ASE Public Engagement Roundup 2026:1

Archaeology South-East’s public engagement specialist Sarah Wolferstan has been very busy in London recently, securing grants, running workshops, and launching exhibitions. 

UCL Research Culture think tank on co-creating research on Memory Culture with communities 

Archaeology South-East was co-recipient of the 2025–26 Grassroots Research Culture Seed Fund, supporting a collaborative initiative on co-producing research. The fund aims to strengthen positive research and innovation culture at UCL and aligns with themes in the Research Culture Roadmap. Working with Associate-Professor Uta Staiger of UCL’s European Institute, and co-lead of the [Black Europe] research stream, we convened community activists, professionals and researchers interested in diverse heritage. Together we explored several case studies, and questioned how creative methods can foster inclusive research practice.

Participants from key ‘knowledge organisations’ - universities, technical teams at commercial companies, local voluntary associations, historical trusts, libraries and archives – are increasingly challenging assumptions of whiteness as default. We shared ideas via Padlet and a preparatory online meeting to co-design a half day think tank bringing together staff across universities, commercial teams, voluntary groups, libraries, and trusts to exchange experiences and envision future collaborative work.

The think-tank was facilitated by Sarah and took shape as a series of conversations mapping our networks and discussing how to transform the public understanding of colonialism and the presence of multiple cultures, particularly in London’s landscape. The semi-structured brainstorming culminated with a creative evaluation led by Dorothy du Boulay, using historic texts as an inspiration to create Found Poetry. The event was also an excellent networking opportunity, providing technical staff, academics, and community partners with the opportunity to share experiences and create a vision for future work.

Community activist Courtenay Harewood said of the event “Archaeology South-East and UCL has created a genuinely powerful platform and has laid an inspiring collaborative foundation for the work ahead in Whitechapel. By bringing together community voices, academic rigour and creative practice, it is reshaping how heritage is researched, interpreted, and shared. It ensures that the narratives we build are not only credible but rooted in lived experience and collective ownership - setting a new standard for meaningful, lasting cultural impact I look forward to bringing all that is possible to the lived space both to inform and inspire.”

New Policy Discovery Project on increasing the public benefit of archaeology by encouraging and diversifying engagement 

Sarah recently secured a Knowledge Broker Academy placement with UCL Public Policy, enabling her to apply for a micro grant to explore partnerships, policy priorities, and pathways to impact in historic environment policy and management. Supported by Institute of Archaeology Associate Professor Dr Sara Perry, she partnered with Sadie Watson (Museum of London Archaeology) and Sandra Shakespeare (Museum X) to submit a successful bid.

The Policy Discovery Project examines how policy and decision makers can enable participatory decision making in developer funded archaeology. Focusing on social value and public benefit, and using case studies such as ASE’s Whitechapel project, we will gather insights from communities and local and regional policy actors on the mechanisms, funding models, and governance structures needed to support earlier community involvement in the planning led process.

Speak Street event introduces Whitechapel archaeology to refugees and asylum seekers

On the 13th March, ASE hosted a visit to its ‘Patterns Beneath Our Feet’ exhibition for refugees, asylum seekers, and volunteers from Speak Street, a London based social learning group founded by Joanna Bevan. Speak Street offers free English classes and language based events that help newcomers build confidence and community. ASE and Speak Street had jointly devised four activities: an archaeology and object word search, a guided exhibition tour, a Q&A with an archaeologist, and an object handling and learning session.

The archaeology word search helped break the ice before exploring the exhibition and discussing commercial archaeology and London’s diverse history. This Q&A session allowed participants to use both their own questions and printed prompts to ask about tools, training, daily work, and technical aspects such as dating. The final activity, after tea and biscuits, invited small groups to handle artefacts from the Whitechapel dig, describing them using guided questions and vocab lists, and then explore the accompanying information cards.

The atmosphere was relaxed and chatty, with conversations happening in English and participants’ own languages. For many it was their first visit to UCL, first time handling artefacts, and first-time meeting archaeologists. The Speak Street group were keen learners, and plans are afoot for a follow up visit to the Silk District.

New exhibition featuring ASE project launched at Tower Hamlets Archives

On the 26th March over 100 people attended the relaunch of the Communities of Liberation exhibition in the London Borough of Tower Hamlet’s Local History, Library and Archives centre in Bancroft Road, which incorporates an exhibition put together by the team at ASE titled “Buried Stories under Whitechapel”. The free event was sold out, having featured in LBTH’s quarterly newsletter that goes to c134,000 homes.

Communities of Liberation is a historical research and public art project focused on uncovering, documenting, and sharing the long, often overlooked history of African presence in Tower Hamlets during the 16th-19th centuries. Co-producers were supported to identify the places, spaces, and networks where African Londoners lived, worked, socialised, and built community. Their work highlights the everyday lives of working‑class people of African heritage using archives, creative arts, and community collaboration to bring these stories into public consciousness. The project blends historical research, archival interpretation, creative writing, poetry, podcasts, and visual art produced by residents. ASE’s exhibition adds archaeological artefacts unearthed in Whitechapel to the story, providing a material connection to Black lives in East London during the 17-18th centuries.

New stories emerging from old artefacts at Object Handling Day

Local History Education Officer, Genova Messiah, organized a joint event on the 18th April at the Local History, Library and Archive Centre attended by an interested group of 15 or so participants. 

Staff at our office in Portslade gathered together an interesting group of objects; from ointment pots to bone ice skates and Sarah introduced them to project, and its main discoveries. Participants passed around the artefacts, pottery dating from the 14th to the 18th century, claypipes, Bartmann bottles and worked bone, all of which was unearthed by ASE archaeologists some 7 years ago during the Whitechapel Central excavation. 

Having explained that our archaeologists are storytellers, and would welcome help to tell stories about our object, participants got to work. Here is one of their tales, based on a broken, brown glazed ceramic jug, known as a Bellarmine or Bartmann bottle. These 16th-century German stoneware jugs were made in Frechen, and often depicted a bearded man, and were possibly named after an Italian Cardinal called Bellarmine. They were copied by various potters, and are found in many countries around the world, and were sometimes used as “witch bottles.” 

“Temperance? Who would have thought that the jug of ale would produce this abstinence? Raising the jug to his lips, I saw to my inebriated brain a face staring at me, but upside down, staring eyes, gaping mouth, placing a hex on my addled and fear-filled consciousness I threw it down, wiped my mouth and never returned”. 

Announcing a new partnership with Nubian Jak Community Trust

ASE and Nubian Jak are seeking strategic school and funding partners for 2026–27 delivery of a project titled ‘Whitechapel: Black Presence Memory and Place’. Nubian Jak Community Trust (NJKT) is the UK’s only organisation with a specific remit to create plaques commemorating Black and global diaspora figures, continues to address the racial imbalance in Britain’s commemorative landscape through its nationally recognised Black Plaques initiative. Together, ASE and NJKT are developing a Creative Whitechapel History & Archaeology Programme that embeds research directly into community learning and public space. The partnership will mark the site of the 18th-century White Raven Tavern - a significant site of memory linked to London’s Black presence, mariner networks, abolitionist connections and mutual aid systems. 

The plaque will not stand alone. It will anchor:

• A new heritage trail linking taverns, theatres, mariner lodgings, and abolitionist sites
• Object-based learning rooted in archaeological evidence
• Creative youth-led storytelling
• Public engagement events

A community launch event with performance and sound installations

This project physically embeds the Black presence into Whitechapel’s landscape – permanently. Whitechapel’s history was co-authored by African and Caribbean people. This initiative restores that authorship – through research, education, and public memory. We are looking for East London schools to take part in extra-curricular enrichment grounded in real archaeological material and academic research. Participants (aged 14+) will:

• Learn research and creative interpretation skills through object-based learning using artefacts from UCL excavations and the development of a youth-authored heritage walk
• Engage critically with local history, through workshops with professional archaeologists and social historians
• Contribute publicly to a new Whitechapel heritage narrative through creative writing, immersive sound design sessions, Zine workshops and youth publishing

Their work will feed directly into the public launch of the White Raven plaque and heritage trail.