Public Engagement for Archaeologists: CIfA’s new toolkit

We all know that archaeology has an amazing power to bring people together and transform lives. But are we making the most of it?

Public engagement is core to our profession; as expressed within CIfA’s Code of Conduct and the Social Value Model, engaging communities improves our work, and creates wide ranging public benefits – including improved wellbeing, community pride, social inclusion, educational outcomes, and much, much more. Yet it’s still too often treated as an afterthought, a tickbox exercise, given too few resources to make a real impact, or is absent from big development and infrastructure projects entirely.

When it comes to public engagement, our biggest challenge isn’t just who we engage or how programmes are delivered; it’s the way archaeological work is procured in the first place.

In this event, our panellists will discuss CIfA’s new Archaeology Public Engagement toolkit, and how we can use it to get better and more meaningful public engagement commissioned – across all types of archaeological projects.

Our panellists

• Sadie Watson, Research Fellow and Archaeologist, researching Public Benefit and Social Value from developer-funded archaeology at MOLA (UKRI, AHRC)
• Bruce Mann, Senior Historic Environment Officer, Aberdeenshire Council
• Manda Forster, Chief Operating Officer, DigVentures

What we’ll discuss

• A vision for the future of public engagement in archaeology
• Why changing the way it is positioned in the commissioning and procurement processes is crucial
• How CIfA’s new Public Engagement Toolkit can help us do it
  
• Practical examples of how to use the toolkit to improve your public engagement practice – whatever your role in archaeology
  
• Q&A