Shared Learning

A BioBlitzers best friend, this guide covers all of the basics for running a BioBlitz event from initial planning to advice for on the day; all illustrated with case studies from BioBlitzes across the UK. You can find the most up-to-date BioBlitz resources right here on this website.

What will we learn from COP26, and how will the UK’s environmental communication community translate international declarations into local action, and national programmes? On January 19th the Communicate conference brought together communication professionals from across the country for a series of roundtable conversations on 6 key topics. This document captures some of the main questions, themes and provocations discussed

Recent years have witnessed a dramatic global growth in the development of large-scale public science events. Although usually grouped together under the umbrella term ‘Science Festivals’, the events differ greatly in size and scope. This paper presents the findings from a 2008/09 international survey of Science Festivals in order to compare and contrast worldwide trends.

Whilst BioBlitz is a fun and exciting public engagement event, it is important to the validity of BioBlitz that the data we collect is scientifically accurate and useful to the local and national environmental community. This simple toolkit is designed to help you get the best out of your wildlife sightings.

To support more meaningful, comparative evaluation of the events carried out in Europe, the European BioBlitz network developed a common tool to assess the social outcomes of Public Engagement with Biological Recording. This research insight aims to report the main outcomes from the experience of event organisers in the framework of City Nature Challenge 2018 in Europe.

“BioBlitz” events are popular local wildlife surveys often engaging public audiences in a race against time to find, identify, and record as many different species as possible in a given time frame. This study provides baseline assessment of the value of BioBlitz as a tool for public engagement and collection of environmental data in the UK.

Bringing together the experience, skills and knowledge of the sector, this set of first principles is a step towards more positive communication around biological data and should be a helpful resource to refer to whether you are talking face-to-face, writing or sharing stories online. This toolkit has been designed in consultation with 90 members of the UK recording community and communications experts to help recorders, organisations and volunteer groups communicate about recording and data more effectively.

This LEARN CitSci project studied what impact citizen science projects have on the young people that take part in them. The study aimed to understand how young people aged 5-19 years develop knowledge, practices and agency with environmental science through their participation in natural history museum-led citizen science and crowdsourcing projects. 

Savita Willmott (our CEO), chaired Defra’s Public Engagement Group between 2011-2012. NHC led on a series of national workshops, sharing recent Defra research, and gathered insights from researchers and practitioners across the country to inform this resource outlining five principles for Engaging People in Biodiversity Issues.