2013 industry heritage archaeology founded 2011 headquarters registered office 4th floor 27 33 bethnal green road shoreditch london e1 6la key people managing director lisa westcott wilkins project director brendon wilkins fieldschool manager raksha dave community manager maiya pina dacier products digstarter ; digital dig team ; dirty weekends number of employees 5 website www.digventures.com digventures is a social enterprise organising crowdfunded archaeological excavation experiences . it is registered with the chartered institute for archaeologists cifa and is a cifa accredited field school . 1 contents 1 background 2 crowdfunding model 3 digital dig team 4 fieldwork 4.1 flag fen lives 4.2 leiston abbey 4.3 dirty weekends 5 further reading 6 references background edit 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 . 2 by adopting a crowdfunding and crowdsourcing approach 3 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 . 4 crowdfunding model edit digventures projects are coordinated through an online multicurrency crowdfunding platform digstarter designed to connect heritage sector managers and archaeologists project owners with a worldwide crowd of interested and actively engaged participants . 5 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 edit in 2014 digventures received a grant from the heritage lottery fund to develop its digital dig team . 6 this has been described as a community management system for archaeology projects . 7 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 such as a smartphone or tablet 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 . 8 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 through immersive storytelling generate revenue through crowdfunding enable public participation through crowdsourcing 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 . fieldwork edit flag fen lives edit 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 . 9 10 11 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 . 12 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 . 13 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 . 14 15 leiston abbey edit 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 . 16 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 . 17 18 19 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 drones to assess structural evidence for absent buildings associated with the eastern range . dirty weekends edit digventures also runs short taster sessions and masterclasses by experts in their respective subjects . 2013 river thames foreshore working with the thames discovery programme 2 weekends 20 2013 as part of the two week summer dig at leiston abbey ; classes in geophysics and archaeological photography . 2014 as part of the two week summer dig at leiston abbey ; classes in post medieval pottery and archaeological photography . 2015 poulton near chester opportunity to work with the poulton research project on their large multi period site . 2015 as part of the two week summer dig at leiston abbey ; classes in post medieval pottery and archaeological photography . further reading edit 2015 leiston abbey crowdfunding campaign launched apr 2015 digventures in current archaeology magazine may 2015 the real time team pdf digventures website digital dig team leiston abbey bbc news leiston abbey dig earspoon and evidence of mill uncovered dec 2014 bbc s the one show black shuck oct 2014 bbc news leiston abbey dig unearths poker chip and curse tablet july 2014 guardian interview with digventures projects director mar 2014 leiston abbey 2014 evaluation assessment report pdf leiston abbey 2014 updated project design pdf leiston abbey 2013 evaluation assessment report pdf flag fen lives on bbc look east digventures in current archaeology magazine nov 2012 digventures at flag fen digventures interview with the archaeologist magazine summer 2012 references edit chartered institute for archaeologists website entry digventures ltd retrieved on 19 march 2015 . knowles kitty . britain must dig deeper to save its archaeology the independent 13 july 2014 . retrieved on 19 march 2015 palmer jason . flag fen archaeology idea brings in public to dig deep bbc news website 1 march 2012 . retrieved on march 19 2015 wilkins brendon & westcott wilkins lisa . the things we think and do not say the future of our business presentation given at institute for archaeologists conference glasgow april 2014 . retrieved on 19 march 2015 heritage alliance website entry digstarter retrieved on 19 march 2015 . westcott wilkins lisa . digventures hlf and the digital dig team at leiston abbey digventures website 1 april 2014 . retrieved on 19 march 2015 . wilkins brendon . digging the crowd the future of archaeological research in the collaborative economy transcript of keynote speech given at the digital pasts conference swansea february 2015 . retrieved on 19 march 2015 . wilkins brendon & westcott wilkins lisa . paranoid android the future of archaeological research in the collaborative and digital economy presentation given at the theoretical archaeology group conference manchester december 2014 . retrieved on 19 march 2015 . the moment magazine . the resurrection of flag fen the moment magazine website undated . retrieved on 19 march 2015 . baker john . reporter digs time in flag fen trenches peterborough telegraph website 27 july 2012 . retrieved on 19 march 2015 . palmer jason . flag fen hosts crowdsourced bronze age archaeology dig bbc news website 13 august 2012 . retrieved 19 march 2015 . wilkins brendon ; bamforth michael ; britchfield david . flag fen lives project design for an archaeological evaluation last revised 1 july 2012 . retrieved 19 march 2015 . westcott wilkins lisa . nothing ventured nothing gained digventures and flag fen lives updated version presentation given at institute for archaeologists november 2012 . retrieved 19 march 2015 . pryor francis . flag fen 30 years on in the long run 14 november 2012 . retrieved on 19 march 2015 . baker john . francis pryor on flag fen s discovery and future peterborough telegraph 26 june 2013 . retrieved on 19 march 2015 . digventures website . digital dig team leiston abbey retrieved 19 march 2015 . bbc suffolk website . leiston abbey dig earspoon and evidence of mill uncovered 28 december 2014 . retrieved 19 march 2015 . harris paul . is this the skeleton of legendary devil dog black shuck who terrorised 16th century east anglia mail online 15 may 2014 . retrieved 19 march 2015 . bbc suffolk website . leiston abbey dig unearths poker chip and curse tablet 19 july 2014 . retrieved 19 march 2015 . cohen natalie . dirty weekends good clean fun thames discovery programme website 12 november 2012 . retrieved 19 march 2015 . retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title digventures & oldid 733035851 categories crowdfunding platformsarchaeological organisations navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages add links this page was last modified on 4 august 2016 at 23 05 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; 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