Public Engagement

BGCI's education team support botanic gardens in their public engagement and education efforts through a range of resources, tools and projects

Best Practice

BGCI has an extensive Public Engagement programme that provides a wide range of tools and resources to support and promote the education work of botanic gardens around the world. We host a global congress (the International Congress on Education in Botanic Gardens), publish an education journal twice a year (Roots), and provide resources and tools to support be st practice education. We also aim to develop and deliver innovative, participatory projects that showcase the important social role of botanic gardens within their local communities.

We are also focusing on how botanic gardens and their millions of visitors can contribute to global conservation challenges. Annually botanic gardens around the world are visited by over 750 million people. We therefore have a huge opportunity to engage this audience in the global challenges that we are currently facing such as climate change, food security and biodiversity, and to the turn that engagement into conservation action.

BGCI's Education Journal: Roots

Roots

Public Engagement / Publication, BGCI Journal / English, Spanish

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Ongoing public engagement projects

Ongoing

Project

Fairchild Global Challenge

Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden and BGCI are partnering for this year’s (2020-2021) Global Challenge: Unsung Plant Scientists. This global challenge is open to all school age learners and celebrates underrepresented plant scientists.

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Ongoing

Project

Food Forever Global Exhibition

The Food Forever Global Exhibition is a series of interpretation resources that are free for botanic gardens to use to develop their own online or in person exhibition about Food Forever.

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Ongoing

Project

BGCI Sustainability Challenge

The BGCI Sustainability Challenge aims to work with leading botanic gardens to develop a series of simple, small-scale sustainability challenges, with associated incentives, that aim to empower and bring about behavioural change amongst garden visitors and the broader community.

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Ongoing

Project

Food Waste Challenge

The Food Waste Challenge is a one year pilot project that aims to challenge visitors of English botanic gardens to take on a 30 day challenge to reduce their fruit and vegetable food waste.

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Ongoing

Project

Food Sustainability Challenge

The Food Sustainability Challenge is a UK based project funded by The Rothschild Foundation which aims to explore and support the development of food sustainability interventions taking place in UK botanic gardens.

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