Being Human Festival 2025

The following post was written by our Training and Communications Assistant, Grace McCulloch, following the Heritage Science Data Service’s participation in the Being Human Festival 2025. 

This November, I had the opportunity to organise an event as part of the Being Human Festival, the UK’s national festival of the humanities. Being Human Festival aims to celebrate and demonstrate the value of humanities research and how this inspires and enriches our everyday lives through the delivery of hundreds of free events.  Every year the festival invites researchers and professional services staff from universities to take part by organising their own unique and creative engagement event. 

This year the theme for the festival was ‘Between the Lines’ encouraging the exploration of hidden histories, erased narratives, or unspoken meaning from the past. Beyond the theme the festival also emphasised collaborating with community partners and innovative forms of engagement that foster genuine connections with audiences.

This event was planned over around seven months, which allowed for me to consult and develop ideas with the communications group at the ADS, a group of staff from various teams interested in promotion and engagement. Several potential concepts were explored before settling on ‘Unearthing Herbals Histories with Digital Archives’.  This event sought to to use archaeobotanical archives held by the ADS and HSDS  host a hands-on workshop that combined archaeobotanical information from digital archives with traditional herbalism to create remedies, based on knowledge of the past. 

Grace presenting on the value of humanities research

For this event we partnered with two organisations, the first of these were The Girls Club York, an organisation that offers a safe space for women to network, meet new people and expand their social circle with the aim of eradicating loneliness. As our target audience was women in York, working with this group allowed us to easily connect with this demographic. It also allowed us to better understand why that would like from an event like this and tailor our material to them.  The second partner was Rox and Jaye from The Historical Herbalists who offer a wide range of interactive demonstrations, using experimental archaeology techniques to recreate traditional herbal remedies but also run workshops, educational talks, crafting activities for people of all ages. 

A selection of the plants used in the workshop

The event itself ran for around three hours and began with an introduction about the humanities, role of digital archives, and a case study. We used archives from the ADS and HSDS  as a way to introduce digital archives more generally, demonstrate their value, and how they can be used to understand more about the past. For this event, we chose the ‘Feeding Anglo-Saxon England (FeedSax)’ archive as it contained archaeobotanical evidence for the past we could draw from. Then my ADS and HSDS colleagues Solange and Becky, spent some time discussing different techniques you can use to explore the past including osteology. We were thrilled to be able to loan one of the plastic disarticulated skeletons from the University of York to aid discussion about gender and sex in the past during this section.  During the second section of the event Rox and Jaye presented on how women used plants in the past.  Then  participants were able to make blended teas, oils, and vinegars, with many of the ingredients that were used, there being evidence of in our archives. 

From left to right: Solange presenting on morphological difference in human skeletons; the tea, infused vinegar, infused oil, and information pack to be taken home by attendees; Rox and Jaye explaining the properties of different plants

The session closed with a quick questions session and  an evaluation of everything we had gone over. Looking over the feedback forms after the event, it was clear that the event was a success in engaging a new demographic to our work. 80% of attendees either strongly agreed that they learnt a lot about digital archives as a result of the event, while 86% thought they could use our services in future. Beyond this we also collected any general comments about the event some of which included ‘This was an amazing event, the talks were so good, the presenters were enthusiastic and I loved the workshop’ and ‘Loved all of it, it was a very interactive and safe female space, allowed us to ask questions and a, lovely event overall’.

This was the first outreach event of this style that we have organised and while it provided a steep learning curve, it allowed us to engage with groups in a new and innovative way. This event demonstrated the value of expanding our engagement work to more hands-on activities and connecting with more community partners. We have plans to host more events like this in the future so keep an eye on the ADS and HSDS websites for more information.

If you are interested, below is a video summarising the event from The Girls Club:

 

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A post shared by The Girls’ Club – York (@thegirlsclubyork)