EXARC had originally planned a conference in Berlin (DE) in March 2020, with Museumsdorf Düppel as our co-host, on Documentation Strategies for Archaeological Open-Air Museums. About 75 people were already registered when, two weeks before it should happen, reality caught up on us, and we had to cancel going to Berlin and decided to go digital instead.

This meant for every speaker to record their presentation, which led to very different approaches. Truth is, they had to step (far) out of their comfort zone to change format under challenging circumstances. A call for volunteers (“all hands on deck”) led to about 15 people volunteering to spend about 500 hours in only two weeks time. Most of the volunteers were from our existing team and gave up their usual work to help us out, but we also received some ad hoc aid, like with voice overs. When the conference started, we had all 20 presentations ready to go. The videos, presented on YouTube, have so far reached 1,100 people and received 4,500 views already. They will remain online via #EXARCBerlin: https://exarc.net/meetings/berlin.

For interaction (questions to speakers, to each other, meeting colleagues, hanging out after hours), we chose the platform Discord. Here too, we had a group of volunteers, some of which were quite experienced, but for most of us, this was a steep learning curve. We had about 200 people on this platform. We will be keeping Discord open as we are planning to be putting together other events like “Film Friday” to screen short films by EXARC members as well as specialized workshops similar to the one we had on Sustainable Development Goals during the conference.

EXARC is already strong online, and with the current circumstances, we will try to offer more opportunities in the cloud!

2020 March - Documentation Strategies in (Archaeological) Open-Air Museums

Date: Thursday, March 26, 2020 - Friday, March 27, 2020
Organised by: Museumsdorf Düppel (DE)

There are probably about 3,000 archaeological house reconstructions around the world, most of them in (archaeological) open-air museums. This means we have already a huge amount of information and experience “locked-in” ... Read more

Conference Review: Documentation Strategies in (Archaeological) Open-air Museums 2020

| Matilda Siebrecht (NL)  | Issue 2020/2

The conference in Documentation Strategies in (Archaeological) Open-air Museums, organised through the Experimental Archaeology Society (EXARC), was due to be held in Berlin on March 26th and 27th 2020. Unfortunately, the first half of March 2020 saw the spread of the Coronavirus... Read more