As a British Asian woman, I am one of a small handful of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people to carve out a lengthy career in the archaeology sector. This is a problem.
In 2013, the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists (CIfA) published its Profiling the Profession (pdf) report, which included a section on ethnicity. We are 99% white, with a miserly 1% “other” ethnicities. There are about 6,000 people employed in the archaeology sector in the UK. Of the 837 respondents, seven described themselves as non-white – and one of those was me.
These numbers are mirrored in wider arts audiences as well as people who access archaeology and heritage in its many forms, including museums and other venues. In December 2015, the chair of Arts Council England (ACE), Sir Peter Bazalgette, highlighted these continuing issues at ACE’s Diversity and the Creative Case event.
But rather hopefully for archaeology, diversity is thriving in the classroom. A recent study by Dr Hannah Cobb of Manchester University, entitled Digging Diversity, revealed that students in British archaeology courses were fully represented in terms of race, disability, gender and variety of socio-economic background.
Essentially, archaeology classrooms are more diverse in every way than our dig sites and meeting rooms.
This is an issue, because our practitioners affect every aspect of archaeology – from research, data collection and interpretation, to teaching, audience engagement, public relations and participation.
The more those practitioners and teachers have varied backgrounds, perspectives and life experiences, the richer and more representative the information produced and experience provided will become. More people will feel welcome to be a part of what we do, whether as a professional, student, volunteer or casual participant.
Inspiration drawn from the past underpins many (if not all) aspects of the creative and cultural sectors. The knock-on effect of limiting the mouthpiece for this to a single, white, middle class, middle-aged male voice is huge. That’s why encouraging diversity in the people tasked with bringing our past to life is so essential.
The ideal would be a place where we don’t have to try to diversify jobs or volunteer opportunities as a box-ticking exercise. But until then, an immediate commitment to opening up our profession through smarter, more modern and strategic efforts in communication will help.
I’d like to see archaeological organisations get smarter about audiences. So let’s talk the same talk as the rest of the world: lose the jargon, lighten up on information embargos and recognise that tailoring our messages to the audiences we want to engage with is an achievement, rather than the pernicious dumbing down we fear so greatly.
There isn’t a king under every car park and that’s okay, because there are unlimited numbers of great stories to tell about all archaeology that will sound and feel familiar to people of any background. There’s sex, death, displacement, war, prejudice, power, gender, wealth, poverty, ability, love, success and happiness.
We don’t need to pander to people from diverse backgrounds to get their attention; we just have to do a better and more strategic job of sharing what we have already got. Archaeological organisations must make this a key performance indicator equal in importance to financial return or other markers of success, or suffer the consequences.
This is directly related to issues of business sustainability, because archaeology is about people. The unique conditions of our sector do not preclude us adopting the techniques and successful initiatives from adjacent sectors, such as the excellent Stemettes programme, the Family and Childcare Trust and Diversity in Heritage. CIfA’s new diversity and equality special interest group is a much-needed and welcome step in this direction.
As highlighted in the recent culture white paper by the Department for Culture, Media & Sport, mixed business models, new ways of working and the use of technology to enable participation will be increasingly important in attracting and involving diverse professionals and audiences to the culture sector.
Archaeology must follow this.
Our work at DigVentures has proven that these techniques can achieve surprising results. So have space in your business model for diverse communities to feed back what they find interesting and want more (or less) of. Accept what this tells you about your work. Finally, be part of the conversation, rather than just broadcasting information.
See how quickly “we” start to look different.
Raksha Dave is public archaeologist and founding member of DigVentures
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