Making Sand Dunes Public: involving communities with living sea defences

Lead Research Organisation: The Open University
Department Name: Faculty of Arts and Social Sci (FASS)

Abstract

Making Sand Dunes Public (MSDP) is an experimental project exploring ways to build trust and support for coastal management by engaging and enrolling local publics centrally in practical decisions concerning the management and planning of sand dunes as a natural form of coastal defence. It starts from the premise that current complex environmental problems, such as those related to climate change, require new, more creative approaches to environmental decision making. These will necessitate more inclusionary process, incorporating many currently neglected and unheard voices, constituencies and forms of evidence within processes that build understanding, exchange and trust in times of environmental uncertainty.

The project is developed through a partnership with the Norfolk County Council (NCC) ENDURE (Ensuring Dune Resilience against Climate Change) project team which emerged in the later stages of the AHRC funded project Listening to Climate Change: experiments in sonic democracy (public facing title Sounding Coastal Change (SCC) (AH/P000126/1 01/09/2016 - 30/06/2019). ENDURE is a 2.1m Euro European funded project with partners in the UK (Norfolk), Belgium, France and the Netherlands. It aims to 'look at establishing sand dunes as adaptive, living sea defences'. Many traditional concrete sea defences are old and failing and can be expensive or challenging to maintain. Natural ecosystems can provide better, more resilient protection. However, building trust and collaboration with localities at an individual community level to develop and encourage natural sand dune systems remains both problematic. In North Norfolk this is reflected at two dune sites in particular: Holme-next-the-Sea and Brancaster. MSDP will partner with ENDURE to develop a workshop programme and facilitate a series of local public and community engagements which involve users and local publics in co-producing future management strategies for these key coastal dunes sites

The project builds on key aspects of methodology developed in public engagement work involving SCC and the Norfolk Coast Partnership (NCP) who produce the 5-year statutory management plan for the Norfolk Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). NCP will co-partner MSDP and NCC as part of their remit in increase public engagement in the AONB planning process. Building trust through local involvement, in environmental policy and management has been highlighted as a key national issue in the current period of climate change and uncertainty. MSDP contributes to developing the mutual understandings, shared knowledge bases and co-created solutions that are fundamental to building resilience and ongoing and flexible adaptation strategies for coastal locations. These become increasingly vital in the face of sea level rises, increased flooding, inundation and more volatile coastlines resultant from climate change.

Aims and Objectives
* Develop and facilitate a series of workshops and events at the two north Norfolk sand dune sites in order to improve the cooperation between site managers, the local community, visitors and local businesses;
* Involve neglected and unheard voices, constituencies and multiple forms of evidence within processes that build understanding, exchange and trust in the management of the sand dunes;
* Engage schools, volunteers, local groups and publics in devising, implementing and taking responsibility for dune management plans;
* Explore, trial and develop a new facilitated collaborative working methodology for environmental engagement involving local schools, volunteers, groups, publics, environmental and conservation groups with environmental and planning professionals;

Publications

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McNally D (2023) Planning, Art, and Aesthetics Edited by Katie McClymont and Danny McNally in Planning Theory & Practice

 
Title Audio documentary Holme Dunewalk 
Description This is an audio documentary about living sand dunes made in collaboration with Norfolk County Council and the ENDURE living sand dunes project. It was made by project team members Kim Hammond and Chris Bonfiglioli. Duration 27.50 mins. 
Type Of Art Film/Video/Animation 
Year Produced 2022 
Impact This is part of an ongoing engagement strategy with local people and visitors. 
 
Title Audio documentary Winterton Dunewalk 
Description This is an audio documentary about living sand dunes made in collaboration with Norfolk County Council and the ENDURE living sand dunes project. It was made by project team members Kim Hammond and Chris Bonfiglioli. Duration 15.04 
Type Of Art Film/Video/Animation 
Year Produced 2022 
Impact This is part of an ongoing engagement strategy with local people and visitors. 
 
Title Dunewalk Holkham North Norfolk Coast 
Description This is an audio documentary about living sand dunes made in collaboration with Norfolk County Council and the ENDURE living sand dunes project. It was made by project team members Kim Hammond and Chris Bonfiglioli. Duration 16.40 mins 
Type Of Art Film/Video/Animation 
Year Produced 2022 
Impact This is part of an ongoing engagement strategy with local people and visitors. 
 
Title Living Sand dunes 
Description This is an video documentary about living sand dunes made in collaboration with Norfolk County Council and the ENDURE living sand dunes project. It was made by project team members Kim Hammond and Chris Bonfiglioli. Duration 30 mins 
Type Of Art Film/Video/Animation 
Year Produced 2021 
Impact This is part of an ongoing engagement strategy with local people and visitors 
 
Title Living well with Dunes 
Description This postcard explores a nature-based solution to coastal defence - a highly controversial issue for locals and planners in the region where hard engineering solutions have frequently been deployed as a matter of common practice. The centre of the piece is an online workshop discussion with researchers from Sounding Coastal Change, collaborators with expertise in coastal management from Norfolk Coast Partnership and Norfolk County Council and a sound artist. Sand dunes are living entities that continually change - sometimes quickly over weeks and months, and sometimes slowly and imperceptibly over decades and centuries. It is this very flexibility that enables dune structures to absorb the sea's power, providing an organic coastal defence from flooding. The work evokes the vitality of the natural sand dune systems, as well as voicing the key species that dwell there: the marram grass, the natterjack toads and the skylarks. These constituents are fundamental to the dune's health and to the region's flourishing biodiversity. (8 mins) 
Type Of Art Composition/Score 
Year Produced 2023 
Impact On permanent exhibition at Wells Maltings Heritage Centre. 
URL https://www.wellsmaltings.org.uk/living-well-with-dunes/
 
Title Sounding out Wells 
Description Exhibition formed from eight 'sonic postcards', creative sound works which engage with social issues and environmental concerns faced by people at Wells next the Sea. Each postcard last between 6 and 14 minutes duration.. The postcards are: School's Out, Sea Change, Living Well with Dunes, Wells Past, Lifeboat Horse, Living with Terns, Lobster Catch, Fishing for Life. There is also a short round table discussion which describes the making of the sonic postcards. These form a permanent exhibition with a listening station in the Heritage Gallery but are also set out as a dedicated Web page on the Wells Maltings Web site. 
Type Of Art Artistic/Creative Exhibition 
Year Produced 2023 
Impact On permanent exhibition in the Wells Maltings Heritage Centre Galleries. 
URL https://www.wellsmaltings.org.uk/whats-on/sounding-out-wells/
 
Description Environmental decision-making and planning in relation to living sand dunes must itself be a learning process and needs to be thought about, theorised, and set out as learning experiences that allow a creative space for reflection, understanding others and imagining possible futures. Thought this way, learning is a process supported by creativity and curiosity.

Publics might better understand and appreciate science and policy drivers, whilst professionals may recognise and find value in local knowledges and those grounded in everyday skills, practices and experiences. This suggests to us the importance of making art and creative works into deliberative and conversational processes which facilitate mutual learning and understanding both within and between the diverse groups involved.

In the context of our work living sand dunes, trust between publics, politicians, planners and politicians is widely recognised as a major issue. For us facilitating mutual learning through creative practice is an important way of encouraging the mutual recognition and transformative understandings that can build confidence between the diverse groups involved.
Exploitation Route It should be useful in relation to the use of creative practice in situations that require the development of community resilience. See Griffin, Revill, Hammond and Wellesley-Smith (forthcoming) 2024.
Sectors Communities and Social Services/Policy

Environment

 
Description They facilitated Norfolk County Councils, objective to educate and involve local publics in relation to their work on living sand dunes and forms of sea defence as part of Norfolk County Council's involvement in the Interreg funded ENDURE project. https://www.norfolk.gov.uk/article/39478/ENDURE-project
 
Description NCC ENDURE - Making Sand Dunes Public Film 
Organisation Norfolk County Council
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Public 
PI Contribution We facilitated the film production - with Chris Bonfiglioli and Kim Hammond (of the project team) working as the film production team including on location filming, interviews, sound work and editing the footage into a 30 minute film
Collaborator Contribution The NCC ENDURE team (Alex Larter and Mel Gillings) organised a week of filming events on the Norfolk coast including arranging all the interviews with local people, Councillors, representatives from two local parish councils and land management agencies (Norfolk Wildlife Trust). They cleared the rights for filming at various sites and with people interviewed in the film, conducted a comprehensive risk assessment, assisted with the film team on location and participated in the film.
Impact https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDvHqjsUsAM&t=1s The film Living with Dunes is located here on the ENDURE you tube channel.
Start Year 2021
 
Description AHRC BBC Radio 3 Green Thinking Podcast 
Form Of Engagement Activity A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press)
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Green Thinking: Seascapes and Blue Gold
"Dr Emma McKinley and Professor George Revill share their research on how climate change affects oceans, and and what they have learnt working with local communities."

Green Thinking podcast with Eleanor Barraclough. This special series has been created in partnership between the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (part of UKRI). There aretwenty-six episodes which take a deep-dive into the latest research on the climate and nature emergency, ahead of COP26 in November 2021.
Duration 27 mins 08/06/2021
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
 
Description International Conference Presentation - ENDURE end of project conference. Film and Discussion 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Kim Hammond and Chris Bonfiglioli of the project team presented the film Living with Dunes at the Interreg 2 Seas ENDURE project Closing Conference in Norwich, and conducted a discussion (virtual and in person event)
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021