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 £1,000,000 to support astronomy and geophysics projects that create a real buzz about science – understanding, discussion and dialogue – in diverse sections of the community.
If you're involved with a local or national organisation that might be able to help, we'd like to hear from you, particularly if 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 £50,000 and £100,000. The grants will be released in two calls – the first in 2015, the second in 2016, to initiate projects that run up to and beyond the RAS bicentenary.
We want our RAS 200: Sky & Earth projects to:
- Have a lasting impact beyond 2020 and inspire a new generation to broaden their interest in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM)
- Go 'where no outreach project has gone before', engaging people from all age groups, ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds etc.
- Harness the shared ambitions of world-leading researchers and national, local and community organisations
If 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, where proposers will be able to come together to find our more about the project and develop their ideas.
More information
- Presentation about RAS 200 critieria given at the 'town hall' meetings
- Presentation on RAS 200: Sky & Earth 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)