Bringing science and art together with the ‘Land of the Summer People’ project

www.thelandofthesummerpeople.org

Ludovica Beltrame – Engineering PhD candidate with the Water Informatics: Science and Engineering (WISE) CDT

The Somerset Levels and Moors are a low lying region prone to frequent flooding due to a range of environmental and human factors. The history of drainage and flooding in the Levels is rich and unique, yet its present condition is unstable and its future uncertain. Winter 2013-14 for example saw extensive floods in the Levels that attracted significant media attention and triggered debate on how such events can be mitigated in the future. The Land of the Summer People Science & Art project brings together engineering PhD students with local artists to increase public awareness and understanding of the Somerset floods. Scientific understanding and traditional engineering tools are combined with the artists’ creativity to prompt discussions about the area’s relationship with floods in a medium designed to be accessible and enjoyable.

Working at this project was an unprecedented experience. Not only it was a chance to explain something that we do to a wider public, but also an opportunity to learn something ourselves that we do not usually learn from data and numerical analyses.

The topic my group chose to focus on is the future of flooding in the Somerset Levels and Moors. The starting point was our scientific knowledge about the topography of the area, the current action plan, and climate and land use change potentially impacting flooding in the future. From here, guided by the artist we were working with, we went through a process thinking about how we could convey this information. How do we communicate to the future? How do we communicate to the present to shape the future? There was the need of some research and experimentation, but in a new different way compared to what we are used to. This time it was all about thinking about how to engage with the public, what techniques to use, what materials to employ.

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We came up with the idea of making a flood survival kit, containing several items bringing together ideas about causes and impacts of flooding in the area, as well as symbolic tools for adapting to floods. The plan was to give our kits to people walking on the street and start conversations about flooding, aiming at raising awareness on the topic and stimulating interest and responses. The performance took place in Taunton on March 17th. At first, it was exciting and scary at the same time: howto approach people? Will they be keen on talking with us? What will they expect? What will they tell us? However, very soon we felt much more comfortable and giving our kits not only provided us with the chance to talk about our project, but also opened the opportunity for establishing deeper connections with people, sharing stories and memories. Studying the physical processes of floods or the topography of the area does not make you aware of the experience of flooding and the effects the local communities have to cope with. Most of the people we met and talked to had actually experienced flooding or knew someone who had experienced it and it was interesting engaging and listening to their stories.

For us engineers, finding an alternative way to talk about flooding was challenging. However, using art to communicate with people turned out to be a nice way of generating interesting discussions and adopting a different perspective helped us understanding aspects of what we study and work on that data cannot teach us.

Bringing science and art together with the ‘Land of the Summer People’ project

www.thelandofthesummerpeople.org

Laurence Hawker – Engineering PhD candidate with the Water Informatics: Science and Engineering (WISE) CDT

The Somerset Levels and Moors are a low lying region prone to frequent flooding due to a range of environmental and human factors. The history of drainage and flooding in the Levels is rich and unique, yet its present condition is unstable and its future uncertain. Winter 2013-14 for example saw extensive floods in the Levels that attracted significant media attention and triggered debate on how such events can be mitigated in the future. The Land of the Summer People Science & Art project brings together engineering PhD students with local artists to increase public awareness and understanding of the Somerset floods. Scientific understanding and traditional engineering tools are combined with the artists’ creativity to prompt discussions about the area’s relationship with floods in a medium designed to be accessible and enjoyable.

After months of work, the day of the exhibition finally came. With a sense of curiosity mixed with a dose of trepidation, we met at the Exeter community centre to set up. As we were uploading the works and strategically positioning in the room, I was struck by the diversity of works – from drawings that exuded characteristics of medieval maps to mobile numbers engraved on stones that replied with informative quotes. Yet they all had a common theme in their interactivity showing how this common space between art and engineering can be used to convey a message. It was also interesting to note that despite the works being completed, the presentation and organisation within the room was carefully considered in order to not only look aesthetically pleasing but to also effectively communicate our work.

Comments expressed during the exhibition were encouraging with healthy interaction between the public and exhibitors. On the most part, the visitors seemed to understand the messages being conveyed, which was certainly aided by the artistic element. Visitor feedback was positive and certainly builds a solid foundation for future projects which is thankfully being planned. Apart from being informative, the exhibition created a friendly, relaxed atmosphere in which the presented concepts could be discussed.

On a personal note: whilst all of us are a part of our particular departments we are also part of a wider university and even society as a whole. Thus, sometimes we need to dismantle our boundaries and prejudices to other disciplines and areas to take in their ideas so more people can understand our research. Ultimately, if no one can understand our work it is futile. Thus, even though projects like the Land of the Summer People are not all always available, it is still easy to read papers or attend lectures from other disciplines, and I would highly encourage anyone to do this. Even from my limited experience of coming from a geography background into engineering, I can safely say that I have taken a lot from both disciplines. This doesn’t make me any better than someone who has stuck to one discipline, but it has opened my eyes to different practices and language that are used. You never know what you might learn!

Bringing science and art together with the ‘Land of the Summer People’ project

www.thelandofthesummerpeople.org

Barnaby Dobson – Engineering PhD candidate with the Water Informatics: Science and Engineering (WISE) CDT

The Somerset Levels and Moors are a low lying region prone to frequent flooding due to a range of environmental and human factors. The history of drainage and flooding in the Levels is rich and unique, yet its present condition is unstable and its future uncertain. Winter 2013-14 for example saw extensive floods in the Levels that attracted significant media attention and triggered debate on how such events can be mitigated in the future. The Land of the Summer People Science & Art project brings together engineering PhD students with local artists to increase public awareness and understanding of the Somerset floods. Scientific understanding and traditional engineering tools are combined with the artists’ creativity to prompt discussions about the area’s relationship with floods in a medium designed to be accessible and enjoyable.

lotsp-posterHaving worked on the early stages of this project researching the history and hydrology of flooding and drainage in the Somerset Levels I thought I was well prepared for the art stages to follow. I was decidedly wrong! The first workshop involved making a standard engineering-style poster containing information in the area our group had chosen to focus on; in my case the future of flooding in the region. This was a pretty standard summary of climate change impacts, land use change and a critique on the present policy which will shape the region over the next 5-20 years.

The next workshop saw us transform this information into a more ‘arty’ format. We chose a newspaper style article from 5 years in the future. In civil engineering (my undergraduate background) there’s a strong perception that the public don’t know anything about engineering and that they demand only bottom-up management towards their own interests; and this was definitely present in my article. Regardless of the truth or fallacy in this assumption, taking this attitude will not gain you public support for your project and, importantly, you will very likely miss out on important information that stakeholders could provide you with.

Each group began work with a Somerset artist to create art out of their topics and ideas. Our group is currently putting together a ‘flood survival kit’ containing items which aim to bring together ideas about the impacts and mechanisms behind flooding. Putting this together has been constant interplay between engineers looking to add purpose to items and our artist looking to reduce purpose with a much heavier use of metaphors/symbolism. Items include purpose-heavy hand-made water filters (from drinking bottles and sand!) and metaphor-heavy sponges and boats (made from Somerset clay).

Additionally our group will be inscribing rocks around Somerset with a text-number which will provide flood relevant proverbs or information when a message is sent to them. This was inspired by tsunami warning rocks in Japan!

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An original tsunami warning rock in Japan courtesy of the Huffington Post, 4th June 2011.

On 25th March, all the groups presented their projects in an exhibition in the Exeter Community Centre.

Our most valuable return on these projects are the skills in working with the public we will gain. After all, even capital projects designed with a stakeholder’s desires and demands in mind won’t work if the stakeholder rejects them. The pre-industrial history of the Somerset Levels illustrates this perfectly as drainage works in the region have typically been vandalised and prevented from working due to public opposition (an interesting contrast to the present dredging-heavy mentality!).

 

Science & Art – Land of the Summer People

www.thelandofthesummerpeople.org

Wouter Knoben (Engineering PhD candidate with the Water Informatics: Science and Engineering (WISE) CDT

Working together at the first workshopThe Somerset Levels and Moors are a low lying region prone to frequent flooding due to a range of environmental and human factors. The history of drainage and flooding in the Levels is rich and unique, its present condition is unstable and its future uncertain. Winter 2013-14 for example saw extensive floods in the Levels that attracted a great deal of media attention and conflicting opinions on what to do how to prevent this from happening again. The Science & Art project brings engineering PhD students together with local artists, to increase public awareness and understanding of the Somerset floods. Scientific understanding and traditional engineering tools are combined with the artists’ creativity, in an effort to make discussions about the area’s history, present and future more accessible and enjoyable.

Coming from an engineering background, the prospect outlined above slightly scared me at first. As an engineer, you rarely use art as a tool in your work and, funnily enough, doesn’t appear during your university courses either. The few interactions with artists (as colleagues in a bar) and art (sporadic museum visits) left me very sceptic as to the success of this cooperation. Sure, art can be nice to look at, but what is the point of it when you’re trying to convey the results of your studies on flood risk?

This project is divided into a couple of workshops, and the differences between engineers and artists was apparent right from the start. We (the engineers) tried to convey as much knowledge about the Somerset Levels as we could cram onto our posters. Dates, history, water safety plans, references, whatever information was available. The artists then showed us some of their work. We saw sketches of landscapes reflecting in water, paintings of local soldiers in shoe polish and visual representations of sound waves to name a few things.

For the next workshop we were asked to change our original posters in any way we saw fit, based on the things we picked up from our first art workshop. This turned out to be not as easy as we’d hoped. After years of being trained to present information in a thorough and accurate way, making the necessary switch to create something that could be called artistic is difficult. We mostly managed to present the, admittedly dry, material on the posters into a somewhat more appealing way. The idea to do something else than conveying information was still difficult to bring into practise.

As the artists kept reminding us, it is not always necessary to convey knowledge to the viewer of our work. Sometimes it is enough to make someone think about a certain topic you think is important, or to simply present some specific theme in an intriguing, appealing or interesting way. In the third workshop we began to form ideas based on this line of thinking. Transferring information and creating knowledge for the viewer are still important parts of the work, but they have become secondary rather than primary objectives. Now we’re hard at the work to make our ideas become reality!

These workshops have been good to show some perspective. As a specialist, you would normally want to present as much of your gathered information and knowledge as you possibly can, but this quickly becomes overwhelming for someone unfamiliar to the topic. Collaborating with artists can be a good way to introduce a specialised topic to a wider audience in an entertaining and accessible way, while at the same time teaching us how laypeople might think about our subjects.

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