Like a great many of us, I’ve taken a few moments this month to reflect on the passing year. I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking 2021 went too quickly, and yet fit far too much into just 12 months. Although, it wasn’t until I was sitting in front of my computer in January ready to write my first GiGLer editorial that I realised just how much we have achieved at GiGL over that time.
It might be an understatement to say that it has been a busy year for us, which you can probably tell if you’ve been keeping up with our monthly GiGLer articles. We’ve had to say some sad farewells but have also welcomed many new GiGLers, with no less than six new arrivals. In this winter edition of the GiGLer editorial I am delighted to introduce all of our amazing new team members, and I’ve also got some fantastic GiGL achievements to share.
First of all, we were all sad to say goodbye to our Partnership Manager Chloë Smith in June. She was a driving force at GiGL for the last 10 years, and we will all miss her joy and enthusiasm just as much as her expertise. We wish her all the best of luck in her new adventure with Butterfly Conservation and we’re thankful that she hasn’t gone too far. We also said goodbye to Emma Knowles, our Partnership Officer who started with us in 2017. She is now with the City of London and we wish her all the best for the future.
GiGL’s previous Senior Partnership Officer Julie Cox skilfully stepped in to take over the role of Partnership Manager and did a fantastic job overseeing our partner work through the first half of 2021, and through no small feat ensured a seamless handover when she left for maternity leave in the autumn. We look forward to her return in September.
Amy Palmer-Newton, GiGL’s Database Officer and author of this editorial (hello!) took over as Commissioning Editor of the GiGLer from Julie in September, and I hope I’ve done her proud so far.
Our Senior Partnership Officer Eleni Foui has worked incredibly hard to oversee our partnership work in Julie’s absence, ensuring no gaps are present in our high quality partnership delivery. We have also welcomed two new Partnership Officers, Becky Garden and Molly Williams, who deliver work for GiGL partners with Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Both hit the ground running and are already invaluable members of the GiGL family.
In May we gained a new Data Assistant, Victoria Kleanthous. She did such a great job assisting the partnership and community teams that she is now one of our Community Officers, leading on species work and acting as our primary contact for students.
We are very lucky to have welcomed Frankie Moorman as GiGL’s Ancient Woodland Inventory (AWI) Officer in August, and she’s been hard at work as the Greater London lead for Natural England’s AWI update project, which you can read about here.
In November Digby Wheeler joined us as a Data Assistant, although it feels like he’s been here a lot longer with how quickly he’s picked up his work updating, maintaining and improving GiGL’s species dataset.
Our newest addition is our Habitat Officer, Becca Jordan, who arrived in December. While she’s been busy getting to grips with the new role, she’s already made great headway into her project; a major update of our habitat dataset which aims to improve both its scope and accuracy.
We can’t wait to introduce you to all of our fantastic 2021 newbies in more detail over the next few months in upcoming GiGLer interviews.
In many ways it was business as usual in 2021 as we continued to provide our core services to our partners and clients, while also maintaining our detailed and extensive datasets. In February Julie took us through GiGL’s bi-annual ‘GiGL is closed week’, which gives us all a chance to concentrate on internal work (with occasional donut incentives to help with motivation, although this is sadly a little tricky to do when working remotely). We produced our first public facing annual report in March 2021, and we are currently preparing our second to showcase GiGL in all its glory. In October we held a hugely successful London Recorders Day at the Natural History museum, where we celebrated the uses of data and came together in person and online in a hybrid event.
In May our Community Manager Lyndsey Cox told us about how the London Priority Species List has recently been updated. This list documents species that experts suggest require particular protection and consideration, and highlights some of the amazing wildlife London is home to.
In March we heard about the work done to update GiGL’s Areas of Deficiency (AoD) models. AoDs are a meaningful measure of access to open space and nature in London, and they help to show whether people living and working in a given area can easily visit Public Open Spaces or wildlife sites. Our newly modelled AoD in Access to Nature was launched in July 2021, and we aim to release our updated AoD in Access to Public Open Spaces this spring – watch out for more information in an upcoming GiGLer article.
A big focus of our work in 2021 was on the services we provide. With data being at the heart of what we do, it can sometimes be easy to forget the scope of what we can offer. Eleni took us through a few examples of the wealth of non-data resources available through the records centre community in the May GiGLer.
Despite our busy schedules we always try and keep up to date with the latest news in urban nature conservation, and in October our Database Officer Tanvi took us through a review of a 4 year project on partnerships for nature-based solutions across Europe, ‘making urban nature bloom’.
We were introduced to Aman Jethwa in September, who joined GiGL’s Board of Directors in November 2020. Her ambition and expertise has helped guide us and keeps us moving forward, and we are very lucky to have her on board as our treasurer.
We also work with a range of external partners, from species experts to government organisations. In September we heard from Andy Overall, who took us through a fascinating survey of fungi in various areas of Heathrow airport, which lead to the discovery of a species new to science. Just a month later Dave Webb of the Environment Agency and London River Restoration Group detailed the 20 year history of mapping opportunity areas for river restoration within the capital, and we can’t wait to see where this takes us next. In our final article of 2021 we partnered up with the Horticulture Magazine to highlight the issue of invasive Japanese Knotweed in London and throughout the UK, linking to their campaign aimed at helping people understand the scale of cases in their local area.
As you can probably tell by now, it’s been a year of change at GiGL, with old hands stepping up and new faces helping drive us forward.
With this in mind, the GiGL team would like to thank our partners and clients for their understanding of any delays caused by short term lack of hands, although these have been kept to a minimum by the fantastic work of the team.
We expect the coming year to be just as busy as we continue to grow and expand, helping to mobilise, curate and share data that underpin our knowledge of London’s natural environment. We hope that you’ll join us as we continue our journey into 2022.
