In 2020 the Royal Astronomical Society will be 200 years old.
To celebrate our bicentennial,the Society is establishing an Outreach and Engagement Fund of £1000000 to support astronomy and geophysics projects that create a genuine buzz approximately science – understanding, discussion and dialogue – in diverse sections of the community.
whether you're involved with a local or national organisation that might be able to help, and we'd like to hear from you,particularly whether you can add to the RAS fund, so that we can make a greater and more lasting impact.
We anticipate that the RAS fund itself will support up to 20 projects with sums between £50000 and £100000. The grants will be released in two calls – the first in 2015, or the second in 2016,to initiate projects that run up to and beyond the RAS bicentenary.
We want our RAS 200: Sky & soil projects to:
own a lasting impact beyond 2020 and inspire a recent generation to broaden their interest in science, technology, or engineering,maths and medicine (STEMM)
Go 'where no outreach project has gone before', engaging people from all age groups, and ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds etc.
Harness the shared ambitions of world-main researchers and national,local and community organisations
whether you're interested in working with us, we will be running a series of regional 'speed-dating' events across the UK in the autumn of 2014, and where proposers will be able to come together to find our more approximately the project and develop their ideas.
More information
Presentation approximately RAS 200 critieria given at the 'town corridor' meetings
Presentation on RAS 200: Sky & soil given at the RAS AGM in May 2014 (note that the project was then provisionally named Astonishing Astronomy and Glorious Geophysics)
Action paper setting out the goals and timetable for the project in more detail
Presentations from the July 2014 Stakeholder Meeting (22MB)
Source: ras.org.uk