No project is an island
Beatriz
Noriega Ortega,
July 9, 2026, 11:46 a.m.
No project is an island, this was the title of the joint final event of the projects ECS and IMPETUS that took place on the 17th of June online. More than 160 people registered to the event during which both consortia walked the audience through their journeys and their legacy. IMPETUS has a legacy of inclusion, community and capacity building. ECS leaves a stronger and better equipped community with the ECS Academy, ECS platform and its networks of citizen science practitioners, educators and trainers, early career researchers, citizen science ambassadors and libraries.
Both projects, over the course of 4 years, strengthened citizen science and prepared the community for a future with more public engagement and citizen science. During the event representatives from Science Comes to Town, Coalesce, REINFORCING, ECS and IMPETUS shared with the audience their vision of what the future of citizen science holds. In particular, panelists discussed the need of structural funding in order to take full advantage of the advances and legacy of projects.
Another highlight of the event was the keynote speech by Vanessa Mignan Jenkins “The future of citizen science cannot look like its past” where we were confronted with perhaps uncomfortable but necessary questions on inclusion and ethics in citizen science. In order to be better for science and for society, we need to find pivotal motion in the discomfort of knowing what we could be doing better.
No project is an island, we celebrated the archipelago of citizen science, an archipelago that ECS,IMPETUS and all of you are a fundamental part of. Together let's continue working on our project's legacy and build the future we want for citizen science.