Working in collaboration with the Living with Water Partnership, Hull City Council and a range of creative and community organisations, Risky Cities set out to address these gaps.
We employed innovative arts and humanities approaches to spark conversations about flooding and climate change and draw on community members’ own experiences.
Our researchers gathered Hull-based stories of flooding from an 800-year history of living with water risks, including recorded floods from the 1250s onwards and several major floods since 2000.
These stories were used in community-based arts and heritage events and activities, as well as large-scale cultural productions developed in collaboration with project partners, Absolutely Cultured and the National Youth Theatre.
Community participants were encouraged to explore these histories as well as their own experiences of living with water in arts workshops involving textiles or creative writing.
Evaluation was embedded into the project at every stage, from workshop participation through to attendance at performance and exhibition events. We used a range of social science methodologies with a focus on participants recounting the impact of their involvement in their own terms. Evaluation methods included surveys, participant interviews, focus groups and reflective journals.
Floodlights