News  |  Posted October 9, 2020

Past Protectors are Prize Winners!

Participants in a PAS project have won first prize in a national archaeology competition, after showing off their presenting and filming skills in the Council for British Archaeology run Festival of Archaeology.

PAS Project Officer, Alison McCandlish writes:

Since February last year PAS have been managing a heritage crime project (Past Protectors) for Historic Environment Scotland which aims to increase awareness of heritage crime in Scotland, exploring what heritage means to young people and their views on managing the historic environment.  We have worked with schools and youth groups across Scotland, from Orkney to Glasgow, and in Dundee, Stirling and Falkirk.

The PAS Past Protectors project recently had some fantastic news- one of the workshops which we held with Stirlingshire Young Archaeologists Club resulted in the two young people who created a video of the Past Protectors activity winning first prize in a national competition!  In this workshop we explored the Scottish Treasure Trove initiative and how we value different artefacts and objects over time.. what might be the archaeology of tomorrow?  All of the young people at this workshop brought in different objects which were important to them, but were broken or not used.. everything from an old computer tablet to slide rules and a neolithic oil lamp!

The objects which everyone brought in were compiled into a mini exhibition, with everyone taking on different curating roles from deciding what the signage for the exhibition should be, to deciding the order in which objects should be exhibited.  Two of the young people presented and filmed a promotion for their curated exhibition, telling us all about the objects and highlighting things which they thought were of note.

Juliette Garven (who was the presenter) and Alfie Lennon (who was the camera person) entered the competition with the permission of their families, and the Young Archaeologist Club co-ordinator Colin Davenport.

Juliette recorded a short video testimonial about what she thought about winning the project.

https://www.pas.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/video-by-juliette_QGjHGVLA_XeLU.mp4?_=1

Alfie said “Whilst filming, I had tried to focus the attention on the object, whilst Juliette spoke about the object.   It was fun to film because it felt like I was working in TV. When I was told we won the competition, I felt very happy, and after being told what the prize was, I was really excited that Juliette and I were going to be members of the Council of British Archaeology for a whole year.”

Thank you to Juliette, Alfie, Colin and the Stirlingshire Young Archaeologist Group for their participation in the project, and congratulations on the win!

View more information about the Festival of Archaeology at LINK.