Learning to Live with Water: Flood histories, Environmental Change, Remembrance and Resilience

Floods and issues of 'living with environmental change' are high on research and political agendas - with community lead adaptation planning being a key element in UK flood risk management strategies after Pitt's Review of the 2007 floods.This requires communities who learn from past floods, have a strong sense of their flood histories and an awareness of risk, and know how to live with flooding. While there has been considerable research endeavour to establish what environmental and social sciences can bring to understanding flood histories and environmental change, there has been little research on what arts and humanities research can bring to research on flood histories, wet landscapes and their environmental change.
This research network therefore aims to establish distinctive, innovative and engaging arts and humanities research perspectives on watery and flooded landscapes and their environmental change through an excellent interdisciplinary and inter-professional network of international significance. The sub-aims involve a focus on the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings to research on wet landscapes, on researching the changing and potential role of different creative practices in materialising informal knowledge about flood histories, and on applying this research in new contexts of social learning and building community resilience in scenarios of changing flood risk. This network will be fuelled and sustained through an integrated programme of activities. The core activity will be three seminars that build from the 'formal' to 'informal' and culminate in an innovative Living Flood History Conference: 'Floods and Futures: Learning to live' that combines positioning new research explorations with performance and creative arts. Throughout the networking research programme, the project will also engage in explorations with the wider national and international community of researchers in the Arts and Humanities, through a weblog.
Network discussions start with a seminar exploring Flood histories and environmental change: theoretical and conceptual frameworks for watery landscapes and living with floods. This is designed to bring arts and humanities researchers in cultural geography, history and heritage together with those in other disciplines to explore understandings of wet and episodically flooded landscapes. The second workshop focuses on understandings of flood heritage and examines flood archives as a resource for exploring known pathways to resilience. The third workshop considers flood stories/narratives around flooding and how these can bring new understandings around social learning and resilience to flooding. The final AHRC network event will be a Living Flood Histories Conference: 'Learning to live: Floods and Futures'. This will focus on developing key research themes that have evolved from the first three workshops. It is anticipated that these will revolve around research explorations of sustainable wet landscapes: theoretical/conceptual underpinnings for research on flood histories and environmental change in the Arts and Humanities; researching changing ways in which floods memories, archives and mnemonic practices are experienced, remembered, materialised, formalised and enhanced; researching flood memory - developing social learning in communities for flood resilience; researching flooding and diversity - sustainable communities, intergenerational communication; and cultural diversity; researching flooding and creativity: exploring the creative strategies of individuals and communities for managing flooding and flood risk; and researching floods and connectivity: exploring the local to global connections between flood-risk communities. Research outputs include the launch of a Learning to Live: Floods and Futures network, a website; an edited interdisciplinary volume of research papers and a series of performances/artefacts that will be cascaded in flood risk communities.

This research will benefit:
* researchers (national and international) working in the Arts and Humanities and workers in other disciplines that focus on flood histories, wet landscapes and their environmental change
* the development of interdisciplinary research Centre for the Study of Floods and Communities at UoG in new cross-disciplinary research-practice collaborations. This will draw in and benefit the academic networks of the Centre.
* practitioners in archives and storytelling and creative writing from communities which have recent experience of flooding and those that have only experienced flooding episodically and recently
* researchers and practitioners in flood science and environmental change, local flood risk management and building community resilience to changing flood patterns
* practitioners/ community members who can use the research to help facilitate social learning about changing flood risk within communities
* policy-makers in flood risk management at different scales who are responsible for social learning and building resilience (Environment Agency, Local Authorities, Parish Councils)
* the public sector including museums who can utilise the research in public/ community engagement and in supporting communities to remember new floods.
* the wider public who will have opportunity to engage with the resources on the web site and with the research forms and performances.

All groups will benefit in developing their knowledge and skills in how arts and humanities research can bring new perspectives and approaches to flood histories and environmental change. The impact of this research on flood histories will be high in theoretical, practice and policy terms, nationally and internationally. Theoretical explorations will significantly extend and develop understandings of wet landscapes. In policy terms, flooding is one of the major risks facing many communities in developed and developing societies. We feel that explorations around art and humanities approaches to researching wet landscapes, flood histories and environmental change will provide new insights into how communities remember and memorialise and learn from floods that can be used by communities and those responsible for social learning in flood risk areas. This can inform those who are developing new ways of 'communities remembering floods' in the 21st century to increase resilience. Watery senses of place and even individual and collective identities which incorporate recognition of flood risk and develop attitudes of coping/living with flood events will be a vital component of flood risk planning at the community level. This research network thus has the potential to make a significant contribution to flood policy discourses/practices. The beneficiaries will gain increased understanding of research in arts and humanities disciplines and advancement of knowledge of how these disciplines can contribute to debates around social learning in new flood risk settings. Hydrologists/ flood risk managers will benefit from being exposed to wider research perspectives. The dissemination strategy will ensure that all stakeholder groups have the opportunity to benefit from this research. Promotion of the research will involve dissemination for information, for change and for action. Stakeholder engagement and knowledge co-generation will be built and integrated throughout the research process. The project will produce a public facing website and a series of articles in non-academic publications such as national newspapers. The research will integrate links with external organisations with a stake in developing social learning and community resilience in flood risk contexts. The emphasis will be on on-going, interactive dialogue and interaction throughout the project, with representatives of key gatekeepers, local practitioners in local government,