As we write our final article and Year of Our Island draws to a close we have been reflecting proudly on all that we have achieved together and we wanted to say thank you!

As the Year of Our Island team we have partnered with people from across Government departments and local authorities, with charities and with businesses, groups and societies and, most importantly with you, our community, to deliver a series of events and initiatives to encourage us all to explore more and do more on our beautiful isle.

We have been excited to celebrate with you just some of what makes our island special and hope we might have inspired some of you to try something new or revisit something long forgotten.

We worked to encourage people to discover a new glen with the promise of hidden treasure, learn about our rich ecosystems on a wildflower walk and find out about our culture and history at one of our historic landmarks.

We found inspiration in our creatives, and community pride in our volunteers and we showed that, whatever the weather, there is so much to see and do on our doorstep.

We celebrated our dark skies, discovering for ourselves why our island is such an outstanding place for stargazing.

We launched the ’Our Island trail’ to encourage intrepid explorers to seek out paths new and old in our towns and our countryside.

We broke records in June with our partners at Beach Buddies and with almost 400 people we cleaned 11 beaches on the same day!

We invited primary school children to help us to create our beautiful Blein yn Ellan Ain Garden in St John’s, and we offered a ’Summer Passport’, an interactive guide for the summer holidays to inspire children and families to visit and explore some of the amazing places that our island has to offer.

The underlying principle of the Year of Our Island was to work to enable others to run their own events and projects and we are proud to say that, through our partner grants, we have supported more than 40 projects and events.

From festivals like Oie Voaldyn to art trails and adventure playgrounds, skateboarding and dance competitions, we’re privileged to have met and worked with so many dedicated people to help bring their projects to life.

Year of Our Island has been about celebrating the people and places that make the Isle of Man truly special and we have heard from so many of you who have been eager to share your stories with us.

We set out to dispel the myth ’there’s nothing to do here’ and we believe we have done just that.

We have been amazed by the response to our celebration and from our entire team we would like to say thank you for letting us become part of your story and for celebrating with us.

We hope that will continue to be inspired by our legacy projects for many years to come.

by the Year of Our island Team

www.ourisland.im