Learn to Engage was a modular course that aimed to build botanic gardens’ capacity to develop effective programmes and activities to engage people with plants. The project partnership designed and piloted a modular blended-learning course. Four blended learning modules were developed in Interpretation, Working with Diverse Audiences, Science Communication and Evaluation and Research. Each module was 12 weeks in duration and consisted of 11 weeks of online learning, hosted by partner RBGE’s online learning platform PropaGate Learning, and one week on-site hosted by the module lead partner. The modules offered botanic garden and museum educator professionals a flexible professional development opportunity and promoted equity and inclusion in botanic garden and museum education. The project’s objectives were: To enhance inclusive education in botanic gardens through practitioner training. To develop innovative blended learning models for training botanic gardens on public engagement (what we want to do). To enhance botanic garden professionals’ access to C-VET through embedding training in the digital era (why we want to do it). To improve services through training on new areas of work for botanic gardens. To support the development of transnational standards for evaluating informal education. To increase botanic gardens’ capacity for showcasing the value of plants and plant science to society. The overall project methodology included four overlapping phases. Each phase corresponded to the development and piloting of a module and included the following major elements: 1. Designing the course structure and content. 2. Piloting the module and collecting evaluation data. 3. Reflecting on the delivery of the module and analysing the evaluation data. 4. Finalising intellectual outputs for each module, which took the form of a Trainer and Participant manual and accompanying online resources. Each unit was led by a different project partner with expertise in the area of focus. MUSE led the Interpretation module, RBGE led the Working with Diverse Audiences module, BGCI and MUSE co-led the Science Communication module and ULisboa and NTU co-led the Evaluation and Research module. All project partners contributed to each module through the development of resources, attending the on-site week, acting as module tutors and evaluation. Train the Trainer events built capacity within the partnership to support module delivery. Each module delivered training for up to 20 education professionals from the botanic garden and museum sector in the UK, Italy and Portugal. Priority was given to small gardens/museums with limited funding, those who had not previously attended comparable training and for other reasons did not have access to professional development training. In total, the project trained 79 individuals from 73 organisations across the UK, Italy and Portugal. Of those trained 82% agreed or strongly agreed that they had been able to use what they had learnt from the modules in their organisation. An additional 171 individuals from 18 countries received training in elements of the LearnToEngage module content through multiplier events in the UK, Italy and Portugal (this included an additional event in the UK delivered at no additional cost to Erasmus+). Through the project’s modules, both the participants and partnership representatives have developed their ability to produce effective public engagement and engage new audience groups effectively. In this way, the project has improved the public engagement offering for botanic gardens in UK, Portugal and Italy, which in turn has improved the botanic garden visitors’ understanding of plant science and conservation and reduced barriers to their participation. Combining the partnership and module participants, the number of visitors that will be impacted by this work is approx. 2.6million. In addition, through our multiplier events and wider dissemination activities of the project outputs we have the potential to reach even more visitors (Multiplier attendee organisation visitor total - 2.5 million visitors). The intellectual outputs have been shared with BGCI’s global network of botanic gardens as well as through the partnership’s national and international contacts so that the resources developed can be used to further enhance the education offering of botanic gardens and museums. Botanic gardens alone see over 500 million visitors each year (Sharrock, 2015), so the potential long-term impact of this project is very large. The partnership will continue to monitor the long-term impacts of the project post completion.

Many of the nearly 400,000 species of plants provide food, feed, medicines, and construction materials. Besides these positive impacts, plants also affect us negatively through pollen allergies, poisonous species, as invasive species, and as adulterants in herbal medicines. Nevertheless, plants are the most promising biological resource for our future. Current extinction risks of global flora and vast decline in taxonomic expertise demand accurate and rapid identification approaches to understand and valorise botanical biodiversity. Advances in genomic data and DNA sequencing are revolutionizing plant systematics, and modern molecular identification methods make it possible to accurately determine plants in ways that were technically impossible only a decade ago. Recently, it has become possible to detect substitution in herbal pharmaceuticals, monitor invasive alien species, trace fragments such as pollen and spores, uncover illegal trade in endangered species, make rapid and accurate molecular biodiversity assessments, and study historical plant diversity through DNA in museum specimens. However, to efficiently harvest the potential of the opportunities provided by the new genomic techniques, society today is in urgent need of trained biosystematists experienced in both taxonomy and in handling enormous amounts of genomic data. Plant.ID will innovatively address these challenges by bringing together academic and non-academic partners including regulatory agencies, industry, SMEs and NGO stakeholders, with the aim of developing molecular identification of plants through tailored approaches to species delimitation, metabarcoding, gene capture, and genomic barcoding, in order to empower stakeholders with simplified molecular identification of plants. By bridging classical taxonomic expertise with cutting-edge genomic approaches, Plant.ID will train a new generation of ESRs who will have immediate relevance to harnessing the central role of plants in the modern world.