Bristol shortlisted for European Green Capital

We're currently preparing our application for the preliminary conference for the EU collaboration mentioned below. By co-incidence Bristol has today been shortlisted for the prestigious Green Capital of Europe award.  

GreenBristol visits Berlin

Last week GreenBristol visited our German greenmapping colleague Pit van de Loo in Berlin. This was to discuss the possibility of launching a European greenmapping collaboration with Berlin and Bistrita, Romania. Pit took Ivor and Steve on a whirlwind tour of the city taking in many fascinating nooks and crannies including a cafe offering free roast wild boar and beer! Steve's friends Mark and Christina were kind enough to provide accommodation, bicycle and more sightseeing during the trip.

Steve and Pit visited Dr Renata Eras of European Project Management, Neukölln. Renata is enthusiastic about the possibility of a collaboration and was very helpful in suggesting the first steps to take. Briefly these are for us to convene a preliminary conference in Bistrita in the Transylvanian mountains of Romania with Ciprian Samoila in January. The likely participants would be adult/lifelong learning groups who could use ICT to benefit their respective communities' environment.

We should submit a formal funding application with at least the three cities as participants - preferably two more to make up a five city project. This to be submitted before the deadline in March 2009. Consideration by the relevant EU Commissioners could take two or three months. Then we could get approval for the project assuming a suitable legal body (preferably in Bristol) could take charge of administration. Steve is approaching Knowle West Media Centre and Bristol Council to discuss possible support.

We are now featured on Open Green Maps.

Evaluation of printed map

GreenBristol was awarded funding recently from the DAFT panel at Community at Heart to commission an independant evaluation of its printed map. We commissioned Conrad Peberdy, former Director of BEST (Bristol East Side Traders), to carry this out. The full process has now been completed and the document is available for download here.

Excerpt: "All households who had not seen a map previously expressed an interest in acquiring a copy (i.e. 83% of those surveyed). During the discussions with (19) opinion leaders 75% of those interviewed said that they had learnt something new."