The ancient world as a curriculum is a wide and fascinating subject but often lacks the relatable context necessary to engage audiences. To this end, we at SASA have worked over the last year to deliver the Inspire Campaign. The Inspire Campaign is a targeted social media campaign that invites enthusiastic interns to create posts aimed at delivering interesting, educating, and inspiring content that engages our audience across the spectrum. From curious quizzes to culinary delights, we have strove to deliver posts that cover the ancient world as widely and accurately as possible, geographically and chronologically.
This campaign encourages the interns to learn more about the past that they care about and pass that passion on to their audience. This process has been overseen by their mentors, a mix of early career scholars or advanced PhD students, making sure that our information is up to scratch. This campaign received funding from the Society of Classical Studies to support this process as a part of their “Classics Everywhere” program.
The results have been fantastic. Our campaign has covered categories such as anime, D&D, wisdom and proverbs, and the kitchen, covering every stretch of life and hobby wherever their interests may lie. This has been a fantastic opportunity for us to explore the more whimsical side of the ancient world, and perhaps the more real side - in how it pertains to us. Creating videos, infographics, or short stories has helped our team discover just how much we have in common with the ancients, and share that with the wider world.
So here’s to us - one year down, and hopefully many more to go! Our work to combat the downward spiral of engagement with Ancient Studies takes many forms, from our academic keynotes to our historical fiction, and the support we get from our audience in all forms is what helps us along the way. So thank you, to you, our SASA supporters, for all that you do in keeping us going; together, we can make the Ancient World available to everyone.