Headquartered in London, DigVentures works globally with a network of regional partners to raise seed capital for, and increasing participation in, sustainable archaeology and heritage projects worldwide. The organisation was formed in 2011, responding to the challenge of austerity and lack of opportunity in the heritage sector. By adopting a crowdfunding and crowdsourcing approach, DigVentures have sought to address this by using digital and social media to build audiences, increase revenue and find new ways for the public to participate in archaeological fieldwork.
Crowdfunding model
DigVentures projects are coordinated through an online multicurrency crowdfunding platform designed to connect heritage sector managers and archaeologists with a worldwide crowd of interested and actively engaged participants. Project owners choose a timeframe and target-funding goal, selling non-monetary rewards and experiences linked to their projects through their social networks. This has enabled the public to financially support interesting archaeology projects as well as to join in, learn new skills and contribute to internationally important research. Heritage projects using this model on the DigStarter platform include Flag Fen Lives, Leiston Abbey, Save the Welsh Streets, Researching Roman Southwell and Chiltern Open Air Museum.
Digital Dig Team
In 2014 DigVentures received a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to develop its Digital Dig Team. This has been described as a ‘Community Management System’ for archaeology projects. It is built onto a cloud-based, open-source software platform enabling researchers to publish data directly from the field using any web-enabled device into a live relational database. Once recorded the born-digital archive is accessible via open-access on a dedicated website, and published to social profiles of all project participants. Beta tested in the field at Leiston Abbey in 2014, early results have shown that the Digital Dig Team system can enable archaeologists to build audiences, generate revenue, enable public participation and improve research by making results available to a networked specialist team in 'real time'. A children's version of this system has also been developed, based on a ‘Cyber Dig’ simulated excavation for use in schools or family events. During the COVID-19 pandemic, DigVentures's digs, talks and workshops were postponed, and the online "How to Do Archaeology" course was made freely available.
Fieldwork
Flag Fen Lives
In 2012 DigVentures ran the world’s first crowdfunded excavation, raising £30,000 to enable a three-week excavation at the internationally significant Bronze Age site of Flag Fen, near Peterborough. The site had experienced a 50% decline in visitors since the large-scale English Heritage-funded excavations finished in 1995; the project’s remit was to help revitalise the heritage attraction, whilst providing detailed scientific information on the preservation of the waterlogged timbers. The project involved around 250 members of the public from 11 countries, supported by a specialist team including partners from the British Museum, Durham University, Birmingham University, York Archaeological Trust, University College London and English Heritage to assist in the scientific investigations. Of the members of public, 130 individuals received hands-on training in archaeological techniques on site and visitor numbers increased by 29% from the previous year. Francis Pryor, who discovered the site in the 1970s, was supportive of the initiative and wrote afterwards: "happily, it was an experiment that worked: the participants had a good time, and the archaeology was professionally excavated, to a very high standard".
Leiston Abbey
was the first crowdfunding campaign to run on the DigStarter platform in 2013, and has since raised more than £36,000 over two seasons. The project is ongoing and is currently entering the third year of five proposed digging seasons. Its wider rationale has been to breathe new life into Leiston Abbey, providing opportunities for visitors to join in with the excavation, and to integrate the heritage attraction with the artistic and musical life of the onsite music school, Pro Corda, who manage the site for English Heritage. Fieldwork has so far focused on characterising undefined earthworks and settlement evidence in three different areas of the site, with a programme of remote sensing used to target thirteen small-scale excavation trenches aiming to identify settlement evidence indicated by geophysical anomalies or extant earthworks. Additional work included a photogrammetry survey to produce a metrically accurate 3D digital elevation model of the Abbey Church and a low-level aerial photography survey using kite mounted cameras and UAVs to assess structural evidence for absent buildings associated with the eastern range.
Dirty Weekends
DigVentures also runs short taster sessions and masterclasses by experts in their respective subjects.
