Thank you so much to everyone who was able to make the launch event of the Communication and Education Working Group, which took place this past Sunday on the EXARC Discord server.
It was great to chat and range over several topics, and participants were very excited to see how this grows and develops. Many links were shared in the Discord chat, and a great suggestion of creating accessible resources (and a further reading list) about prehistory - especially for audiences such as teachers who face a daunting amount of self-led research on top of everything else they do.
We talked about different target groups - children, neurodivergent people, and in particular the ‘middle people’ - people not part of a specific minority, the average Joe so to speak. How can we engage and educate them? A great audience to target as they pass on their knowledge too. Creating links is essential - ie the wooden mice trend was used by the British Museum.
We also talked about the challenges of developing programs when there isn’t a physical site to visit yet (such as a Broch still being built). We talked about touring collections, online methods of engagement (Minecraft is excellent, along with other online games). Lego! There’s a Lego broch touring Scotland at the moment.
We also threw in some natural building chat and heritage crafts. We discussed that great way of involving people in actually building the site. Collaboration whilst balancing modern health and safety can be tricky though.
Some members offered support for a member who is recently moving out of being a primary school teacher to doing history visits for schools - one offered to put her in contact with other people in the same business in the area. It would be great to have a mini-conference of people in the same sphere.
What more would you like from this working group? If you’re keen to get involved you would be welcome to join Jess as a coordinator of this working group! Or if you'd prefer to join as a participant, check out the Discord server (link below) and sign up to the mailing list (more info coming soon on that) more for information.
