From Noah to Now: A Cultural History of Flooding in English Coastal and Estuary Communities

The Noah to Now fellowship charts a centuries-long fascination with flooding in the literature of England's coastal and estuary communities across time. It sets this deep cultural history within the context of the heightened flood risks facing coastal and estuary communities now and in future, focusing on three case-study regions: Humber and Lincolnshire, London and South-East, and Bristol and South-West. The project asks how we harness the power of historical flood stories to build future resilience to flooding in England's coastal and estuary communities, and how we work within the framework of new UK Government strategy for teaching sustainability and climate change to embed arts and humanities approaches to flooding in primary schools.

The IPCC (2022) have reported that climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of coastal flood hazards, and the Environment Agency's National Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Strategy for England (2022) notes an urgent need to cultivate 'climate resilience' in coastal regions. But there are also significant challenges to coproducing climate action in some English coastal and estuary communities where embedded inequalities are not only impacting on education and wellbeing but on environmental resilience. We know fiction can play a key role in communicating flood risk, and research has shown how stories of living with water and flood that are rooted in local literatures and histories can help make the global story of rising seas locally meaningful. We therefore need to equip communities at risk of flooding with the necessary cultural capital to enable them to communicate, contextualise, and historicise today's water risks in locally meaningful ways. 'Noah to Now' addresses this research gap by providing the first, in-depth account of how the centuries-long experience of living with flood risk in England's coastal and estuary regions leaves its mark on the distinctive literary identities that these cultures of risk help create. The project charts connections between literature and the lived experience of flooding across the longue durée - from Chaucer to contemporary climate fiction - and reads literature through a distinctive interdisciplinary lens that draws on Environmental History approaches to water risk management and participatory research methods from Cultural Geography.

The project pilots arts and humanities approaches to teaching the topic of flooding in primary schools by collaborating with project partner Hull Music Service; with six primary schools located in areas of Hull and Grimsby that have been identified by UK Government as priorities for flood risk awareness campaigns; and with a production team led by artistic director, Lisa Coates to co-produce public performances of Benjamin Britten's children's opera, 'Noyes Fludde' (1958), at Hull and Grimsby Minsters. The project will measure the impact of these collaborations on flood risk awareness and resilience via stakeholder interviews, audience evaluations, and ethnographic observations of young people, and will use fieldwork findings from our case study region to inform recommendations for future uses of flood stories in classrooms and communities across England. Outputs include a monograph, journal article and conference presentations; a collection of digital curriculum resources for teaching flooding through the arts and humanities in primary schools; and policy publications targeted at national and international education policy audiences.

The fellowship's findings will therefore be wide-reaching and transformative: for the disciplines of English, Education, Environmental History, and Cultural Geography; for coastal and estuary communities; for national sustainability and climate change education strategy; and for young people, who are likely to be most impacted by future flood risks and who therefore have most need for the arts and humanities-led adaptation strategies we co-develop here.