Vote for OPAL today, we need you!
OPAL (Open Air Laboratories) is through to the semi-finals of The National Lottery Awards 2011 and needs your vote to win.
OPAL is one of only ten projects to make it through to the semi-finals in the Best Environment Project category of The National Lottery Awards. The Awards are an annual search to find the UK’s favourite Lottery-funded projects, and they recognise and celebrate the difference that Lottery-funded projects make to communities across the UK.
The OPAL project works all over England to get everyone involved in nature through a range of national and regional initiatives which aim to inspire people of all ages and backgrounds to get outside and explore their local environment. In doing so, it brings communities, scientists and nature enthusiasts together. OPAL is a partnership of universities and other organisations with an interest in the environment that has been working with thousands of people across England, many of whom have not been involved in nature before.
The NBN and OPAL
The NBN is one of the OPAL partners and has been developing tools to make public recording more accessible, via Indicia – the online recording tool. This is now being used by a number of organisations as they develop their own recording systems and public participation projects. Some examples are:
BBC Breathing Spaces and the Ladybird Survey
Recording Invasive Species Counts
‘Developing our online recording system using Indicia will put the Dragonfly Recording Network at the forefront of biological recording schemes. Using the building blocks of Indicia enabled us to produce our system of choice in a very short time and on a far smaller budget than if we had developed the system independently.’
Stephen Prentice, Dragonflies in Focus Officer, British Dragonfly Society
Through OPAL, the NBN has also been developing the ability of the NBN Gateway to hold and display habitat data and to make the use of web services more accessible to more organisations. You can see some of the most recent developments if you look at the Interactive Mapping Tool and most recently the Get Map URL information, which makes it very easy for users to display NBN maps in their own websites.
Media Support
Professor Robert Winston is OPAL’s media personality for the Awards. You can see a video of Professor Winston supporting OPAL and emphasising the importance of public engagement in science, and the OPAL model for engagement, as well as endorsing OPAL’s short listing in the awards.
“We live in a society which is dominated by science. Getting out in the environment, which OPAL is all about, is essential. This approach means that scientists are actually listening to what ordinary people are saying and thinking, and the more of that sort of contact the better, because it shows science in a human light.”
Professor Robert Winston, Imperial College London
National recognition
The winning project in each category will receive national recognition on a star-studded BBC One TV show in early November and this will be a great opportunity to let more people know about the work that OPAL does and get more people outside learning about the world around us.
How to vote
Voting for the finals started at 09.00am on Tuesday 31 May and ends at midday on Monday 20 June. To register your vote for OPAL (Open Air Laboratories) call 0844 836 9694* or log on to the OPAL page on the National Lottery Awards website
(*Calls will cost no more than 5p from a BT landline. Calls from other networks may vary, calls from mobiles could cost considerably more. Please note that any calls made outside of the voting periods indicated above, will not count and may be charged.)
What happens next?
OPAL is now featured on National Lottery Awards publicity material, press releases, and their websites, with public voting to select the finalists from 31st May to midday 20th June. The finalists will be selected for a final round of voting in September, with the winner and runners-up to be announced on a special BBC One show in early November.
What’s the prize?
The winner will receive an award trophy and £2,000 prize towards their project, however, the biggest boon will be publicising OPAL work and encouraging more people to get involved.
For further information please contact: Mandy Henshall or Sarah Baldwin
We hope you will support OPAL by voting for us today! Thank you.
