Another year of Marine SABRES has drawn to a close so we gathered in Madeira for four days to plan for the next one!
Proceedings
For the first day of our meeting our project coordinator Emma Verling kicked things off bright and early for a morning and afternoon of administrative updates. In these sessions our Work Package leads took to the floor to discuss their overall progress, the Milestones and Deliverables they have achieved, and how their work to date will contribute to the progress in Year 3 of our project. Emma Verling gave a brief overview of the results of our RP1 review meeting held in May 2024, and the adjustments that partners are making to accommodate our project officer's and external advisors' feedback.
Following on from our administrative updates, the Marine SABRES consortium faced into the three day event to:
Present on key developments and challenges within the project,
Discuss work in our Arctic Demonstrations Sites
Facilitate a 'Shared Experience Workshop' which brought together members of the consortium to discuss and improve the Simple Social-Ecological System (sSES) approach!
We would like to take the opportunity to thank all of our project partners, Work Package Leads, and Task leads for their participation in this year's event and for facilitating such fruitful discussions. Finally, we would like to take this opportunity to thank our host partners MARE - Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre for all of their support and work in hosting and facilitating this event!
Special Guests
As part of Day 2 we also had the pleasure of Tim O'Higgins and Alice Newton's (University of Algarve) company and time! Tim, who initially coordinated the successful Marine SABRES funding application before taking up a new role as an advisor to the Irish Government, joined us remotely in his capacity as a member of the project Advisory Board. Tim joined us to present to the consortium on communicating the project to policy and decision makers, drawing upon his wealth of experience and providing key infographics and steps. In his aptly titled presentation 'Untangling the Horrendogram: How to Make Social-Ecological Systems Policy Relevant', Tim demonstrated to the consortium, how best to keep our message simple, without losing the depth and importance we wish to convey, using examples from his own work.
Joining us on site to represent the Marine SABRES Advisory Board, was Alice Newton (University of Algarve). In her presentation Alison provided key feedback to the consortium on how to meet European Comission's expectations, and how to build upon our progress to date. Alice Closed out Day 2 of proceedings with her reflections on the work presented at the general assembly, and highlighted in particular the strengths of the project methods and wok plan.
Workshops
Throughout the General Assembly we had a number of workshops that focused on key developments and agendas for the project. The first workshop was a 'Shared Experience Workshop' which brought together members of the consortium to discuss and improve the Simple Social-Ecological System (sSES) approach as a key output of Marine SABRES. Organised by Kathrine Kopke, Julie Bremner, Frances Mynott, Mike Elliott, and Gemma Smith, and delivered under Work Package 7, this workshop aimed to update everyone on the progress of the refinement of the Simple SES guidance and to gather feedback from the group to guide the final stages of development. You can read more about this workshop here!
A second workshop was undertaken with our Marine SABRES arctic Demonstration Areas under Work Package 3, the results of which are currently being collated by our colleague Gemma Smith, so don't forget to check back for her insights and lessons learned!
Communication and Engagement
As part of this session Work Package 7 lead Kathrin Kopke (MaREI, UCC) gave a detailed overview of the communication and dissemination activitis undertaken by the consortium to date and highlighted key deliverables within the project that have been produced to support the consortium in promoting their activities. Kathrin was joined by Christina Huerta representing LifeWatch ERIC who spoke about the launch of the 'Marine SABRES in Fairs' project initiative, and the 'Marine SABRES Serious Game School Competition' that will introduce classrooms to basic concepts of marine biology and coastal ecology and increase students' awareness of the strong relations between us and the ocean.
Remember, if you would like to keep up-to-date with the Marine SABRES project activities, you can do so by joining our Substack. Just click on the link below to register!
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