Learn to Engage was a modular course that aimed to build botanic gardens’ capacity to develop effective programmes and activities to engage people with plants. The project partnership designed and piloted a modular blended-learning course. Four blended learning modules were developed in Interpretation, Working with Diverse Audiences, Science Communication and Evaluation and Research. Each module was 12 weeks in duration and consisted of 11 weeks of online learning, hosted by partner RBGE’s online learning platform PropaGate Learning, and one week on-site hosted by the module lead partner. The modules offered botanic garden and museum educator professionals a flexible professional development opportunity and promoted equity and inclusion in botanic garden and museum education. The project’s objectives were: To enhance inclusive education in botanic gardens through practitioner training. To develop innovative blended learning models for training botanic gardens on public engagement (what we want to do). To enhance botanic garden professionals’ access to C-VET through embedding training in the digital era (why we want to do it). To improve services through training on new areas of work for botanic gardens. To support the development of transnational standards for evaluating informal education. To increase botanic gardens’ capacity for showcasing the value of plants and plant science to society. The overall project methodology included four overlapping phases. Each phase corresponded to the development and piloting of a module and included the following major elements: 1. Designing the course structure and content. 2. Piloting the module and collecting evaluation data. 3. Reflecting on the delivery of the module and analysing the evaluation data. 4. Finalising intellectual outputs for each module, which took the form of a Trainer and Participant manual and accompanying online resources. Each unit was led by a different project partner with expertise in the area of focus. MUSE led the Interpretation module, RBGE led the Working with Diverse Audiences module, BGCI and MUSE co-led the Science Communication module and ULisboa and NTU co-led the Evaluation and Research module. All project partners contributed to each module through the development of resources, attending the on-site week, acting as module tutors and evaluation. Train the Trainer events built capacity within the partnership to support module delivery. Each module delivered training for up to 20 education professionals from the botanic garden and museum sector in the UK, Italy and Portugal. Priority was given to small gardens/museums with limited funding, those who had not previously attended comparable training and for other reasons did not have access to professional development training. In total, the project trained 79 individuals from 73 organisations across the UK, Italy and Portugal. Of those trained 82% agreed or strongly agreed that they had been able to use what they had learnt from the modules in their organisation. An additional 171 individuals from 18 countries received training in elements of the LearnToEngage module content through multiplier events in the UK, Italy and Portugal (this included an additional event in the UK delivered at no additional cost to Erasmus+). Through the project’s modules, both the participants and partnership representatives have developed their ability to produce effective public engagement and engage new audience groups effectively. In this way, the project has improved the public engagement offering for botanic gardens in UK, Portugal and Italy, which in turn has improved the botanic garden visitors’ understanding of plant science and conservation and reduced barriers to their participation. Combining the partnership and module participants, the number of visitors that will be impacted by this work is approx. 2.6million. In addition, through our multiplier events and wider dissemination activities of the project outputs we have the potential to reach even more visitors (Multiplier attendee organisation visitor total - 2.5 million visitors). The intellectual outputs have been shared with BGCI’s global network of botanic gardens as well as through the partnership’s national and international contacts so that the resources developed can be used to further enhance the education offering of botanic gardens and museums. Botanic gardens alone see over 500 million visitors each year (Sharrock, 2015), so the potential long-term impact of this project is very large. The partnership will continue to monitor the long-term impacts of the project post completion.

Ensuring the availability of and access to sufficient safe and nutritious food is a key priority that impacts all EU citizens and Horizon 2020 has therefore identified food security as one of the major challenges to be addressed. BGCI, an international network organisation will work with botanic gardens, experienced informal science centres with research expertise in food and food plants, alongside other key organisations to implement the BigPicnic project. This project builds, through the co-creation approach and public debate, public understanding of food security issues and enables adults and young people across Europe and in Africa to debate and articulate their views on Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) in this field to their peers, scientists and policy makers. The project involves the delivery of low-cost, co-created outreach exhibitions on food security, using the metaphor of a picnic basket; the exhibition will include information, activities and participatory events that engage a broad range of target audiences (adults, schoolchildren and families). Building on audience engagement and data captured from these initial, locally held, exhibitions, the project will run science cafés in publicly accessible and informal engagement areas as well as in botanic gardens, again capturing public views on RRI and food security. The final phase of the project will consolidate the findings of the public engagement to produce two key publications, a report articulating public opinion and recommendations for RRI on food security and a co-creation toolkit that will build capacity for engagement in further science institutions across the EU. A number of case studies on RRI will be provided to support the EU RRI toolkit currently under construction. It is expected that the project evaluation will show organisational learning and change amongst partner institutions. Partners will go on to disseminate training and promotion of RRI for future public engagement.

With 115 organisations across 21 European countries, The Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) represents today the largest ever formal agreement between organisations of this type, in the world. These organisations have joined forces to develop and operate as a distributed pan-European Research Infrastructure. The DiSSCo RI works for the digital unification of all European natural science assets under common curation and access policies and practices that aim to make the data easily Findable, more Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR). DiSSCo will deploy a comprehensive portfolio of services across three main categories: a) e-Science Services, b) Physical and Remote Access Services and c) Support and Training Services. DiSSCo Prepare acts as the main vehicle through which DiSSCo RI will raise its overall maturity and set itself in a position to implement its construction programme. DiSSCo Prepare aims at 1) improving the overall Implementation Readiness Level (IRL), and 2) delivering the DiSSCo Construction Masterplan. The DiSSCo IRL is defined as the measure of the ability to embark on specific implementation actions (construction projects) based on clear, actionable guidelines with minimum risk, and across the scientific, data, financial, technological and organisational dimensions of the infrastructure. DiSSCo Prepare will raise the readiness level of the RI across all five dimensions. The DiSSCo Construction Masterplan will be considered as the final output of the project and will effectively be used as the organisational, financial and technical guiding framework for the construction of the infrastructure (including establishing the legal entity).