A celebration of the ECS archipelago | Bringing citizen science to public libraries

As the European Citizen Science (ECS) project enters its final year, we are celebrating our achievements through a distributed series of events across Europe. Organised in collaboration with the Slovenian Citizen Science Network and Public Libraries, and as part of the ECS final event series, A celebration of the ECS archipelago, we are organising a day of collaboration and capacity building. This event focuses on the journey through the development of the ECS digital meeting point, the citizenscience.eu, showcases citizen science impact stories, delivers training on citizen science and highlights the importance of public libraries in creating community and enhancing scientific literacy. Attendance at the event is free, but as places are limited, participation is by invitation.

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

Pathways to increase the uptake of citizen science generated data by local policy makers

Join SOCIO-BEE for an online workshop dedicated to exploring how to leverage the impact of CS-generated data, particularly in the realm of air quality, on local policy-making. Rosamund Adoo Kissi Debrah from Ella Roberta Family Foundation, will give a keynote talk on, ‘The importance of personal stories in creating global change’, and you will hear about the experiences accumulated by the EU Horizons SOCIO-BEE and CitiObs projects. Following this, participants will have the opportunity to engage in interactive sessions aimed at exploring strategies to overcome challenges facing CS projects related to accessibility, scalability and data quality.

Stories from the YouCount Youth - On new perspectives, being heard more deeply and belonging.

YouCount is working to co-create new knowledge and innovations to increase youth social inclusion. Since 2020, 100s of young people from local communities and 30 students from universities have worked with researchers on 10 research questions in 9 different countries. This webinar is a unique opportunity for you to learn about the YouCount project. 16 of these young people co-created this webinar and some of them will share their stories from the YouCount project. This includes lessons learned and what you should consider for future work with youth like them. Join us to learn about their important work, their results, and their valuable perspectives on engaging youth in citizen social science.

The role of photographic heritage in empowering communities participation in cultural heritage

This event is organized by Photoconsortium in cooperation with the University of Pisa and will be hosted at the Museum of Graphics in Pisa (Italy). The event will take the form of a 1-day conference with leading speakers from the CitizenHeritage consortium partners and other experts in digital cultural heritage, in Social Sciences and Humanities research and in the use of participatory approaches in a cultural and/or educational context. The main aim of the event will be to offer insights about successful stories of citizen participation in Cultural Heritage Institutions and Higher Education Institutions. In addition to the conference programme, a digitization desk will be organized, inviting participants to share heritage photos from their family albums, which will be digitized on the spot by a professional photographer. The stories associated with the image(s) will be collected and converted in appropriate metadata to accompany the digital objects. The collected records will be aggregated by Photoconsortium and offered to Europeana for publication.

Stories about Women in Citizen Science

ECSA is celebrating the 2022 International Day of Women and Girls in Science. This is promoted every year by UNESCO. Together with the ECSA Storytelling and Other Arts Working Group, we will share stories from many people (from all genders) from our community, who are particularly engaged in this field. One day a year is not enough to achieve equal opportunities for all, however even these symbolic moments are inspiring and need our strong support. The webinar and the stories will be broadcasted on the ECSA YouTube channel, so join us there from 11am on 11th February 2022: https://www.youtube.com/c/ecsaeuropeancitizenscienceassociation

Online workshop: Common Challenges in Citizen Science

Scivil (Scivil.be) is bringing together citizen science actors to exchange experiences, succes stories and challenges in an online workshop. The workshop is aimed at citizen science project initiators and coordinators and will be guided by Stickydot (stickydot.eu/). The workshop will take place in English on Zoom on May 10th from 10:00 to 12:00. Participation is free, register here.

MOOC: A Roadmap to Citizen Science Education

BRITEC MOOC “A roadmap to citizen science Education” will provide materials and stories of implementation from innovative citizen science education projects. Citizen Science Education is based on the assumption that teachers and researchers can find a common ground of discussion and develop practices that are advantageous both, for the education sector, and the science sector. Therefore, this course proposes a process of collaboration between teachers and researchers. It provides insights from the perspective of researchers that have supported teachers developing STEM learning scenarios that include scientific activities based on the needs of active research projects.