Creative Resilience through Community Imaginings

How might practices that stress imagination and connection inspire transformational agency and build communities' resilience in the face of environmental challenges and opportunities? The question, which brings together nine researchers from academia and civil society organizations, is the basis of this development proposal to generate a full-scale set of methods and approaches with which to begin to find an answer. It addresses head-on intractable problems that environmental social scientists have been attempting to tackle and which don't readily have a scientific solution, but are inherently context-based and culturally specific. We research the production of a practical method of engagement, informed by theories of performance and aesthetics, to contribute to knowledge on dealing with environmental change in the social, cultural and economic realms.

Evidence suggests that environmental crisis narratives, rather than spur people to take action, prompt feelings of anxiety, helplessness and disempowerment. Ultimately these narratives may serve to foster apathy and denial, discouraging people from considering alternatives or taking control. Behaviour change interventions, also aimed at encouraging environmentally-considerate behaviour, have tended to ignore concerns about status, ethical values and beliefs, identity, quality of life and fun, thereby stripping life of much that people value. This project addresses the need for a step-change in society's notion of everyday life (ie the small achievements and intuitions that provide our compass) to take account of a future with distinctly different environment, opportunities, and states of uncertainty. We will build a programme of work to address the scale and forms of change needed and to co-develop a change process that accounts for the factors that make life manageable and worth living. We take communities rather than individuals as our principal focus for inspiring creative resilience. The particular quality of this resilience is that it will withstand hardships and tensions arising out of the changes expected, but also respond ingeniously to solving the problems such change throws up. In this way, the proposal addresses not the changes needed, but the need for responsiveness to ongoing change and a strong sense that we are all future-making all of the time in all our actions.

Who will benefit from this research?

Since it is a short development project, the principal beneficiaries will be the immediate participants, which includes two community partners at present and will include more as the project is intended to build capacity. If we look at the potential of the wider project, the scope of impact increases substantially....

In the short-term (i.e. during the large project itself) beneficiaries will include the communities and project participants, local authorities, local strategic partnerships, parish and town councils, and third sector organizations involved with environmental and climate change issues.

In the medium-term, beneficiaries will include policy makers at the national level and in relevant government departments (Defra, DECC, DCLG), and in agencies specifically concerned with the impact of environmental change on communities (such as the Sustainable Communities arm of the Homes and Communities Agency).


How will they benefit from this research?

The answer to this question can be divided in two: those who will benefit from the research findings, and those who will benefit from the research process.

Research findings relate to the role of creative- and imagination-based strategies for creating resilience in the face of environmental change. These findings will improve environment-related public policy through analyzing the extent to which practices informed by theories of performance and aesthetics can enhance resilience in communities. Some of these benefits will be almost immediate - i.e. during the lifetime of the project. Community participants, for example, should experience enhanced resilience by the end of the project. Other benefits may take longer to establish - for example those outlined in the medium term category described earlier.

The research process will involve the development of skills that will benefit participants in the medium to long term. Individual researchers brought into the project, such as Research Assistants, will have the opportunity to develop qualitative and quantitative research and teamwork skills that will benefit them in future research-related projects. The central modus operandum of building communities of practice will benefit community participants by engaging and empowering them in the design of resilience practices. University-based researchers and third sector partners will learn how to work more closely together by synergizing their respective expertise.

What will be done to ensure that they benefit from this research?

The community beneficiaries will be engaged throughout the project as actual participants, and the co-production commitment will extend to communication activities themselves. User guides aimed at intended beneficiaries outside the community groups will be produced by the end of the project.

Other beneficiaries in the short-term (and beyond) group will be engaged through the setting up of steering groups. The project website will be a source of communication to all beneficiary groups throughout the life of the project and beyond. The project will end with a workshop to which representatives of the beneficiaries named above will be invited.