Festival of Archaeology 2023 Youth Day

Every year, as part of the Festival of Archaeology, we celebrate young people during our Youth Day. This is an opportunity to foreground the contribution of young people, early career archaeologists and heritage professionals.

The Youth Day is kindly sponsored by the Royal Archaeological Institute (RAI).

As part of this year's Youth Day we have a number of events and resources lined-up.

Early Careers Conference

Following the success of the 2021 and 2022 conferences, the CIfA Early Careers Special Interest Group and CBA are hosting another digital Early Careers Conference as part of this year’s Youth Day.

This digital conference aims to platform students and early career archaeologists, and to give them the opportunity to gain presentation experience.

We hope the conference audience will comprise of anyone who has an interest in the range of topics that will be discussed and/or those who wish to support early career archaeologists and heritage professionals in a welcoming and friendly environment.

Find out more here: Early Careers Conference 2023

Introducing the CBA's Youth Participation Programme

The CBA is launching a new programme of activity aimed at 16-25 year-olds. As part of our Youth Day, our Youth Governance Lead, Mercedes Baptiste-Halliday, will be introducing our exciting plans. Watch this space!

YAC Podcasting

Our Young Archaeologists’ Club (YAC) have been learning to create their own podcasts. We will be sharing some of their work and we will also share our online training session, which can be easily adapted for other youth groups to utilise using open-source software.

YAC Festival Resource Pack: archaeology and creativity

Every year we create a new bumper pack of activities aimed at 8-16 year-olds based on the Festival theme. This year that theme is archaeology and creativity.

We have co-created the resource with young people to ensure our activities are youth-proofed and we have asked each to share their experience of creating their activity as a blog or vlog. We will be highlighting these throughout the day.

The resource pack is supported by English Heritage's national youth engagement programme, Shout Out Loud.

Letters to a Young Archaeologist

Engaging young people to participate in archaeology is one of the main objectives of the CBA.

Last year we launched Letters to a Young Archaeologist, a monthly publication addressed to those considering a career in archaeology through the fictional figure of the “young archaeologist”, in partnership with Birbeck, University of London.

We’re thrilled to be continuing the series in 2023, taking the additional step of involving young people directly. Every month this year, we are inviting key organisations in the sector to write, record, film or create a letter, and young people involved in that organisation to respond – or vice versa.

As part of the Youth Day we will be sharing the videos, interactive games, art work and written letters exploring their experiences and ideas about their own participation in archaeology and heritage.

We hope you will join us for the 2023 Festival of Archaeology Youth Day and the many other youth-focused events running throughout the Festival period.