2021

People are searching for gardens and green spaces more than ever. In keeping with this green-fingered enthusiasm, Google Arts & Culture is launching our first foray into the natural world, celebrating a unique selection of gardens and gardening from across the United Kingdom: Gardens United.

Gardens United is a new, interactive digital hub sharing the stories of a range of gardens around the country, thanks to collaboration between Google Arts & Culture and over 30 cultural partners in the UK. From archives to allotments, from botanic gardens to heritage bodies, there is something for everyone to enjoy and discover. This is only the beginning and we hope everyone can take some inspiration away from exploring online and in the physical world.

Take a look at 6 ways to jump right in:

1. Get a bird’s eye view. Gardens United brings together over 50 gardens from across the United Kingdom. From the Isle of Wight, to Northern Ireland to the Scottish borders, and see the unique beauty that can be found in each of them.
2. Learn about modern gardens and why they are so important today. Hear from leading garden designer Juliet Sargent on how she created her award-winning Modern Slavery Garden, and her thoughts on the future of gardening. WhileRainbow Grow founder Clair Battaglino discusses why the rules don’t always have to apply to gardening.
3. See a garden through a child’s eye. Meet Robin, one of Alnwick Gardens biggest fans, and explore the breadth of plant life that can be found in the Northumberland site, from the largest Taihaku cherry orchard outside Japan, through to a signing gate – all through a child’s eye.
4. Discover the benefits of gardens on our health and wellbeing. We all know nature is good for us, but what does that really mean? Hear fromexperts at Oxford Botanic Gardensabout prescribing gardens, and see how the charityHospital Roomsare working to bring the magic of gardens to aid treatments in clinical settings.
5. Hear from experts explain the link between climate change and how gardens can play their part. From your cup of coffee to your afternoon snack, changing climates are threatening our food supplies. Teams atKew Gardens are working with local growers to trial new ways of growing crops and save seeds for the future. Meanwhile on the Isle of Wight, Ventnor Botanic Gardens are working to predict the effects of climate change on the rest of the country due to their unique microclimate.
6. Get creative with gardens-inspired Machine Learning. To celebrate the beauty of gardens using art and technology, we have launched a new set of Machine Learning-powered explorations with Art Transfer, for those looking for more creative interaction. Try them out using the Camera features in the Google Arts & Culture app on iOS and Android.

Want to learn more? Visitg.co/GardensUnited, or download Google Arts & Culture’s Android or iOS app.

During a 14-year career as a journalist, Dina Aboughazala reported on issues impacting people’s lives across the Middle East. But she found that many existing news services concentrated on what was happening in big cities, while lesser-known areas were often ignored. To highlight undiscovered voices with interesting stories to tell, last year Aboughazala started the journalism platform Egab.

Egab, which connects journalists from the Middle East and Africa to international media outlets, is one of 22 successful recipients for the Google News Initiative’s second Middle East, Turkey and Africa Innovation Challenge.

It will use the funding to build a platform for contributions. “This means we can empower more local journalists across the Middle East and Africa to tell diverse stories about their communities to global audiences: stories that defy stereotypes, represent our part of the world more fairly and engage more audiences,” Aboughazala says. “We will now be able to do that at a larger scale through the online platform we will be building.”

We launched an open call for applications in February and received 329 applications from 35 countries. A rigorous review, a round of interviews and a final jury selection process followed.

Today, we’re announcing $2.1 million in funding to projects and initiatives in 14 different countries. Recipients include startups and online-only media platforms alongside some of the bigger names in news across the region, and cover topics ranging from audience development to virtual reality storytelling. We placed an emphasis on projects that reflect and demonstrate a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion in the news industry.

Here are just a few of the recipients (you can find the full list on our website):

• Messenger Reader Revenue: The Standard Group in Kenya is going to integrate bots and Artificial Intelligence (AI) onto a WhatsApp number so that its audience can prompt and interact with it to access news. Via a subscription, the uniquely curated content will feature categories such as farming and investigations.

• Dreamcatcher: A blockchain-based micro-licensing platform for news articles comes from Aposto, a technology and new media startup in Turkey. This will mean news outlets can tap into a new market of unsubscribed users. For users, this allows them to access premium content without having to buy multiple subscriptions. 

• Virtual Reality (VR) tours: Frontline in Focus in Syria will bring VR Tours by local journalists for international media and NGOs to help international reporters tell stories from the conflict zone with the help of more seasoned local reporters.

• Growing through innovation: An audience engagement and membership project from Raseef22 in Lebanon targets Arab youth. The team plans to enhance audience engagement with dynamic story formats, podcasts and a membership program to explore new reader revenue.

• Data for Morocco: A public platform to collect economic and financial data comes from online-only publisher Société des Nouveaux Médias. This will make basic datasets accessible to all readers as well as create specific offers to subscribers and clients through personalized dashboards, real time updates and market analysis.

We’ll be following their progress alongside the previous recipients who are already impacting the news ecosystem with initiatives that increase reader engagement and make for a more sustainable future of news.

I was born in a small town in the South of France to an Algerian dad and a Vietnamese mom. Like many kids from immigrant families, I took school seriously because I saw success in the classroom as a way to fit in. 

I was incredibly lucky to have teachers in high school who spent extra hours after school pushing me and surfaced opportunities I wouldn’t have heard of otherwise. Without them, I probably would have settled for less. Instead I’m the first in my family to go to university. The helping hand I got from them growing up is what motivates me today to find opportunities to give back — and thanks to Google there’s plenty of ways for me to give back at work. 

Shoppers get the most choice when they can easily discover businesses and their unique products. And when those products get discovered, businesses can connect with more customers. We see it as a win-win, which is why we’re working hard to make commerce more open online. One way we’re doing this is by teaming up with eCommerce platforms like GoDaddy.

Starting today, we welcome GoDaddy online store customers to more easily integrate their product inventory across Google at no additional cost. This means that GoDaddy merchants can now get discovered across Search, Shopping, Image Search and YouTube in just a few clicks. With this integration, GoDaddy merchants can upload their products to Google, create free listings and ad campaigns and review performance metrics — all without leaving GoDaddy’s Online Store.

By teaming up with platforms like GoDaddy, we are able to help even more businesses make more connections with shoppers who are eager to discover new brands.