New citizen science projects
ECSA was part of three successful bids in the recent call for proposals under the H2020 programme. We will be sharing more news about these exciting new initiatives in the coming weeks.

Inclusiveness in citizen science
The second in our series of Diversity and Inclusiveness workshops was held in June, co-organised with the ECSA & Living Knowledge Network working group on empowerment, inclusiveness and equity, D-NOSES and Cos4Cloud. You can rewatch this workshop on our YouTube channel.

Food waste experiment results 
Better climate information reduces waste in the school canteen. This is a clear finding of the 2020 ForskarFredag Food Waste Experiment, a citizen science project in which 700 pupils from 27 schools in Sweden helped researchers develop an AI smartphone app to measure food waste.

Citizen science in action 
Ngwna dza madi (water champion) - a citizen scientist becomes a champion and is ready to train other citizens in groundwater monitoring in the Limpopo Province, South Africa. Here is Aldrian showing skills in both the material (appropriate technology and cost effective dip meter) and emancipatory dimensions of water literacy (Water Research Commission Project led by Prof Jacqueline Goldin)

Housing experiment 
In order to live independent and active lives, we need housing that is designed to meet our needs. In the 2021 ForskarFredag Housing Experiment, school pupils and senior citizens across Sweden will be helping researchers at Lund University to investigate how accessible Swedish housing is.
 

New Data Visualizations in Citizen Science Apps on the SPOTTERON Platform
The upcoming SPOTTERON platform update enables live Data Visualizations directly in your Citizen Science App, making data meaningful & interactive. This marks a new way of understanding for both Citizens and Scientists what the data distribution in a Citizen Science App means. 

CitSciOz21
Registrations are now open for ACSA’s next online conference, CitSciOz21, which will take place from 27-29 October 2021. Register here.

iSpot: 12 years of biodiversity citizen science & engagement
iSpot: your place to share nature – The Open University's award-winning citizen science platform – marks 12 years of activity. iSpot12for12 celebrates iSpot’s launch over the next 12 months; acknowledging achievements and future plans building species identification skills, data gathering, teaching and research. Go to the new iSpot OpenLearn space to find out more. Join the iSpot community and #GetiSpotting!  

Eurobioblitz 2021: Save The Date
In September (24-25), researchers, school groups, citizens and wildlife enthusiasts take part in the worlds’ first 48-hour continental BioBlitz! Participants will submit photos and wildlife observations through the iNaturalist app. This is part of INTERSECTIONS, an international collaboration for European Researchers Night. Contact the Natural History Consortium to get involved: matt [at] bnhc.org.uk

The Science of Citizen Science 
Many ECSA members contributed to the recent Springer book, The Science Of Citizen Science - and this now has over 200,000 downloads! If you haven’t already started reading it, you can download each chapter as an open access PDF from the Springer website.

Science, business and art in dialogue: Utopia instead of Dystopia 
With the two new Impact Labs at Johannes Kepler University Linz and the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Angewandte), the LBG OIS Center brings science, business, art and civil society in dialogue to address major challenges on the way to a desirable future - from the digital revolution to the climate crisis.

INCENTIVE 
We have just launched our website and we are happy with the results! 

The team has been also busy running a series of co-creation workshops, led by the University of Twente. Their aim is to deep-dive into the needs of different stakeholders, so they can be better engaged in the citizen science hubs. 

D-NOSES
D-NOSES was recently featured in the Cordis EU Research Results magazine, in the articles ‘EU researchers tackle pollution for a cleaner, greener Europe’ and ‘A citizen-driven approach to tackle odour pollution’.

STEP-CHANGE
The Step Change project #H2020 has launched its new website! Learn more about its five Citizen Science Initiatives about wildlife, health, preparedness for infectious diseases, energy sharing and renewable energies in Europe and beyond.

PANELFIT
As part of our work for PANELFIT, ECSA is helping to create a series of factsheets to inform the public about the ethical and legal issues around ICTs. We are also creating a citizens’ guide to ICTs, data and vulnerable people. Before finalising these outputs, we would like to ask people to share their thoughts on the draft versions. You can find a link to these factsheets, and the survey, on our website. 

PANELFIT is also running a series of webinars on ‘Data protection in journalism: practical tools’. These will continue until 8 July, and past events will be available to watch again. You can find all the information on the PANELFIT website and register for the events here.

EU-Citizen.Science
The online event “Citizen Science for Policy across Europe” held on 22nd June 2021 was organised by the EU-Citizen.Science project with the support of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, the Portugal Foundation for Science and Technology, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the European Commission. Over 170 participants followed the fascinating conversation over Zoom and YouTube. Outcomes will be accessible on the event webpage in the next few weeks. You can view the infographic prepared by the project for the event or browse useful policy briefs on the resource section of the platform.

In other news, new training modules are available on the Moodle integration, which you can access directly with your EU-Citizen.Science handles. 

Cos4Cloud 

A six-month online teacher training course entitled “Citizen Science and Environmental Education for Sustainability” was run to introduce citizen science in the Greek school curriculum; NKUA led the training in the Cos4Cloud framework. Read what the participants think about the course!

Read the interview with Barnaby Smith, public engagement manager for the Bumblebee Conservation Trust and find out how some of Cos4Cloud’s tools and services could support the citizen science projects that his organisation leads.