Social Contract Archaeology: a business case for the future

18th Annual Meeting of the EAA Helsinki – Finland

Social Contract Archaeology• Crisis and Opportunity

• Solution – Crowdfunding/Crowdsourcing

• What is DigVentures and Flag Fen Lives

• Spectrum of Engagement

• Does it work?

• Value-led Archaeology

• Connected, Adaptive and Intelligent: A business case for the future

Crisis

• The ‘Northants Effect’ looms large on the horizon, with an unofficial 11% cut in frontline local authority archaeology posts creating ‘black holes’ in service provision.

• Withdrawal of grant-in-aid for the Council for British Archaeology and English Heritage may yet see those organisations change beyond recognition.

• The tripling of university fees for entry-level archaeology qualifications, for which there is a substantially decreasing market.

Opportunity

• Membership of the National Trust, English Heritage, and the Council for British Archaeology is growing (Thomas 2010)

• The CM&S Select committee identified that heritage tourism contributes £20.6 billion to the UK economy (HLF 2010)

• ‘...in some cases it may be possible to subsidise the public good attributes of a site through exploiting certain of its other more marketable assets.’ (Garrod and Willis 2002)

What is Crowdfunding?

• Over 450 Crowdfunding Platforms

• Equity Based Crowdfunding• Lending-based Crowdfunding• Reward-based Crowdfunding• Donation-based Crowdfunding

What is Crowdsourcing?“Crowdsourcing is a when a company takes a job that was once performed by employees and outsource it in the form of an open call to a large undefined group of people generally using the internet.” Jeff Howe, May 2006

DigVentures

•DigVentures Ltd is committed to providing seed capital and building audiences for archaeology projects worldwide

•Our response to deepening economic issues and the downward funding spiral of archaeology within the university context is to do things differently: sourcing private money to create cost-neutral public research archaeology

•We believe current community archaeology and engagement models do not provide a sustainable solution, and devalue archaeological expertise

Flag Fen Lives

• Worked with English Heritage to develop a MoRPHE compliant project design for archaeological evaluation

• We launched our campaign on 29th February 2012, raising over £27k for the dig in 90 days

• Flag Fen Lives now stands as Europe’s first-ever crowdfunded and crowdsourced archaeological excavation

Flag Fen Lives

•Flag Fen is internationally acknowledged as one of the most important Bronze Age sites in the world. The archaeology is in jeopardy due to extensive drainage and development of the surrounding area

•The visitor attraction is failing: visitor numbers at the Flag Fen Archaeology Park have sharply decreased since the end of live excavation in the early 2000s from a peak of over 20,000 to under 14,000 in 2008

Flag Fen Lives – Project Aims

• The overarching aim of the project is to contribute to the future management and presentation of the Flag Fen Scheduled Ancient Monument, ensuring that appropriate management information is available to decision makers and that this is communicated as effectively as possible to the community. (English Heritage SHAPE sub-programme number 11111.130)

• The Flag Fen Lives project had a three-fold mission: • satisfy the archaeological imperative, • provide field skills training, • And reinvigorate the visitor experience

Building our Venturer community

•Aspiration: a research excavation on an internationally important site

•Engagement: Promoted the idea of ‘team’: ‘We will be building a community with archaeology at its heart: our funding ‘Venturers’ will be a part of the project from start to finish’

•Value: Offering value for money was a key aspect to our success, and an area that other heritage-based crowdfunding projects have failed to capture

• Reach: Creating a robust online platform enabling us to offer exclusive daily content and a forum

The Spectrum of Engagement

Broadcast interviews

• BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Fri 13 Aug– Francis Pryor, Brendon Wilkins (DV) 4.5mins

• BBC Radio Cambs – Paul Stainton Show, Mon 30 July– DV team (Lisa, Brendon, Raksha) promoting FFL and talks

• Peterborough Community Radio, Mon 30 July– Interview with Sarah S

• BBC Radio Cambs – Jane Smith (cross-county), Sat 28 July– General + focus on Summer School

• BBC News - Look East, Thurs 26 July• ITV News - About Anglia, Tuesday 24 July• BBC Radio Cambs – Paul Stainton x 4 (see below)

1. Fri 20 July: Interview with Francis Pryor2. Fri 13 July: Interview with Sarah S and Lisa (DV)3. Wed 16 May: Interview with Raksha Dave (DV)4. Tue 24 April: Interview with Sarah S and Lisa (DV)

Print/web coverage

• BBC News website feature (Science & Envt)• Evening Telegraph ‘The Guide’ (cover)• The Moment Magazine (feature and podcast)• 4 x ET news articles (web)• ET feature (web)

Amplified via Social media

One-Click Engagement

Source: Kezia Evans, UCL. MA in Public Archaeology, thesis in process.

The Spectrum of Engagement

On-site Visitors Resulted in a 24% increase on Flag Fen visitors numbers

On-site Visitors Where did visitors come from?

In addition to two from Netherlands, 1 France, 2 South Africa, 4 USA

New Audience Reach• 12% of visitors completed survey

On-site Visitor EngagementThe breadth of engagement for on-site visitors

Venturer EngagementThe depth of engagement: what did you learn?

Source: Kezia Evans, UCL. MA in Public Archaeology, thesis in process.

Venturer Geographic Reach (UK)

Digital Venturer Geographic Reach

Fit for Purpose: Value-led Archaeology

• Total Economic Value: defined as a combination of use value (public participation through outreach, open days and non-specialist publication); option value (conservation, consolidation and preservation of archaeology in situ for use by future generations); and existence value (published and accessible results and finds for use by researchers).

Value-led Archaeology

Current Procurement Models

Triple Bottom Line

Social Contract Archaeology

A value-led archaeology situated within the emerging trend for social commerce, entering into a social contract with an unlimited constituency of funders and stakeholders.