Small Programs, Big Impacts: Benefits of Partnerships in Community Outreach

Summary

The positive impact of public outreach and education to the preservation of archaeological resources has become increasingly apparent to professionals within the field. Outreach programs not only help disseminate the knowledge gained from excavations and research but also how the public can play active roles ensuring this knowledge is not lost. Making archaeology accessible to those outside the field strengthens our ability to neutralize the mass of misinformation found in the media. The University of Texas at San Antonio Center for Archaeological Research outreach program, "LEGACY: Hands on the Past" has developed partnerships to overcome the hurdles faced by small programs. The mission of LEGACY is to enrich the community through public education in archaeology and cultural preservation to promote a collective responsibility for our diverse and shared past. LEGACY is limited to a two person staff and a revolving host of volunteers attempting to serve the population of 1.4 million in San Antonio. Smaller outreach programs, like LEGACY, can lack the staff and funding of their larger counterparts thus creating challenges. This paper will discuss LEGACY’s strategies to overcome such challenges by generating partnerships within the university and community to reach a large demographic.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords