Face-to-face communities (3 minutes)

Most citizen science projects are online, but some are done face-to-face, for example as outdoor group work, e.g. a BioBlitz. In this case, you'll bring people together in a shared space. 

It will be essential to provide time and space for discussion and questions before the work begins! Someone may turn out to have an idea for the project you hadn’t thought of, or face barriers which prevent them from accessing the area in which you will be working, so it will be necessary to deal with these before you start. You’ll also need to give people time to get to know each other and to try out any equipment or program they need to use, and help out where anyone has difficulties. If this is the first time they’re all meeting, they may not yet know what questions to ask or be feeling nervous. It may thus be best for you to start with a talk or lecture, or to agree on some common goals or ground rules.

If you’re going to work in a particular geographic area or community, the National Council for Voluntary Organisations suggests some approaches to mapping your local community to ensure your project brings the widest possible benefit. Examples include:

• Try to bring together a mixture of experts who know the subject, and local non-experts who know what is happening in their area. 
• Ask for “mid-term feedback” halfway through your project, to check that everyone is happy or whether something should be changed.
• Prepare to be surprised by something you didn’t know. 
• Carry out a pilot project before you go into the full one.

If your project is likely to be carried out by several separate groups, you or they may have appointed a group leader for each and bring these leaders together regularly. In this case, the “Train the Trainer” module may be useful to you. 

For work done in remote parts of the world, such as with indigenous people, it will be essential to carry out a process called “Free, Prior and Informed Consent” (FPIC) prior to embarking on any scientific work with them. You can read about more it here (this will also be in “Further Reading”, so you can find it later). 

Not all projects are top-down! It may be that a community has recruited you, such as for help with scientific expertise or equipment (the Typologies module will call this “extreme citizen science”). If so, you will not need to assume leadership or carry out community building activities, though you may be asked to lead some sessions e.g. on scientific practices.

Note that even for face-to-face community work, it will still be worth it to keep some kind of online record that people can refer back to, or to have an e-mail address where people can contact you with comments or questions.