This year is my 2nd as the Festival of Archaeology Coordinator for the Council for British Archaeology a role I carry out alongside volunteering for University of Leicester Archaeology Services, one day a week on the Rutland Villa site helping train community volunteers. Both have the same outcome though, enabling individuals to take part in archaeology - from excavation through to sitting at home watching a lecture. Although the perception is that our team forms part of a large organisation, the charity only has 10 people, the Festival project management has 2 dedicated people with other colleagues take on considerable outputs such as Youth or Explorer.

This year I have also been part of the organisation of the opening and closing events for the Festival, this involves liaising with Stakeholders who have multiple management layers and figuring out issues such as the weather, transport and accessibility. I also have to navigate the new website and make sure that the volunteers who help moderate the upload of events are trained and well informed about day to day activity. We designed the branding, along with our marketing and comms team and also have daily briefings about the social media output. Alongside this we are also providing newsletters to the public and organisers asking them to complete the evaluation so we can report back to our funders at Historic England and see how we can improve year on year.

No day is the same, during the Festival the work pace increases 4 fold (literally), even with major advance planning in place. The best part of my Day in Archaeology is not necessarily after the closing event when I can have a lie down 😊, it is working with an incredible team and the day to day contact with individuals all over the UK (and sometimes Australia) solving problems and enabling participation.