Between 6-8 of November, the University of Barcelona and the Barcelona Social Hub organized the first Co-organized Citizen Science Training. Several European and national citizen projects promoted by UB researchers contributed to these sessions in which we reflected on the impact of citizen science on social transformation. The co-host of the training that conducted all the sessions was the Catalan Third Social Sector Platform.
The group from the University of Barcelona of the I-CHANGE Barcelona Living Lab participated in the sessions, presenting I-CHANGE project. The training was divided into three modules, one for each day, and took place at the historic building of the University of Barcelona and Centre Cívic Ateneu Fort Pienc in Barcelona. The Seminar was held in the context of TORCH and Citizen Science NOW projects.
During the first day, one of the Barcelona Living Lab stakeholders shared their experience as a participant in the I-CHANGE project with the Kostka #JEGràcia school. We also learned about experiences from 6 other citizen science projects taking place in Catalonia, and during the networking-coffee break, we presented our poster on the project and the Barcelona Living Lab.
The training continued over the next two days, organized into modules associated with key aspects of citizen science and in a conversation format. On the second day, we worked on co-creation, community building, and discussed the necessary tools and methods for carrying out citizen science projects. The focus was on the importance of collaborating with the Social Third Sector to address the challenges of involving the community from the beginning in citizen science. The adaptation of methodologies and support in processes and activities were some of the aspects highlighted by the speakers in the second module.
Finally, during the third day, important topics such as data collection and processing, ethics and inclusion, and action in citizen science projects were addressed. Maria Carmen Llasat from the Barcelona Living Lab of I-CHANGE took part in one of the dialogue tables of this third session on the type of data and how they are collected in citizen science activities of the project. Finally, in the last dialogue table of the day, Montserrat Llasat contributed to the debate on how to translate the citizen science to the transformation of society in social and environmental aspects.
As a summary, the main conclusions were the importance to include the community from the beginning of the project, to adapt the methodology and language to the users, consider, in the design of the project, ethics and privacy issues and the importance of the feedback to the participants and their community.
