Natural Nations: birds, bees and happy collaboration

‘Really happy that we now have a way forward and a great understanding of what is going to happen next’                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Stefania Popodol, Birdlife Malta

In spite of the continuing COVID -19 disruption, the scheduled project 4 day training event went ahead from 15 – 18 June, courtesy of the magic of Zoom and the fantastic contributions, discussions and future planning decisions from our partners in Malta, Spain and Sweden.  There was a will….and we found a way!

As our Swedish partners in Lund had made significant progress piloting surveying techniques in their schools, based on tried and tested Polli:Nation methods, the discussions on day 1 centred around how to adapt and refine the two surveys – bird and insect/plant – to suit each country.  Variations in the distribution of birds between Northern and Southern Europe made the task of choosing a single identification list very challenging, so discussions spilled over to another day.  As the image shows, the bird drawing icebreaker for that day was a real hit.

Our own CEO Carley Sefton Wilson and her husband Jim gave everyone the benefit of their professional filming expertise on day 2.  Helpful hints and tips on working with accessible technology such as iPhone and tablet gave everyone confidence that the footage for the final suite of videos would be of a suitable calibre for the editing stage.  Who knew that sound quality is probably the most important aspect of filming to consider when out and about?

The subject of formal, non-formal and informal curriculum in each country led to some really thought-provoking discussions about how the final resources would look and in what way they might be adapted for different levels of formality in terms of learning outcomes and content.  Project officer, Polly Jarman has created a collection of brilliant resource templates that we will be working to develop in the future.

LtL would like to thank all our fantastic partners for taking part in such a successful few days.  We would have definitely preferred to have delivered the event in person, but the spirit of Erasmus + prevailed with the hope that we would indeed meet again one day……

‘This week has been far over my expectations….thanks to everyone for their contributions’

                                                                  Anders Wånge Kjellsson, Naturskolan i Lund