Today marks the end of the PASt Explorers project, started in November 2014 to develop the Portable Antiquities Scheme volunteer base, providing training and support alongside other resources for our FLOs and volunteers. The project was generously funded by the National Heritage Lottery Fund and we are extremely grateful for their support.

Sadly, we bid a very fond farewell to our Outreach Officer, Lauren Speed and thank her enormously for the amazing contribution she has made to the PAS, especially in driving forward the PASt Explorers outreach programme, making it such a success.

Over the course of the project, 619 volunteers were part of PASt Explorers, recording a total of 104,170 new finds onto the PAS database. This figure of course does not take into account the great number of records improved, photographs added and numerous other achievements by our volunteers, but does demonstrate the enormously important integral role that volunteers have  in building up knowledge of the archaeology and history of their local areas.

A total of 190 training sessions were delivered through the project covering all aspects of recording finds on the PAS database, various commonly found objects and outreach were delivered in-person across the regions and online right up to the end of the project.

As part of the project 135 resources for volunteers, including finds recording guides, training kits, training videos, volunteer management and volunteer handbooks, an outreach kit, finds reference kits, schools resources and of course, the County Pages were produced. These resources were developed by the project team, FLOs, Finds Advisers, project partners and our volunteers.

The very hard work of the project team, FLOs, Finds Advisers, Heads of PAS & Treasure, Treasure Team, British Museum, project partners, and most especially the volunteers themselves have made the project a success. We would like to say a heartfelt thanks to everyone involved in the project whose support, ideas, sheer hard work and enthusiasm have helped provide a lasting legacy of training and guidance resources, which we hope will facilitate and support volunteering with the PAS for many years to come.