John Regan Associates - External funding for zoos, botanical gardens & aquaria

The environment”,  someone once said  “It is all around us…” .It certainly is all around us as a subject today.  One can hardly pick up a paper, or turn on the TV without encountering ‘sustainability’, ‘climate change’, ‘sustainable technology’, etc… Surely, the time has come for zoos, aquariums and large audience nature sites to become accepted [...]

When one seeks major funding, one needs somehow a big idea that keys into some macro-political agenda. How can your project help someone in authority tick a given box – perhaps in way that nobody else can…? In terms of EU funding, it seems to me there is an important, fundamental idea that Europe’s zoos would be [...]

One of the most audacious suggestions ever to emerge in our dialogue with senior Government figures is that they overlook the potential for  zoo and aquarium sites to act on their behalf as a gateways, not only into the world of wildlife, science, the environment as a whole, community engagement, etc,  but actually as gateways into… [...]

An interesting suggestion that arose a while back in conversation with Colin Brown of The Deep Submarium, Hull, UK. Should our organisations articulate a greater educational role in asking visitors ( perhaps young ones in particular) to take a more considered view of the overall relationship between non-human and human animals? Of course we do generally [...]

Does anyone agree with me that the planning ( both for exhibits and for an overall organisation) within zoos could benefit from greater or at least ‘wider’ creativity…? For some years now I have nurtured the idea of a workshop around either a given zoo project or site, or perhaps even the future of zoos as [...]

When I was a child, I used to fantasise about introducing a host of exciting exotic species to British farms. Why, I thought, cannot we ride zebras or tapirs, as well as horses?   If you could domesticate the ancestors of cattle and sheep, why not all those other marvellous grazing species.  A boring old ‘ordinary’ [...]

Of course I think ( …obsess?) about this , at least partially, from a ‘how to get funds’ point of view.  I know that lots of forward looking zoos and aquaria  across  Europe are doing more and more with indigenous species as a good and interesting thing in itself. But when I discuss the status [...]

Are zoos and aquaria perceived by the outside world as sufficiently different to one another?  If not, do we lose out of area visitors and funding potential, because we are seen as having little to offer that is part of the particular authentic ‘flavour’ of that part of the world? The fact is,  from within [...]

Do zoos around the world get sufficient acknowledgement for their place within that incredibly difficult to define expresssion, culture..?  Do we ourselves think of our own organisations often enough in this way? I was very interested  in a recent conversation with Harry Schram ( Executive Director of European Association of Zoos and Aquaria- EAZA) discussing an old [...]

The boundary between our two types of institution seems very porous. However, in certain contexts at least, the museum seems to be a much more socially palatable concept than the zoo.  Museums are seen as inarguably a ‘good thing’, deserving of public and political support, and somehow part of a generally improving, ‘civilising’ process. There is [...]