We are working on various projects to network and support grassroots citizen science initiatives
There are a lot of independent communities and initiatives around the world trying to engage with science from a grassroots, non-institutional position: doing our own research, bringing diverse (often marginalised) societal perspectives to the practice or application of science, sharing knowledge, building communities and collaborations. We do this out of personal motivation to learn, to share, to explore our relationship to science, to pursue research and projects that don’t fit within institutional agendas or traditional academic careers. At the core of it is the belief that science should be accessible to and for the benefit of everyone in society, not just the privileged few.
‘DIY Science’ is a broad term that includes any initiative that tries to engage with science from a grassroots, non-institutional position: diybio community labs, civic environmental monitoring projects, patient activism groups, bioart collectives, interdisciplinary science hacking communities etc.
We are a growing network - connect with us here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/diyscience
This project is still very much in development, but there are two main areas we think we could work on:
- Crowdsourcing and collecting best practice advice and resources from the network on how to successfully run a DIY Science / grassroots citizen science project (on funding, equitable collaboration, how to access space and equipment, etc).
- Building an advocacy campaign to reach decision-makers that encourages measures to support grassroots citizen science initiatives.
We are looking for different kinds of help and support from:
- DIY SCIENTISTS: We'd love to connect with further grassroots citizen science communities or initiatives. Let's pool our experience, learn from each other, find out if perhaps we're facing the same challenges, and do something about it!
- DIY SCIENCE SUPPORTERS: We would be very happy if anyone would like to donate their google fingers to help with some internet research. Also, more generally, we are trying to develop good strategies to support an emerging sector of civil society - good constructive criticism and advice is very welcome.
- JEKYLL DEVELOPERS: We want to make (find, fork and adapt) a simple easy-to-edit github pages site.
- DESIGNERS: We want to be able to communicate effectively with DIY science communities, institutions, AND policy-makers.
- ADVOCACY EXPERTS: We'd love to hear from anyone who has experience of advocacy work, especially in a European context.
- TIPS FOR FUNDING: Most of us don't have an institutional affilliation and are already over-stretched volunteer community managers or leads for existing projects. If anyone has any tips for where we could apply for funding to support developing this campaign, at least to cover travel expenses to Brussels etc, that'd be great!
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Crowdsourcing Resources: We will bring this part of the project to the Mozilla Global Sprint, 1-2nd June - issue in the mozilla/global-sprint repo here. Find out how you can contribute.
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Advocacy Campaign: This part of the project is still evolving - precise nature of what we'll be focussing will be defined in the coming weeks. We have had some good first discussions at the European Citizen Science Forum (in the context of the H2020 Do it Together Science Project), Paris, 25th May 2017 and at the Biofabbing Convergence, Geneva, 10-14th May 2017, are currently team-building, and hope to soon develop a roadmap and some concrete work packages.
We want this project to be a safe and welcoming space for everyone, and as such ask that anyone contributing respect the Mozilla Community Participation Guidelines. Please report unacceptable behavior to [email protected]. Thank you!
Have questions? Come chat with us in our Riot channel, #DIYscience_github:matrix.org
