Observance of Commonwealth Day

The Observance of Commonwealth Day. On Monday I went to Westminster Abbey for the service to which the Queen, Prince Philip, Prince Charles, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago also attended (and 2,000 other delegates including school children). The service had representation from the different faiths and all the Commonwealth counties. It included key speakers such as Lord Robert Winston - the speeches and activities all related to the Science, Technology and Society theme. At the end of the service the Queen laid a wreath with the help of Savita, Director of the Natural History Consortium and then on her exit from the abbey, Martha from Kenya and Gotham from India were are at the entrance to hand the Queen and Camilla some flowers. David Hill, Uni of Bristol, and I were stood nearby with the flag bearers and the choir as they came out. The results of the Bioblitz will be submitted to Buckingham Palace (BP) with the view to seeing if the Consortium can do a bioblitz of the BP gardens to help promote our work further.

This evening there was a stakeholders event at the zoo for the Bristol Natural History Consortium to celebrate a year of activity in 2009 and the local and national projects (including what we've just done) that will be running in 2010 - the Year of Biodiversity. The museum will be involved at the three main events the Consortium runs - the Bristol Festival of Nature, Bioblitz and Communicate conference. It was a great evening with a fab presentation by Savita and Sara and met some wonderful people from organisations across the city and beyond.