 It is my enormous pleasure and privilege to be able to introduce our keynote speaker, Raksha Dave, to you all this afternoon. She will be speaking on why representation matters in heritage. And she is a fellow alumna of the Institute of Archaeology at UCL, with two decades of experience in archaeology, public archaeology, and in broadcasting. So I'm sure she will be a familiar face to many of you from her decade working on time team, and she also has extensive experience in educational initiatives working for local authorities, the Council for British Archaeology, and as an advocate for the Young Archaeologists Club. You may have also seen her in addition to her many broadcasting adventures on the BBC and on Channel 5, Digging for Britain, Pompey's Final Hours. You might have also caught her this summer doing all sorts of exciting things, including opening Witch Bottles Live online, which was a brilliant event. So without further ado, it's my enormous pleasure to introduce our keynote speaker this afternoon, Raksha Dave. Thank you, Raksha. Thank you, Natalie. Right. Yes, I just want to say also that I've been listening to all of the papers this morning, and they've been absolutely fabulous. So that's been really great. Thank you to all of those. So now I'm going to try and do the magic sharing screen. I got asked to deliver this keynote, we were still feeling the echoes of George Floyd's death. The ripples of the Black Lives Matter movement were tangible. The pandemic had ripped the lid off inequality in society and magnified its beating heart. As an archaeologist, I felt that we have finally come to a watershed moment, a point of reckoning, when finally we could start the work of unpicking racism and the inequalities felt by other groups and look forward to more equitable and equal space in society. Every sector has had to look inwardly. Are my spaces and work diverse and more importantly, are they inclusive and equitable? Unfortunately for the arts and in particular for heritage, we are still acknowledging that our spaces are far from diverse or inclusive at all. And unlike other sectors, we have at least 30 years of catching up to do. We work in the parameters of a white male European framework, fueled by colonialism, where the power and the capital of heritage comes exclusively from this viewpoint. I've often felt at ease working with these structures. And it's true to say that at various points of my career, I felt on the outside. Whether that I was at university studying archaeology in the workplace as a female and at the point when I started a family. My intersectionality as a working class, northern female British Asian archaeologist has put me at a major disadvantage. It may not seem that like now, but it's important to say that enable for me to succeed. I've had to carve out my own space. The system as it stands doesn't work for people like me. I don't think I've ever enjoyed working in a heritage organisation as a paid employee. I felt creatively stymied, bullied, gaslit, unsupported or undervalued as an asset within a company. Unfortunately, I know that this experience is not inclusively my own. As heritage hemorrhage is telling on a daily basis. But what I find most frustrating is that I know that it doesn't have to be like this. Having worked in two different sectors, one in a local authority and now in broadcasting, I know that there is light at the end of the tunnel, that for heritage to move forward to more equitable space, we need to look outwards to other industries where their revolutions happened decades ago, or perhaps where they are striving to actively make changes now. It's important to remember that this keynote is not intended to depress or threaten. It's important that we start a conversation for people not to feel attacked, for people to bend rather than break. And I hope that after listening, organisations like the Society of Antifories move forward to a period of reflection resulting in much needed action. So what is diversity? Diversity and inclusion are two interconnected concepts, but they are far from interchangeable. Diversity is about representation or the makeup of an entity, contributors or workforce. Inclusion is about how well the contributions, presence and perspectives of different people are valued and integrated into an environment. It's important to remember that you could work in an environment where many different genders, races, nationalities and sexual orientations or identities are present, but if only the perspective of a certain group is valued or carried or carry any authority or influence, your workplace may be diverse, but it's not inclusive. But why is this important? It's the power of bringing people together who think differently from one another. This is intrinsically important to the whole of society, but especially person to the field in which we work. The heritage sector, where our very job is our role to tell the stories of the human experience on this planet. Surely by having an equitable framework by which we do this is a necessity. The very idea that we have been conducting fieldwork interpreting material culture and dominating world narratives from a white Western European viewpoint is preposterous. In fact is perspective blindness. So perspective blindness, what does that mean? It refers to the fact that we are oblivious to our blind spots, that we perceive and interpret the world from a narrow frame of reference and underestimate the extent to which we learn from people with different points of view. It means that we list the complexity of people, their lives and their lived experience, their stories which would further enrich the historical and archaeological record. Where are the narratives for children? People of colour, Indigenous communities, people with disabilities, neurodivergence and LGBTQ people of the past. It's arrogant to think that these people who belong in our society today did not contribute or live in societies of the past either. Cultural decolonisation is the starting process for this, the undoing of colonialism, deconstructing the ways we think and interpret cultures and their cultural material. For us to design diverse and inclusive research whilst repositioning debate by creating multidisciplinary research teams. Inevitably there has been a backlash to the work that we have started, the vilification of colleagues, work that started with people of colour, some of which is now being undertaken by allies. Unfortunately this has led to threats towards heritage professionals and heritage institutions. We are now threatened by proposed funding cuts and control over governance structures at board level. It seems that we have now found ourselves within a fake cultural war. Those alternative narratives, sometimes uncomfortable truths, are not palatable to the people who benefit from these power structures. As David Olyashoga eloquently pointed out, history after all is a process not a position and he's right, our job is to be reflexive. Archaeology in history isn't a sports picture where you can pick out the edited highlights. I personally like to call this straight dessert. So let's imagine we're at a restaurant, we all know that we should eat a balanced diet, but really we want to skip the starter in a main and head straight to dessert. And why not? It's sweet, it makes me smile and vaguely heady and euphoric. I know what I should choose vegetables, proteins and good carbs because in the long run I will benefit. And there it is, the elephant in the room. You can't pick and choose what you want to hear from history because just like continuously eating dessert, it will ultimately make you sick. Backlash from institutions and individuals are normally from people who are unwilling to change and are open to hear alternative points of view. This is why we hear the phrase from a place of privilege because quite often these people have solely benefited from these colonial structures, elevating their positions and taking advantage of the opportunities that are geared towards them. But to challenge and democratize archaeology in history we need to look at the structures by which we operate. Where are the key areas we need to challenge to become more diverse and inclusive? And here's one of them, local knowledge and contribution. Now I really didn't want to go down this back, but I'm going to go into it anyway. Stonehenge. Stonehenge is topical with the proposed development of the tunnel cutting under the archaeological sediments to replace the A303. But I feel as though the narrative has been exclusively taken over by male academics who feel as though they have a right to exclusively conduct research in the Stonehenge landscape and popular historians who have no archaeological framework whereby to contribute to the larger picture. The effects of this fallout now mean we have a skewed narrative where archaeology that falls within development and the planning process is bad versus academic research which is good. By and large I would like to see a more well-rounded approach. I feel as though the local voice has been lost. What are their daily transport issues? What do they think about a tunnel? And are there other issues that the lack of local planning and development that has hindered economic growth in their area? I do think that there is another way. I would like to see a variety of voices, the creation of multidisciplinary teams of academics and archaeological practices and local stakeholders contributing to better infrastructure developments. Personally I don't think that the current plans are a good compromise because all of these alternatives have not been discussed with a diverse group of people. However I fully support the current fieldwork undertaken by archaeological colleagues and their ability to execute the project to the highest standards. And also let's take a brief look at the Edward Colston statue. Who decides whether a statue should be dismantled or replaced? I for one didn't even know who Edward Colston was prior to June last year but the people of Bristol obviously do. It seems that there was already a strong grassroots campaign supported within the local Bristol population for the statue of Colston to be reinterpreted replaced or removed. A long-standing debate of anti-blackness, a campaign to reclaim humanity and execute reparations to individuals who suffered from Colston's actions. Frustration it seems was born out of inaction. The campaign had lobbied through proper chattels by the planning process and the local authority which were largely ignored for a quarter of a century. And as we all know the statue was torn down during the Black Lives Matter protest something I don't think would have happened ordinarily if it wasn't for the catalyst of living amongst the strains of inequality during a pandemic. Ultimately decisions like this should be made at a local level. Why do I care about a statue of someone I never even knew existed? Let us leave the final word with the people of Bristol. This panel on the slide is at the current Colston exhibition curated by the M Shedding Bristol. And it says it all, in less than three days after the removal of the statue 10,252 people responded to a survey by Bristol Live. Only 20% of the respondents think it should have been taken down at all opposed to an overwhelming majority of 80%. So what about fieldwork and research? International fieldwork teams can comprise exclusively of European and North American archaeologists at professional or student level. This is problematic. The idea that teams would operate without the input of local archaeologists or use local archaeologists in lower ranks within team hierarchies or as labourers. I certainly witnessed this during filming in Egypt. There is a pervasive colonial structure that still operates within Egyptology and Egyptian archaeology. I was also quite shocked by the terms of reference. European teams still refer to themselves as missions. I'm guessing this is extrapolated from the word missionaries bizarrely naming them as such in a possible bid to save the local populations from their own material culture. Local Egyptians are almost always used as labourers or are present as lower ranked experts within teams regardless of their expertise. Exclusive European teams is a real world issue. This can ultimately lead to the guarding of knowledge, a lack of training in native countries and the lack of understanding of methodologies and frameworks. In some cases it can exclude for meaningful research and discussion about their own heritage, curation and the management of heritage assets. And what about indigenous communities? I'd like to see more engagement with indigenous archaeologists and communities. Let us dismantle the process of disenfranchised indigenous people. It is important to understand how much their contribution is relevant and how colonialism has almost eradicated their right to participate. For example, recent archaeological research has shown how indigenous populations can contribute to the future ecology of our planet. I still feel we have a lot to learn from these communities to bring them front and centre to the debate and solutions for climate change, land management and living sustainably. And we also need to decolonise curriculums. An active move to help decolonise teaching curriculums by viewing the historical curriculum through a critical lens, instead of giving us the edited highlights. The move to more expansive teaching will give us the ability to portray stories that reflect our society, whether that is from the viewpoint of people of colour or the working classes. This is also mirrored in post-colonial countries. I was quite shocked recently as I sat on a panel for SEPA to hear that British history is still actively taught in Kenya. The echoes of empire still firmly in place. But ultimately, how relevant is this to Kenyans? It's really important that we don't continue these discussions and actions without our colleagues from the global south. I'm pleased that decolonisation work is happening, but it is becoming apparent that there is a gentrification of the decolonisation process. It's important that we stay authentic, that people of colour, Indigenous communities and colleagues from the global south are not excluded from this work. They are the people that snowball this movement and have to live with the daily consequences of these structures, be allies, not colonisers of decolonisation, and the workforce. Ensure that you don't have fake diversity versus true diversity. The evidence of parity in a level playing field for EDI individuals and that diversity and inclusion is embedded into the organisation, not just as an afterthought, and that those diverse employees are represented through entry level to senior management and executive level. There is a real issue with heritage organisations in the UK, where practitioners are almost exclusively white. There is diversity in these organisations, but they are predominantly represented in support staff. Cleaning staff, HR, marketing and IT, but almost hardly in their practitioners. Organisations will supply this data as a win, whereas if we scratch beneath the surface, nothing has changed at all. So I just wanted to give you a snapshot of UK archaeology as a case study. It's really hard to get a real snapshot of the quality, diversity and inclusion in British archaeology, mainly because umbrella organisations are not invested in making a change. Where are the success stories, the issues and how we can improve in areas where we are lacking? We need a real commitment from sectoral bodies to improve the way in which we attract a diverse workforce and shape policies, enabling people to thrive and contribute within a positive environment. After all, a quality diversity and inclusion shouldn't be siphoned off into a box called specialist interest. Surely it's in everyone's interest. What we see is a negative approach to EDNI, one that is reactive rather than proactive. Take for instance the Me Too movement, whereby our female colleagues globally have bravely and very publicly shared stories of sexual harassment in our field, or in the Society of Antweres case whereby governance structures were changed to hold a member accountable for sexual offences and to uphold the role of the society as an educational charity that operates for public benefit. Research has shown that there are many benefits to a diverse and inclusive workspace. It can lead to higher revenue growth, greater readiness to innovate, increased ability to recruit from a diverse talent pool, and a 5.4 times higher chance of employee retention. The flip side to this is this, when employees don't feel their ideas, presence or contribution are truly valued or taken seriously by their organization, they will eventually leave. UK archaeology has a real problem with this. We have a serious issue with retention on every level of the archaeology food chain. How do we attract diverse people at participatory level? How do we feed this into universities or apprenticeships and why does this not translate into the profession? So what do we have? We're going to have a quick look at some recent data collected by Landward Research. They're the authors of profiling the profession. It's a central overview of UK archaeology and data for this survey was collected from UK organizations and individuals working within British archaeology. The report for the 2020 has just been published and you can access the full detailed current report and earlier reports here. There's a link on the slide and these are just like quick excerpts. It was quite difficult to actually take the quality diversity and inclusion information from there because it's quite scant. But we're looking at in 2020 there were roughly 6,300 full-time equivalent archaeologists working in the UK within organizations. So if we take a quick look at disability, when asked about a disability organization said that only 2.8% of archaeologists working for them is disabled. However, when individuals completed the survey 11% of UK archaeologists reported that they are disabled but that only 30% report their disability to their employer. This is much higher than previously thought and actually it's more in line with national employment figures relating to people in employment with a disability. Those that indicated they have a disability were asked if this was caused or exacerbated by work and 53% of respondents said yes. The age disparity between individuals asked about emotional disabilities are more frequently reported by younger age groups rather than the 40 plus age group. Again, I don't know why. Perhaps there is a generational inability to talk about emotional mental health or perhaps the framework didn't exist to diagnose individuals at a younger age, especially if we're looking at pre-2000s. Now there is a caveat to this. It's not a legal requirement to report to your employer that you are disabled. So we're unsure why under reporting happens. But it's clear that more work needs to be done looking to support archaeologists with disabilities. Another category that we're looking at is ethnicity. In 2020, 97% of archaeologists are white. However, the other category which totaled to 1% was also exclusively ticked by white Europeans that work in the UK sector, suggesting that UK archaeology is 98% white. If we look at previous years, there's a 1% diversity improvement. Data collected for the 2012 report showed that archaeology was 99.2% white. But hang on, let's not celebrate the 1% climb. There are caveats to this data also, because since 2002, the UK workforce has become less white over time, while archaeology has essentially stayed the same. The small changes in the 2020 data are within the margins of error and landlords suggest that they cannot say that an increase of 1% in the number of BAME archaeologists is the result of change in the sector, or a result of that year's sampling. In short, we cannot say that this has changed at all. So if we look at harassment policies, 98% of organisations have a sexual harassment policy, 41% have a no retaliation policy, but only 25% of UK archaeologists are employed by organisations that provide sexual harassment training for all employees. Interestingly, sole traders and partnerships usually don't have employees and don't think that they need these policies, which I consider quite odd, especially if they are predominantly engaged in loan working. They simply don't see the need for training or safeguarding themselves. So gender and age, 53% of UK archaeologists are men and 47% are women. Over time, since the start of data collection for profiling the profession, the proportion of women in UK archaeology roles has been increasing. And in 2020, in the 2020 report, the gender balance in the profession matched the data for the entire workforce. People identified as other genders and they were reported, individuals reported identifying as other genders opposed to a handful of staff as reported by organisations. Lamma suggests that these numbers slightly affect the dataset, but all the results by employers and individuals are within 1% of each other. Let us, however, seem to be some more, some good news. Data from the 2012 report highlighted the phenomena of women being pushed out of archaeology in their 30s before they reached their 40s, potentially due to family duties, disproportionately affecting women. The dataset for 2020, however, suggests that there is now no such ceiling. However, Landward are unable to make a clear analysis of whether this is due to generational trends due to the seven-year reporting gap. The data does indicate that there is no such ceiling. However, there is no extra analysis of where these women sit within these organisations. How many are represented at senior management level? Has government policies such as childcare grants, paternity leave and parental rights enabled women to stay in the profession? And how many leave because of gender-related issues? Of course, we do not know, but we can speculate. Now, this leads on to carers' responsibilities. 29% of UK professional archaeologists are carers for children, theirs or others, whereas 6% of UK professionals are carers for other adults. Now, Landward realised that one of the correlations discovered during the analysis was between age and carer duty. Almost half of the archaeologists in their 40s were caring for children, whereas for adults, it peaked for archaeologists in their 50s. I'm imagining that this is where we'll see a trend as populations grow older. The need to care for adults will become the norm and employers will need to be more supportive towards the caring duties and responsibilities of these age groups. So, what about the solutions? As you can see, the data doesn't paint a very diverse and inclusive sector. There are obviously issues, but what about the solutions? What can we do to support our workforce, but also to address those key areas in how and which we do our work? How do we stop operating in homogeneous spaces, and how do we stop thinking more like rebels and not like clones? Matthew Said in his book, Rebel Ideas, coins this phrase. He recounts the tale of joining the FA's Technical Advisory Board and was confused as to why he was invited. He accepted, as did a lot of other individuals, who had no direct expertise in football either. But what he found was exhilarating and I paraphrase, diverse groups express radically different properties. It was fascinating to see how people who were not experts in football were nevertheless able to pierce through to some of the underlying weakness, whether in recruitment or coaching methods or bring a fresh perspective to media relations. Rebel Ideas were often rejected. Exchanges were robust, but always led to divergent thinking and more sophisticated solutions. So how do we think more like rebels? I think the heritage sector has a lot to learn from other sectors and I for one would welcome heritage sectors taking these steps in moving the ED and I agenda forward. So what about the long term and possible solutions? I think that we need to look at sex sector wide initiatives, a commitment by member and umbrella or heritage organisations to cross sector data collection. We need robust data asking the right questions. We need to know where the sticking points are in the chain of engagement at participatory level, how this feeds into higher education which eventually leads to work within the profession. Are we supporting people enough so we attract a diverse pool of talent, retain them and see the transition of diverse people into senior management and CEO level? We need to challenge the power structures too. There is scant diversity at board level for heritage organisations from cultural institutions to grant giving bodies. Are you recruiting wide enough? Are you exclusively recruiting from your sector? And are you personally handpicking board members that suit your agenda? True board diversity comes from individuals that will challenge you. Remember, think like rebels, not like clones. I'd like grant giving bodies to reframe the way that they look at funding projects. Longer term sustainable grants rather than three year cycles. How can we really see change and the benefit of our work? Having worked in public policy, this can only happen if you enable projects to embed into communities successfully using longer term models. And let's talk about impact data. How do we collect impact data? We need to look at other sectors like public sector organisations and how to successfully show public benefit. Our terms of reference for this public is public engagement. Mainly with experiences of supplying data to grant giving bodies, but their data collection is not fit for purpose either. We need a cross-sexual toolkit available to drill into the benefits of history and archaeology. Higher education institutions need to challenge the terms of references for bursaries. There's no point in being too selective in which groups of ethnic minorities can access funds. Because as we can see from diversity data, that this doesn't translate into the profession anyway. All bursaries are always exclusively for postgraduate degrees, but there is a bigger problem, the supply chain, and what are you doing to attract diverse students for them to take that first step onto the undergraduate ladder. I'd like for us to look to other sectors. Other sectors like engineering science and local government have diverse pools of talent. Heritage obviously has a problem with recruitment and diverse participation at all levels. It is time to look beyond the fences of heritage and look to other sectors to see how successfully they attract diverse thinkers. Local authorities are some of the most diverse workplaces, but admittedly outside of the greater London and other urban areas, there are issues with representation at senior management level. However, there are many areas where they succeed and we can learn. Perhaps it is because of the very nature of their business, that they are there to serve their local communities and by and large reflect the people that they provide a service to. But surely this is what heritage needs to strive towards too. Local authorities have long established outreach engagement programs and the right tools to embed projects into society around them. They have robust impact studies showing public benefit which leads onto shaping local agendas. They are ingrained in everyday business as is the retention of local stakeholders. I'd also like to see us emulate successful outreach programs that other sectors rule out. STEM programs were particularly designed to attract and encourage girls and young women to potential careers in these sectors. Traditionally, careers in this sector were predominantly populated by males, so successful STEM engagement programs like STEMS and Girl Geeks has had a positive impact in turning the tide of uptake of future roles females. Or also for us to look at sectors that realise immediate action is needed just like broadcasting. Employees in this sector have been predominantly white, male and traditionally from wealthy socioeconomic backgrounds. Broadcasting is an emerging sector where change is happening, but in some cases it is pithy, but in others it is rapid. They've obviously been spurred on by the success of diverse subscription-based channels like Netflix. Channels have been keen to emulate the disruptive breakdown of traditional broadcasting, but it's interesting because particular channels that are quick to make change are not bogged down with senior and middle management structures. A good example of this is Viacom who were in Channel 5. In 2021, the company instigated an immediate no diversity, no commission policy, meaning that unless representation is built into projects for on and off-screen talent, commissions will not be approved. We have also seen clear commitments to commissioning from independent diverse indies and the introduction to colourblind casting, which saw Jodie Turner-Smith cast as a lead role in a three-part drama about the ill-fated Queen Anne Boleyn. But what is the impact of these? Currently, Channel 5 always ranks in the top two or three channels for diversity, and it will be interesting to see how diversity starts change after the implementation of these policies. Ironically, the BBC, the UK's public broadcaster, lags behind in diversity targets compared to Channel 4 and Viacom-owned Channel 5. But what can we do as individuals? If you're a leader, show effective leadership, acknowledge that there's an issue and respond accordingly. If your organisation is criticised for the lack of diversity or inclusion, it is your responsibility to act accordingly as a CEO. You shouldn't leave it to staff to pick up the rebuttals. Make excuses on your behalf or for you to take ownership. Allyship. Find out what this means and share the power instead of adding to the echo chamber and keeping the power to yourself. Speak up when you see aggression. Support a quality in diversity, inclusion individuals, and stand up for people who don't have the same capitality. Help elevate other people's voices that are not heard, or make sure others get access to opportunities like attending panels and conferences or invites to boards. Personally, if somebody asks me, I always send a suggested list of alternatives to organisers and always check to see who the other speakers are before I accept, to ensure that there is an actual representation of voices. As you can see, we have a lot of work to do. Diversity, inclusion and then quality isn't just a buzzword. Let's make that change so we can welcome more critical thinking into our research and explore multiple narratives that are truly representative of the human story. I'd like to thank the Society of Antiquities for asking me to deliver this keynote, and I'm pleased to say that this is the beginning of a series of events planned by their diversity and equality working group. So following this conference, Society of Antiquities have planned two follow-up panel discussions, as Nat Cohen said, in October 2021 and February 2022. The first will explore the UK's troubled history of slavery and colonialism and its legacies, and the second, an international perspective on colonialism. Thank you. Thank you so much, Raksha. That was a really amazing paper through which I was writing down questions, but quite a few of which you then answered through the paper. So I have, if I may, I'll start with one question that's just come to mind. Thinking around your discussion, particularly of board appointments and those sort of higher level some strategy appointments and the people who are actually in charge and the recent challenges around some of those board appointments that we've been seeing in the press from government. I'm wondering how, and this is potentially a rhetorical question, but do we, do we as a sector need to become much, much more effective in influencing at a higher level so that we can help support those colleagues who are looking to make proactive board appointments and things like that? I think it's quite difficult because I do think that there's this strange chicken and egg situation where they are often reliant on government funding. So obviously their livelihoods and their staff's livelihoods are being threatened, but I do think that, yes, we do need, we need to apply the pressure from both, I would say, not just from on high and the power structure, but also from below to say, well, you wouldn't have culture, you wouldn't have history if it wasn't for the people that work in it, you wouldn't have interpretation and amazing museums like the British Museum and all the London museums and all the brilliant local regional museums if it wasn't for their staff and the people that curated them and all the archaeologists that supplied the museums, you know, it's mind boggling really, so I think the pressure needs to come from all various angles. And do you think as well that we need to become much better as a joined up sector as well that potentially we come across as quite fragmented and perhaps that this is something that isn't helping us to pull together? Yes, desperately so, and I think that we need to start working in silos, they need to be much joined up thinking, that we need to do a lot of cross pollination. Yeah, start looking after like our own business, because actually it's not our own business, it's all of our business, because we're so interconnected anyway, that we do need to actually start working together so that we're one voice, rather than lots of fragmented voices which we currently are at the moment. So much stronger voice around shared heritage aspects? Things like I don't, as I said in my paper, I don't think that we actually really know what the impact and our personal public benefit is yet. So we really need to look at that and kind of find a framework by which we can all funnel that information into, because currently we don't have anything. Yeah, I would agree. I'm just waiting to see what other questions might come in, but I have more. That's okay for me, I've got a lot of right loads of notes. I was thinking about your points around decolonising the curriculum and how we can help to support embedding much broader histories that are being presented in our schools. At what point do you think is the key point at which to embed that given educational curricula and frameworks and how difficult it can be to influence those sort of aspects of education? Is there a key point that you can see from your experience of when is a good moment to have these conversations in schools and really influence the choices that students might make in terms of career choices or just their sort of lifelong interest? Yeah, I think yes to a more diverse curricula for sure and things that are more relevant and things that aren't one-sided because I remember doing GCSE history many many many moons ago now and my GCSE history was all about the industrial revolution. Yeah, me too. That's all about the greatness of Great Britain and they innovative, you know, all of this stuff, inventions here there and everywhere, industrialisation, but actually if it would have been a much more rounded and brilliant experience if I'd actually realised that this didn't actually happen without colonialism, the only reason why the industrial revolution kind of kicked off was because there was this extreme depression of colonised countries that we absolutely trashed their economies and we had to make our own. But then I also made a recent documentary called The Bone Detectives where we followed this amazing story about mill workers and they excavated the bodies of these poor children, the poor working classes living in the mills and what they found was that these working class people were completely just taken in, you know, they were themselves indentured slaves, they were records saying that these children were taken from work houses, you know, so obviously there's this like this great industry that suddenly needs a supply chain of people, where does it come from? It comes from poor people, you know, so it's this whole thing of intertwined histories, that's what we're talking about, you know, it's the yin and the yang, you know, suddenly all of these global markets don't exist, we're suddenly having to make our own and take all the money, but where are you going to get your workforce from? And there's this very pertinent line, you know, that this country was made on the bones of children, you know, and it's so and that's what I, you know, we need to hear about those people as well. Definitely, we have lots of questions all of a sudden now in the chat, so I'm going to go through a few of those for you now. First question is from Sadie and she says, how do you think we could encourage a younger more diverse population, particularly of Londoners, into Burlington House, the Society of Antiquities Home? Do you have any suggestions as to how we could encourage a different audience to come through the door? Oh gosh, millions and billions of ideas, but I think that essentially, firstly, there's one thing that we have to address is that we don't actually have a great PR image at all. So I just vaguely remember a couple of years ago, I was kind of doing some consultancy with some young people from Birmingham with the National Youth Agency. And I went to talk to them about archaeology and would they be interested in an archaeology project, that kind of thing. And I felt completely ashamed because I felt as though I hadn't done my job properly. Which was that they didn't even actually really understand what archaeology was, they thought it was just for white old men. It was really depressing actually. So I do think the first thing that we need to do is to change our image. Yeah, yeah. Thanks. And I think once we get over that hurdle and change our image, and people realise actually, so many different people do archaeology and actually archaeology is done, it's not just field archaeology, that there are so many different types of archaeologists that do so many different types of jobs. And also you can study archaeology, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be an archaeologist either. You could be a charter surveyor, you could be a teacher, you could be an ambassador, you name it, you can do anything. And that's the whole point is that they don't quite understand the enormity that archaeology gives, that there are so many transferable skills. Absolutely. So I have another question in the chat here from Howard Spencer, who asks, how could we best improve recruitment practices, specifically to avoid the well documented tendency for people to recruit those who look and sound most like themselves? Well, just like Channel 5 did, the colour blank casting, it's the same. You do blind recruitment, essentially. So the person's not a name, they're a number, and what you do is you just recruit from the best talent. But then also the issue is there isn't a supply to choose from a diverse group of people either. So it's really crucial and essential that those higher education bursaries change, that they recruit people into undergraduate courses from a diverse pool of people, but also that apprenticeships are also attracting the right people too. And it's those things that will then funnel in a bigger work group of people, a much more diverse group of people. Yeah, and that's really interesting actually in terms of two of the questions that have just come in, or comments that have just come in as well on the chat. So we have another from Sadie, just noting that some research by Hannah Cobb at the University of Manchester a few years ago did indicate that archaeology courses at universities are populated with a more diverse group of individuals than we're seeing reflected in the profession. And then we have a follow-up, it's almost like a nice follow-up question from Paul Drury, which asks, salaries in commercial archaeology have remained low despite professionalisation. Does this contribute to the lack of diversity? Massively, massively. And that's an issue as well, and especially with Brexit, because quite a tranche of the people who are working within UK archaeology were from the EU. We've been stabilising our work economy from people from the EU, and now that is no longer viable. I think places like Merle, they've just announced that they can give people working visas from other countries, which is part of that. So all organisations need to start looking at that and supporting new talent from abroad, but also, yes, absolutely, we need to make sure that we are getting paid right. I know loads of people who are archaeologists, and there are other hubs can't be archaeologists, so one of them has to go and get what we say in an inverted job. It has a massive issue on sustainability of the profession, doesn't it, because the very depressed wages are not an encouragement for career progression through the profession. Especially when you're trying to do things within your life, which is to get on the property ladder, to have a holiday, and to start a family. I mean, I'm sorry, but they're not onerous things. They're not luxuries. They're things that people do in their normal everyday lives, but when you're an archaeologist, you can't afford those. Yeah. So we have a couple more sort of comments and questions, and then I think we will look to see what's coming up next. There's a comment here from Jane Gallagher just coming back to the points we were talking around the curricula, saying that teachers have some flexibility in the curricula, and it's the exam boards that dictate overall what is going to be examined. So that potentially is another area of atmosphere that we would need to look to influence in, in order to help to create those changes and to have those options of a more diverse curricula. And we have another question here from Andrew Myers, and if we knew the answer to this question, Andrew, we might have the winning key. It says, how do we change our image? University departments are under attack. The teaching of colonial period industrial archaeology at university receives minimal investment and requires a higher research profile. And when this comes back again, I suppose, to the point of, you know, there are significant threats to archaeology and heritage within university departments, within planning. We have an acknowledged image problem, and we potentially, well not potentially, we're undervaluing ourselves. How do we try to sort of address all of these fairly serious structural issues alongside encouraging more people into the sector? Well, I think that we have to just start doing it anyway, because there's there are always feast and famine years, as I like to say. So I would probably say the feast years were the time team years. Yeah. It was massive, you know, people watching it, you had a dearth of university courses, loads of hundreds of thousands of students attending, you know, university departments opened. Actually, nobody really did anything. They kind of wrote the wave, but they didn't really do anything with it. And that's the problem is that you can't just wait for something like that to happen. You know, you have to take a long hard look at yourself and go, actually, we have to start the all this grassroots kind of development. And that's like, you know, all the yak clubs or looking going into schools. And it's the same if the STEM groups, you know, the STEMS, the Girl Geeks, if they realize that they had a problem, they realized that they had to change their image. And they went into those schools, you know, they actually did all the footwork and went in there and and just changed that whole agenda around them. That's what we have to do. We can't just be complacent and just say, well, well, you know, we're not being funded, and this isn't happening, because that will change. Will you change? That's the question. And unless we start changing, then nothing will change. Yes. But we'll start doing it. Absolutely. So we have a comment, which I think will be our final comment of the of this evening from Izzy Bartley around diversity in the curriculum and looking at initiatives from Pearson who are thinking of embedding LGBTQ plus histories through their syllabi at GCSE level. So hopefully, you know, we are starting to see the effects of those changes coming through and fingers crossed that that continues in a positive direction. Yeah. And I think that's the thing. It's those small things. You don't have to do big things. It's the small things. So, yes, there are the kind of long term structural organizational things that we all have to have a vested interest and do things about and support. But there are those individual things that you can do, whether that's you changing the syllabus in your school, teaching something slightly different on your curriculum, supporting the Young Archaeologists Club, going into schools. You know, it's all those small, tiny, tiny things that create the biggest sum of something. You know, just just do it. Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. Well, I'd like to wrap up this evening then by by thanking you so much, Rector, for an amazing keynote speech. It's a really brilliant way to round off what I hope everyone has found to be such a thought provoking and sort of interesting event as I found it this afternoon. My huge thanks to all of our speakers from today. All of our chairs who helped to manage the sessions and also, of course, to the organizers, Linda and Danielle, for putting together such a fantastic program. And it's really exciting to see the, you know, further steps being taken towards more events of this kind through the Society of Antiquaries events program. These recordings of today's session will be available on YouTube, hopefully within the next week or so. So it just falls to me to say thank you to the audience as well for all of their fantastic comments and thought provoking questions. And I hope that you've enjoyed the day on behalf of the Society of Antiquaries. Thank you so much for joining us. And we look forward to seeing you again soon. Thank you very much. A big round of applause, virtual applause for Rector and all of our speakers. Thank you, everyone.