I hope your organisations are doing well. This month, I have updates for you from Ecsite on the topics of Ukraine, Science Europe, Calls and AI.

I would like to start by thanking you all for your commitment and generosity to our colleagues in Ukraine. For our action supported by the Simons Foundation, we were pleased to receive 10 offers from members to donate part or whole exhibitions. Again, thank you.

Secondly, I am pleased to bring a great piece of news to your attention. As you may be aware, over the last years Executive Director Catherine Franche and I have been holding meetings with stakeholders to advocate for the importance of science communication and engagement in Europe and to open up our scope. On 12 & 13 March, Science Europe, the association representing public organisations which fund or perform research in Europe, held a conference on Science Communication at which we were invited to speak and we are pleased to report that the outcome is full recognition of the importance of science communication professionals. We will continue our work in this area and to foster this key relationship.

You may have seen the calls to host the Ecsite Conference in 2026 and 2027 and the Directors Forum in 2025 and 2026. I would like to encourage you to consider submitting an expression of interest before 24 April and raise the profile of your organisation by hosting one of Ecsite’s key events. At this stage it is just an expression of interest: which allows you to later confirm or change your first intention.

On a final note, and acknowledging the importance of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Ecsite is compiling useful resources on all aspects of AI for you, our members. Ranging from policy to implementation, for internal and public facing activities, we are currently forming an advisory group to help shape these resources to make them useful and relevant for all Ecsite members. If you have knowledge of or experience with AI, and would like to contribute to this advisory group, please feel free contact Nicola at nhamilton@ecsite.eu