Twenty plenty more

I could review 2023, with The Rock Showman and I delivering a fab fossil festival in wonderful Whitby; and the magnificent Kirkleatham Museum team inviting me to work on their Lemon Tops & Lobster Pots exhibition; and the NLHF Dynamic Collections scheme awarding funding for YorEarth Heritage with Scarborough Museums and the University of Leeds; and becoming a champion of the REACH programme in York; and finding an ichthyosaur bone block with Dr Katie Strang on Tate Hill Sands; and publishing a paper with Dr Bryony Caswell on Jurassic stinky bottoms; and recording an episode of Open Country with Dr Rose Ferraby, and having enormous fun bringing The BEACH Project to Redcar & Cleveland during October and November, but I’m always looking back. I feel like looking forward instead.

2024 is bound to be politically and environmentally disappointing/frustrating/catastrophically upsetting* but from a palaeontological perspective, there is much to get excited about. Especially the tenth Yorkshire Fossil Festival, which will be coming to Redcar over the late May bank holiday weekend: Saturday 25th to Monday 27th of May!

Not only will this be the first Yorkshire Fossil Festival to be held in Redcar & Cleveland, but it will also be the earliest in the year we’ve ever held the event. With Lyme Regis shifting its 2024 fossil festival from early May to early June, Redcar will now kick off the fossiling festival year. With a mega bicentenary coming up, this feels like a privileged position to be in.

I very much hope you’ll be able to join us!

*delete according to need in a year’s time