The Redevelopment of the Young Archaeologists’ Club Website: a co-creation approach

Описание: In 2025 The Council for British Archaeology and CIfA's Early Careers Special Interest Group ran an online conference for early career archaeologists and heritage specialists to share their interests and research. The conference was delivered during Youth Day sponsored by the Royal Archaeological Institute as part of the CBA Festival of Archaeology.

Speakers: Esmé Haigh and Amy Vaughan
Blurb: In order to convey its importance within society and education, archaeology must engage with the general public. Co-creation is one method that can be used to do this. Co-creation has a unique ability to draw people from a wide spectrum, and within archaeology, this is vital. The majority of the population has interacted with archaeology in one way or another
but may not actively think that they have engaged with it.

By using co-creation in the redevelopment of the Young Archaeologists’ Club (YAC) website, this enabled us to demonstrate the effect that various stakeholders can have on archaeological developments. The co-creation meetings all took place online, with them running fortnightly. The company Progress Today was used to facilitate the meetings. The various stakeholders came from a wide range of backgrounds, but all with a basic
understanding of archaeology as they had a connection to YAC. The differing opinions and experiences about archaeology, and thereby YAC, were of great importance, and provided huge insight into what the different stakeholders wanted out of the website. There were some issues, as there were clashes in ideas, particularly where the website should focus. However, co-creation allows for these difficulties, although the ability to deal with these problems is linked to who the facilitator(s) are. Nevertheless, the sessions that have taken place have been deemed a success by all those involved. The process of the redesign of the
website is not yet complete.

We will attempt to demonstrate that using co-creation within public engagement for archaeology greatly enhances the feedback received and how it is actioned upon. This will allow an understanding of how to suitably carry out projects that require public involvement, particularly with the benefits of co-creation. Therefore, co-creation can play a vital role in
engaging with the public about archaeology.