at Berkeley. Stay in touch: www.facebook.com/digberkeley | www.twitter.com/digberkeley.

Contact: Aisling Tierney a.tierney@bristol.ac.uk

*The above teaching strategies are part of a University of Bristol ‘pump prime’ teaching development grant awarded to Aisling Tierney (Engagement Coordinator and current PhD student) and Dr. Stuart Prior (BCP Director and Senior Teaching Fellow in Archaeological Practice)*

June 2015: Aisling Tierney, archaeologist

The Berkeley Castle Project

For the last few years, I have been involved with the Berkeley Castle Project run by the University of Bristol. My role started as a student and evolved to Coordinator of the Social Media project as of 2013.  The idea behind working on social media was to showcase the amazing work that our Bristol students undertake every summer as part of their undergraduate programmes and the incredible research by academics. An average day sees at least 50 students on site and there is an fantastic buzz in the air, full of excitement at the thought of new discoveries and lots of enthusiasm from those who understand it as a valuable learning experience that they can take with them into their careers.

Public Engagement – social media

2013’s Social Media project was a real success, reaching a vast worldwide audience (Find out more here: facebook.com/DigBerkeley). It also allowed the students to develop great transferable skills on professional practice and public engagement. All sounds great, right? But there was one element missing for me – engagement with the local community. We have a great relationship with the main tourist attractions of the Jenner Museum and Gardens and Berkeley Castle, and St. Mary’s Parish. The local community were offered free tours and talks every season. In my view, however, this placed them as passive recipients of knowledge and offered no obvious route for them to share their views.

Community Engagement – first steps

By a fantastic turn of luck, the University of Bristol started the Green Apple Scheme that supports projects that relate to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), which can include community engagement. I saw this as a great opportunity to get some much needed funding to engage with the public and provide relevant archaeological outputs while introducing students to wider concepts of ESD. The community were invited to a student-designed student-led workshop where they discussed issues including: communication and engagement; community representation; and environment and social sustainability. Students then reviewed the responses and created an in situ exhibition in the three sites of excavation (the Castle, the Jenner Museum, St. Mary’s Church) and also posted materials in the local community library – all in time for the Festival of Archaeology. (You can read the full report of the project here: Link).

All ages were represented at the community engagement event

How I want to engage with the public

Part of the problem with local community engagement is that the community needs to come to us. As we only run the excavation on weekdays, many nine-to-five workers just can’t get involved. And even if people are free, we can’t always allow them on site due to weather, available supervisors, etc.

What would happen if the archaeology was brought to them instead?

Our main excavation trench in Nelme’s Paddock faces a narrow street of house built right onto the footpath. Flower pots, cats, and lacy curtains decorate the windows, but these could be supplanted (on a temporary basis) with real archaeological artefacts excavated just across the road. Imagine the feeling of having temporary curatorship of such finds in your own home, sharing the stories of these finds with your friends, neighbours and family. Perhaps each house could host a different artefact type, from ceramics, to animal bones, to shards of glass, with a little explanation alongside. This could even expand to shop window displays in local businesses.

Creating a temporary town-museum could help ensure that the community is included in the archaeological project and invite further participation and a sense of ownership over their own heritage.

Collaboration

The project could also sit within next year’s plans for the Festival of Archaeology and Berkeley Castle‘s socio-historic heritage trails. Combining efforts and joining forces will mean that there is a better public offering, better engagement, and a better sense of community involvement.