As we mark the first year of Archaeology on Prescription, York Archaeology’s innovative social prescribing project, we are opening the site at Willow House to welcome participants, stakeholders and members of the public to come together and celebrate the success of the project to date 1 October 2022 11 am to 3 pm
You will have the opportunity to see what our participants have been getting up to and learn more about what we’ve discovered over the past year. We are offering tours of the trenches as well as children’s activities, a display of finds, complimentary refreshments and a chance to chat with our friendly staff about the next phases of the project as it enters its second year.
You can also find out about other opportunities for community members to take part alongside the excavation, including building a community garden and volunteering either in person or remotely through our new soon-to-be launched online community exhibition, The People’s Museum.
Archaeology on Prescription is a new social prescribing project, piloted by York Archaeological Trust,which aims to engage the City of York and all of its residents in archaeological work to improve health and well being, foster meaningful social connections and build self-esteem. The first of two 9-week pilots was launched in September 2021 at Willow House on Walmgate.
Alongside the main project, we are running several projects specifically engaging with Walmgate and the surrounding community, including a gardening project with Edible York and the Barbican Community Group, and an oral history project called Voluntary Voices, inviting Walmgate residents to share their memories of the area.
We hosted an Open Day on 11 September,2021 with plenty of activities for kids, including art projects for the garden and sieving some of the soil from the excavation trench. Visitors were also invited to tour the excavation site and talk to our field archaeologists while our collections team showed off some amazing finds from other sites in the Walmgate area.
We’ll be hosting another Open Day on 30 October, and hope to see you there!
You can follow #ArchOnRx on Twitter and Instagram for updates, and read about the project, as well as a weekly blog from the excavation team, at yorkarchaeology.co.uk/archaeology-on-prescription.