Storying Water
Challenge
Water system resilience is a critical issue of our time, and yet many people do not fully understand the complex challenges involved in bringing drinkable water to our taps, the risks to water resilience in the UK, and the positive role that every stakeholder can play. The collaboration between SWW and CREWW is producing vital research on these issues, and yet many people are unaware of the developments in research and in its value. Moreover, trust has become a critical issue between water companies and the public, and dominant media narratives do not reflect the multifaceted work that SWW is doing, in collaboration with CREWW, to ensure that the water system remains resilient at a time of climate change and biodiversity decline.
In this challenging environment, the arts have a vital role to play in increasing and deepening public engagement, inspiring action to help to conserve water and contribute to water resilience, and also in generating new ideas and connections between professionals involved in the water sector. Storying Water is a pioneering artist residency project aiming to address these problems.
Research
The project is led by Dr. Ellen Wiles: artist-in-residence at CREWW, and a novelist, sound artist, anthropologist, producer, former barrister, and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing. She has developed an innovative body of environmental creative work focused around immersive narrative audio experiences created through commissions and partnerships. She researches and develops her creative work collaboratively, working with scientists and other experts in the water system, ranging from senior regulators to farmers and fishermen, to translate their experience and ideas into compelling audio storytelling, and to explore new possibilities for arts-based engagement with environmental science research.
Storying Water is an arts-led research project to explore our water system: what it means to people, how it works, challenges involved in maintaining it, species affected by human uses of it, why its future resilience is threatened, and, in the face of environmental emergency, what is needed to improve and protect it into the future.
Research
Impact
The project has produced as variety of high-impact outputs, including a series of creative workshops for water system experts; a water-themed book club for scientists; Shifting Waterscapes, an exhibition at Thelma Hulbert Gallery involving a new installation, Springs and Seepages, which was shortlisted for a nature award; and Ripple Effects, a microfestival at the Northcott Theatre involving leading artists and scientists.
One of the culminating outputs is the Storying Water podcast: a ten-part series, following the path of the Exe from source to sea. Using the river as a guide to explain how the water system works and how it can become more resilient in the face of climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss and growing demand for water. Combining descriptive storytelling, expert interviews, scientific research and local case studies, the podcast reveals the complexity and interconnectedness of the water system, problems threatening its health, effectiveness and sustainability, and explains how its future resilience depends on natural ecosystems, innovation, collaboration, regulation, and imagination.
Project team
Funded by
