Community Waterscapes

Lead institution: University of Hull

The Energy and Environment Institute’s new project Community Waterscapes seeks to unravel Hull’s rich cultural history and heritage of living with water. We want to generate a dialogue around the intricate relationship between water, community, and material culture within the city, documenting how these elements have collectively shaped peoples understanding of watery environments over time. The stories shared by the community participants help us identify heritage (tangible and intangible) that is currently lost, unknown, under-represented or downgraded and create a record of the changing cultural landscape in the city. By researching heritage through this bottom-up approach, Community Waterscapes documents lived experiences, local knowledge, and environmental understandings related to life in a dynamic estuarine city. The data collected will be incorporated into a publicly accessible Story Map which will provide a digital, community-led heritage record of people’s connection to water – including personal stories, objects, buildings, landmarks and memories.

Community Waterscapes carried out its first two workshops in the city of Hull on the 11th and 25th of July. Dr Katerina Velentza, Dr Hannah Worthen, Dr Edward Brookes and Dr Kate Smith worked with participants at the Western library and the Wilberforce House Museum sharing their stories of living with watery environments in the city from the past to the present. Participants also explored a variety of historical maps tracking changes in the maritime setting of Hull and were given an opportunity to map places of significance to them at present, places they remember from the past, which are currently lost, as well as areas that could be better preserved and more accessible in the future​. This enabled participants to share stories of their own multi-generational maritime family histories, alongside photographs and images of how the city and its maritime planning had changed, images and stories of favourite landmarks, favourite walks and watery landscapes – each revealing the dynamic and intimate relationships they had with the surrounding rivers, estuary and the North Sea.

Our work addresses the 10 Challenges of the Ocean Decade and particularly Challenge 10 that aims at ‘changing humanity’s relationship with the ocean’ contributing to broader discussions around the importance of conserving local history, heritage and communities in the face of changing climates and landscapes.

The project will continue with more knowledge exchange activities in 2025 to address the need for long-term, multi-layered cultural engagement around life by the water and the corresponding environmental issues. Our data will be also presented to our local councils with the intention to influence decision making regarding spatial planning, attribution of heritage significance and environmental action.

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