Making the most of very little funding?

For ten years I ran Dipterists Forum's field meetings programme - at least three meetings a year, all of which were 'residential'. The Summer field meeting was usually organised around a venue such as a field centre or University Campus, whilst the Spring and Autumn meetings were organised around guest houses and hotels, with the onus on members to find and book their own accommodation. Latterly I have also found a chain of hotels that has a small number of single rooms and which can accommodate our tiny party of Autumn specialists.

The big stumbling block was finding accommodation at a reasonable price. My aim was to secure a week's meeting for no more than £360 half board and with a common 'work room'. As time went by it became increasingly difficult to find such venues and in many cases I just could not manage to get anything because the Universities started to treat groups such as ours as 'Conferences' with appropriate 'Conference' rates. In the end I gave up running the summer meeting as I had run out of steam.

So far, DF has managed to continue the summer meeting programme (for 3 years) but I know it is a struggle to find venues at sensible prices and DF has had to subsidise some of the costs. That is an unsustainable long-term scenario so an alternative needs to be found.

It would be a shame if DF Summer meetings were to cease, because they offer a fantastic opportunity to get 20-30 of the country's leading Dipterists to look at an area. In some years they generate as many as 8 or 9,000 records (except in bad weather!). Over the 40+ years that these meetings have been run, they have been instrumental in the discovery of many dozens of 'New to Britain' and even more important second, third and fourth records. Importantly, the way DF works is to encourage newcomers and in recent years bursaries have been provided to allow two or three aspiring Dipterists to participate at subsidised rates - thanks to an anonymous donor and to the income from our WILDGuide 'Britain's Hoverflies'.

Will these meetings continue? We must hope so. BUT, as time goes by it gets harder to find accommodation and meet the bureaucracy of securing access permissions and, increasingly, providing evidence of insurance. Meanwhile, as costs rise, it is inevitable that the meetings will become out of reach for the less well-off. It would be terrible to see this sort of meeting become the preserve of the rich, pushing biological recording back towards the 19th Century when it was the preserve of the 'men of independent means'. I expect similar problems face other societies.

Getting 'Bangs for Bucks'

So, if there is thought given to funding and getting more bangs for your bucks - what about finding a way of supporting such field meetings - a subsidy provided records are received by a given date? If there are organisations that feel that they could support a targeted approach then maybe there is mileage in forming a partnership. For example, the three Country Agencies all want records from SSSI; LRCS want records from their area, and maybe there are others who would also see some merit in getting DF to visit their area. The main point is to try to get broad coverage, so there would need to be a good range of sites to visit - a team of 20 can cover a lot of ground in a week!


I also think there is a lot of sense in some of the societies working together to make these sorts of meetings happen and to ensure that when they are there there is an interchange of specimens. The DF Summer meeting has an annual event - the Honey Pot Challenge - a pot of Andrew Halstead's very excellent honey as prize for the person who generates the most records of sawflies in the week. It is a keenly contested prize, surprisingly so when you bear in mind the havoc that a sawfly can create in a pooter full of flies! I am sure other traditions could be generated and that these in turn might harness the enthusiasm of people to find a bit more than just their target interests; after all, when sweeping we all come across other taxa that may be of immense interest to other schemes.

And, if anybody is thinking about HLF bids, then maybe developing a programme of support for the active recording groups to go 'square-bashing? I have described some of my trips in this blog - it costs me about £350-500 per week to do this sort of survey - so it is inevitable that the furthest-flung places will get very little effort and those closer-by but under-recorded may stay so if the costs are too high. When I had work, I used to take myself off for five or six weekends a year and cover poorly recorded (and often very dull) parts of the country. Now, without work, I cannot afford much and try to go to places where I will enjoy the fieldwork and the scenery!