No project is an island|Bridges towards a joint legacy for the future of citizen science in Europe

Citizen science thrives on collaboration between researchers, policymakers, innovators, and the public. Yet within the citizen science community itself, a critical question remains: do we have the infrastructure to enable effective, lasting knowledge exchange across initiatives and projects? No project operates in isolation, and the collective learning generated across the field represents an underutilised asset for science and policymaking alike. At a time when public engagement is increasingly recognised as essential to rebuilding trust in institutions and tackling mis- and disinformation, the connections we build within the citizen science ecosystem matter more than ever. Sharing what works and what doesn't strengthens the community's capacity to deliver the scientific, environmental, and societal benefits that make citizen science a genuine return on investment for Europe. This summer, both the ECS and IMPETUS projects reach their conclusion. Before they do, we want to invite the citizen science community to come together to reflect on how these projects have supported citizen science across Europe and to celebrate the real-world impacts this work has made possible. The event will also provide an opportunity to hear from new and established citizen science projects, alongside stakeholders and decision-makers, ensuring that the momentum built can be sustained and that science continues to serve the society it represents. Building on the Citizen Science Archipelago series from the ECS project, this gathering reaffirms a founding principle of the citizen science community: no project is an island. Mutual exchange is not simply a nice-to-have; it is the foundation on which the continued growth and impact of citizen science depends.

Strengthening Public Engagement in Research: Evidence, Impact, and Future Pathways

In collaboration with the IMPETUS and RIECS projects, ECS is organising a final policy event entitled "Strengthening Public Engagement in Research: Evidence, Impact, and Future Pathways" in Brussels. We will present engaging scenarios featuring real-life citizen science projects and share impact stories from European policymakers. These examples aim to highlight not only what has been achieved so far, but also the potential for even greater impact if support mechanisms for citizen science are strengthened. Following the presentations, there will be opportunities for networking and engaging with interactive elements over coffee and light refreshments. This event is primarily targeted at MEPs and European policymakers, but we may be able to open additional attendance spots depending on capacity. To register your interest, please contact Nadia at Nadia.Bates[at]mfn.berlin

ECSA's Aquatic Working Group webinar series

ECSA's Aquatic Working Group is launching a webinar series, with the first one coming on the 21st of May! The first webinar is titled "Creating a European Network of Citizen Science Projects on Freshwater Macroinvertebrates: Towards Comparison and Harmonization" - it will host a number of experts presenting their work from major European based projects focused on the topic. The listed projects are Riverfly Project (UK), CS Stream Index (CSSI) & (SSIS) (Ireland), RiuNet (Spain), and FLOW (Germany). Anyone interested can join us at the zoom link provided, and a recording of the webinar will be made available on ECSA's YouTube channel. See you soon and stay tuned for more!

Citizen Science meets potatoes: Engaging citizens in protecting plant health

12th of May is International Day of Plant Health. We want to use this opportunity to present three different projects dedicated to plant health: ROTATES, CERBERUS and PataFEST. From potatoes to vines, from lab analysis to crop rotation, from collaborative research to citizen science: The webinar will showcase different topics, approaches and ways of engaging with citizens while working on healthy soils and healthy crops.

Layers of Values: Exploring Impact in Culture, Art and Education

On 25 September 2025, in the framework of MONDIACULT 2025, Layers of values: Exploring Impact in Culture, Art and Education will take place as an international meeting dedicated to advancing inclusive impact assessment in the arts, culture, and education sectors. In a time when social inclusion, civic participation, emotional well-being, and ecological transition are urgent priorities, the convergence of arts, culture, and education has proven to be a driver for building more diverse, resilient, and imaginative societies. Yet, despite the richness of this field, many initiatives still operate in isolation, and valuable learning remains fragmented. The event will gather projects, practitioners, and researchers working at the intersection of culture, education, and research to address complex evaluation challenges: capturing intangible outcomes, defining success with vulnerable groups or informal settings, and measuring layered impacts that go beyond simple metrics. Drawing on the New European Bauhaus values — beauty, sustainability, and inclusion — it will offer a space for peer exchange, co-creation, and methodological innovation. Organised by the EU-funded PULSE-ART project, in cooperation with European Citizen Science (ECS), the meeting aims to embed diversity not as an optional goal, but as a foundational condition for equitable impact. It will also strengthen connections between cultural, educational, and citizen science initiatives, paving the way for shared tools and collaborative frameworks. If your work touches on culture, education, or citizen science — and you are committed to developing rigorous, inclusive evaluation practices — this event offers a unique opportunity to exchange knowledge and shape the future of impact assessment

Education for Climate Community Café - How do you become an Energy Community?

AURORA - Joint event with the Education for Climate Group Community Café 10th September 2025 from 17.00hrs - 18.00hrs Topic School Energy Communities To join the event register here - https://education-for-climate.ec.europa.eu/community/challenge_hub/event/community-cafe-september, This is an exciting event where you can learn about how the Palomeras Cultural Centre School in Spain has pioneered the first school Energy Community in Madrid with the AURORA project. The school, in a working class area of Madrid, has installed solar energy on the roof tops of their buildings, along with two air source heat pumps to keep the classrooms cool in summer. Funds of €140,000 have been raised from their community, staff and parents of the school, along with students and professors from the Technical University of Madrid as part of a share offer. This means everyone can have a stake in the energy transition. Lower energy bills, no capital cost to the school and a small return on investments from everyone supporting the scheme. It really is true that such transformations not only lower carbon emissions, supporting efforts to reach net zero carbon, but they also lower costs by diverting what would have been fossil fuel profits, back into the local community. The renewable energy generated will also be tracked via the AURORA energy tracker app to allow investors to see the energy being generated and to offset their own personal carbon emissions based on the investment they have made. It will join other projects at Aarhus University Denmark and Ljubljana University Slovenia already connected to the AURORA Energy Tacker app . Could schools in your country follow their lead and be the first school in your town, in your city, moving away from fossil fuels towards the future of clean renewable energy. A teacher from the school will explain what it is has meant to the students and staff of the Palomeras Cultural Centre school in Spain. The whole café event will be an opportunity for open discussion, facilitated by Martin Brocklehurst from the AURORA PROJECT, so that you can understand how to follow the lead that has been set. Looking to the future EU Legislation has also recently changed allowing the export of surplus renewable energy from community energy schemes through the grid to be sold to users around the installation. Once enacted into National law this would allow the export of surplus energy from Schools during holiday periods to users around the school. A great idea for public swimming pools for instance seeking to heat the pool during the summer holidays when usage rates are at their highest. The future looks bright for community energy schemes. In the UK, once the Governments strange block on Power Purchase Agreements on public buildings is removed we can perhaps also follow the EU lead and recommence community energy schemes on schools buildings.

III Workshop Mapeamento Colaborativo e Cartografia Social - MPCS 2025

✅ -- In Portuguese below The Participatory Mapping and Social Cartography Workshop - MPCS, in its third edition, aims to bring together researchers from Portuguese-speaking countries - Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe and East Timor - who have in common the use of collective mapping methodologies, known as participatory or collaborative mapping. Part of the projects presented at the Mapping Project Exhibition, the preparatory stage for the III Workshop on Participatory Mapping and Social Cartography - MPCS 2025, will be selected by the organizing committee for publication as a book chapter in the second volume of the book of case studies, to be released in early 2026 under the IVIDES publishing label, https://ivides.org/livros. ✅ -- PT -- O evento Workshop Mapeamento Participativo e Cartografia Social – MPCS, em sua terceira edição, visa reunir pesquisadores de países lusófonos – Angola, Brasil, Cabo Verde, Guiné-Bissau, Guiné Equatorial, Moçambique, Portugal, São Tomé e Príncipe ou Timor Leste, que têm em comum, a utilização das metodologias de mapeamento coletivo, conhecidas como mapeamentos participativos ou colaborativos. Parte dos projetos apresentados na Mostra de projetos de mapeamento, etapa preparatória do III Workshop Mapeamento Participativo e Cartografia Social – MPCS 2025, serão selecionados pela comissão organizadora para publicação, como capítulo de livro, integrante do segundo volume do livro de estudos de caso, a ser lançado no início de 2026 com o selo da editora IVIDES, https://ivides.org/livros.

Cluster event: Advancing Public Engagement and Citizen Science in the ERA

The event will celebrate citizen science and showcase the value of public engagement, highlighting best practices, guiding future policy, sharing knowledge and building collaboration. The 2025 EU Citizen Science Prize winners will also be announced! REA is proud to co-host a cluster event which will gather researchers and policymakers to discuss the impact of public engagement on evidence-based policymaking. In addition, - The event will provide a platform to showcase successful and innovative citizen engagement strategies, while reinforcing the value of “Bringing science closer to citizens” within the European Research Area. - EU-funded research projects will present their citizen science and public engagement experience and share best practices. - The winners of the EU Prize for Citizen Science will be announced. The Prize rewards outstanding citizen science initiatives that address social, political, cultural, and environmental challenges through the involvement of citizens. The full event will take place in Brussels. Those connected online will be able to follow the plenary session (in the morning) and the winners' announcement (in the afternoon). The event is co-organised by REA and EU-funded projects IMPETUS and ECS.

From Citizens to Science: Tools Driving Climate Action

On April 28, 2025, during the European Geosciences Union (EGU) in Vienna, the H2020 I-CHANGE project will hold its final scientific event titled “From Citizens to Science: Tools Driving Climate Action” Over the past four year, I-CHANGE has worked to place citizens at the core of climate action, demonstrating that informed, empowered communities are essential for achieving behavioural change. By combining active citizen participation, innovative technologies, and scientific collaboration, the project has fostered behavioural transformations towards more sustainable living. This closing event will present the outcomes of I-CHANGE, showcasing results from its eight Living Labs across Europe and beyond. These Living Labs served as active hubs for environmental monitoring, and community engagement, emphasizing how citizens can observe and reduce their own environmental impacts. The event will feature the presentation of the project’s final results, including scientific findings, technological and engaging activities that have been implemented to raise climate change awareness and foster participatory science. It will also include talks from sister projects involved in citizen science initiatives related to climate change, and offer reflections on how citizen-generated data can complement scientific observations and help shape a more sustainable future. In addition, on May 1, 2025, key I-CHANGE results will be featured during the EGU session titled “Engaging Citizens in Understanding Urban Climate and Climate Change Risks through Participatory Science.” This session invites contributions that explore citizen participation, crowdsourced data collection, and effective practices for integrating the public into climate adaptation efforts across Europe. For more information, please visit here

Responsible, Trustworthy, and ethical AI in citizen science

The use of AI techniques (such as machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision) is increasing rapidly across the participatory sciences. Such techniques are used throughout the research process, such as cleaning data before presenting it to volunteers, using volunteers to contribute to the training of machine learning models, in the field data collection aided by computer vision, and creating collaborations between humans and AI to make tasks more engaging and of higher quality. Whilst this can improve the scientific process, it is important to understand the limitations of the use of these techniques, as well as consider the impact on how volunteers understand their role in participatory science. How practitioners communicate the use of AI to volunteers and continue to emphasize the importance of their contributions is also extremely important. To be beneficial to all in the participatory science community, the use of AI must be responsible, ethical, and trustworthy. However, it is not always clear what this means and how it can be applied. This study asks: -What are the opportunities and drawbacks of using AI techniques in citizen science? -What does it mean to be responsible, ethical, and trustworthy in the use of AI? -How should the use of AI in citizen science be advanced? If you are (or have been) involved in planning, carrying out, or taking part in citizen science projects, you are invited to take part in an online survey about your perceptions of the use of AI in citizen science. The survey should take around 20 minutes and you will be asked about -Your experience with citizen science projects -Your experience of AI -Opinions on how/why AI should/should not be used in citizen science -The effects of AI use on volunteers -What the terms ‘responsible’, ‘trustworthy’, and ‘ethical’ mean in the context of using AI in citizen science -How citizen science and human-AI collaboration should develop in the future The results will be presented at the Conference for Advancing Participatory Science in Portland, Oregon, at the end of May 2025.

ECS Collaboration Session - Help build the European Research Infrastructure for Excellence in Citizen Science

Do you want to help build the European Research Infrastructure for Excellence in Citizen Science? The first step is happening in the upcoming ECS Collaboration Session! The RIECS-Concept project will conceptualise the European Research Infrastructure for Excellence in Citizen Science. This RI will integrate citizens’ resources, such as mobile phones and computers, with existing scientific platforms and data collections; and it will offer transversal services, improving accessibility across research communities. The RIECS-Concept project will produce two key outcomes: a conceptual design including a feasibility study, and a five-year implementation plan for the new research infrastructure. These outcomes will provide detailed insights into the diversity and maturity of the concept considering technical, operational, societal, and environmental challenges associated with establishing the permanent and shared infrastructure. This is the very first activity of many to gather inputs and community-based evidence, in collaboration with the ECS project. You will have a chance to not only learn about this important project but also to bring your own input, needs and solutions, independently of your background or scientific domains. Who can join? This Collaboration Session is aimed at the entire Citizen Science community: practitioners, students, researchers, educators, representatives of CS projects and networks, etc.

ECS Collaboration Session - Advocacy in CS

Are you involved in citizen science projects or networks? The ECS Collaboration Sessions give you a platform to learn about different citizen science projects, exchange insights about key topics and competencies in CS, and share updates on your own work with a wide range of CS professionals. The ECS project is organising Collaboration Sessions once every two months. In these online Sessions, CS practitioners have the floor to host presentations, activities, and learning moments for the benefit of the European citizen science community. Do you want to learn about ongoing projects and specific competencies that can boost your own work? You are welcome join and participate in these sessions. Or do you want to host your own session, in which you share insights from your own work with the European CS community? Then, feel free to reach out to alex@stickydot.eu to arrange your session. Upcoming Session: February 4th - Amplify your Impact: Advocacy for Citizen Science Are you passionate about citizen science but unsure how to fully showcase its value to policymakers, funders, or even colleagues in your own organisation? Advocacy is a powerful tool for increasing awareness, recognition, funding, and policy change — but it can be tricky to get right! Join the upcoming ECS collaboration session focused on advocacy training for CS practitioners to learn and practice effective strategies to better communicate the value of your work and secure the support you need for your projects. This session is ideal for citizen science practitioners, project leaders, researchers, educators, and anyone passionate about advancing the field of citizen science. About the speaker: Ilona Kish With a wealth of experience in policy development and advocacy, Ilona has been a driving force behind numerous campaigns that have successfully highlighted the value of libraries to policymakers, funders, and communities across Europe and beyond. As Director of Public Libraries 2030, Ilona has been working to expand and reinforce the role of public libraries as beacons of citizen participation in science – and she sees the crucial role that advocacy skills play both in mainstreaming CS in Europe and in securing support for organisations working in the field. Session details: February 4th, 11:00 - 12:30 CET Online Format: Presentation from advocacy expert Ilona Kish + interactive group activities Interested in joining? Enter your email address below to receive the invite.