Thinking for the Future...

[gwyl]

The Corporate Membership certificate nailed to the office wall and the logo on the stationary both look just fine, thanks :face-approve:

but for individuals a not insignificant number of the criteria for joining seem to be a long way from archaeology; Corporate Membership might be an appropriate way forward for companies with IfA membership applying for individuals - should they wish.
however, i think that the IfA offers better potential for career development in archaeology; we need to have some method of indicating a person's skill-set, and at a higher level in the IfA a return to Areas of Expertise would also - as has been mentioned on another thread - cover people such as illustrators become MIfA or whatever grade appropriate. it also has the benefit of defining MIfAs in terms of what they are and are not competent to carry out; their very own skills passport, if you will.
The Digger's Charter is clearly a useful exercise within the profession but is separate and, i suspect, largely of little consequence to the construction industry. aspects of it - such as skills passport - are however capable of being integrated into a CPD - which of course the IEMA, as the IfA, require of individual members - but any CPD-exercise is going to require the cooperation of employers, the various bodies such as BAJR, IfA, CBA (etc) representing or providing a voice for archaeologists. at the moment any benchmarking exercise for field-staff is doomed by everyone pulling in various directions with a result that consensus, which is there, doesn't come to enough action.
The Digger's Charter and the Digger's Forum Campaign for a Living Wage are both striving to effect some change but when only half-a-dozen people turned up to the DF meeting last month one wonders whether there is any point to it. membership of organisations be it IfA or union relies on the members being involved - and god knows - there's little enough time in the day, what with filling out that CPD form, digging holes, recording writing up and preparing the next risk assessment and researching that EIA - but we must ensure that a Skills Passport has equivalence with IfA CPD otherwise archaeology has no cohesion as a discipline in the eyes of the construction industry but also the skills gained by practitioners are circumscribed by whether you are or are not IfA or any other body: internal wrangling doesn't need to be made public for the sake of it