27th July 2010, 05:59 PM
Dinosaur Wrote:If the outreach is in the spec, and it's not happenning, the curator surely shouldn't be signing-off the planning condition? In fact the curator should be ensuring that all points in the spec are satisfied to an adequate standard, so there shouldn't be any 'robbing Peter to pay Paul' stuff going on in the contractor's costings to the client, everything should be under specific budget headings - quoting a fixed single sum is just commercial suicide
Of course in Uo1 land there would be no curator}
, and even if the curator survives Uo1s brave new world we won't see any outreach associated with any pre-application trial trenching/fieldwalking/test-pitting/geophysics/earthwork-survey/metal-detecting survey work - because if this is being done before the start the official planning procedure then it's apparently none of the curators business:face-stir:. Yes curators can, and should, do a lot more to get outreach built into specifications/briefs - and the PPS5 guidance paper is useful in this respect - but the shoulder of burden should not wholly fall on them. We are all archaeologists and we can all do our bit, it doesn't have to be big and it doesn't have to be expensive. Archaeological contracotrs could use outreach as a way to add value to their work, something that some - by all means not all - clients may see a possitive selling point. I certainly have been involved with a number of schemes, including (or perhaps especially) contraversial ones, where the developer is keen to employ the possitive outreach output that archaeology can readily achieve.
Kevin's suggestion that
kevin wooldridge Wrote:one way to get the information out there in a colourful user friendly manner, with all the trappings of professional magazine publication and totally free of charge at the point of download..... is to write an article for Past Horizons magazine.....does indeed provide a (relitively) easy way to get information out there - but who is this information reaching? We need to make sure that we're reaching new audiences and getting the local community involved - not just providing readilly accessible pieces that are only read by archaeologist/those who are interested enough to look for them. How many school children for example read Past Horizons (I honestly don't know and this isn't meant to be taken as a slight on the magazine!)?
In my experience the part of archaeology that really captures the public's imagination is seeing the work being done and the finds that are made - the "wow to think the last person to use this bowl was a medieval monk" or "its amazing to think the last person who stood on this bit of road was a Roman" type comments. Opportunities to get hands on with the process or the objects or even to see an active archaeological site are (to my mind) a much more powerful outreach tool than just reading a pdf article.