The Places that Speak to Us and the Publics We Talk With: Shaping Environmental Histories

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Context‘The Places that Speak to Us and the Publics We Talk With’ develops the work of two Networks funded under the Researching Environmental Change Network call: ‘Local Places, Global Processes: Histories of Environmental Change’ and ‘Cultural Spaces of Climate’. ‘Local Places’ revolved around three site-specific workshops on location at Wicken Fen (Cambridgeshire), Quantock Hills (Somerset), and Kielder Water and Forest Park (Northumberland). At each venue, we worked with a formal project partner - the National Trust, the AONB service and Northumbrian Water, respectively - and forged relationships with other environment management organizations, including the Forestry Commission and the Wildlife Trusts. We combined indoor pursuits such as academic papers, presentations by project partners and round table discussions involving partner representatives, with direct engagement with the locales themselves. The Cultural Spaces of Climate’ Network was more orientated towards traditional academic discourse in the seminar room, and entailed innovative engagement with arts and humanities representatives, the broader research community, learned and professional societies and the public sector, to identify ways to redress the global and scientific bias in climate discourse, to explore the meaning of climate for different groups in different spatial and temporal contexts and to interrogate climate’s ontological status. This joint proposal from the ‘Local Places’ Investigators and the Principal Investigator for ‘Cultural Spaces of Climate’ combines their experience and expertise in pursuit of a new round of activities that develops the original research agendas but uses them in combination to shed light on how processes of communication and the transformation of meaning in different contexts shape understanding of the environment, through the structured interaction of different research strands engaging with a variety of publics. Aims and ObjectivesThe principal aims are:1. To generate innovative and productive knowledge exchanges between academics studying past environmental change from arts and humanities perspectives and professionals – our project partners – who manage environments and address environmental change. 2. To endeavour to contribute to management decisions by applying perspectives that take account of human perceptions, community involvement and other cultural considerations. Our longer term aim is to help inform public policy.3. To examine, through the inter-relations of our different sub-projects embracing the broad category ‘the environment’, how different methods, contexts and publics, and processes of communication across these elements, shape environmental understanding and the translation of understanding across audiences. 4. To pursue a range of projects, workshops and events in collaboration with partners to secure these ends. Some of these undertakings are directly related to previous workshops and Network outputs: an interview project, with professionals involved in managing the site and local community members, and a workshop to advance the book arising from ‘Local Places’. Others are spin-offs: the Quantock Orchard Project to research the role of orchards in the local landscape; Walking Militarized Landscapes to devise walks around military training estates; a public lecture series on ‘Environmental Visions’ at Wicken Fen. These projects develop existing partner relationships (National Trust, AONB service and Northumbrian Water) and formalize links with the Forestry Commission and the Royal Geographical Society (With Institute of British Geographers). We bring the two Networks’ research directly together by investigating local co-production and reception of climate change adaptation strategies adopted by environmental managers. Potential applications and benefitsThe potential research applications include informing decisions by professionals who manage sites and address environmental change; heightening public awareness of such issues; providing insight on practices of communication and the emergence of meaning for academic and non-academic partners; and contributing to public policy decisions. With these in mind, we also plan a Journalism Workshop convened by Erin Gill, an environmental journalist, to explore how to extract newsworthy stories from our research, convey them in appropriate language and place them to maximize the public as well as scholarly value and impact.We will also hold a follow-up Forests and Woodlands Workshop with Forestry Commission and National Trust support, to bring historical, cultural and social perspectives to key concepts, such as ownership and management, community, access, and value, highlighted at our previous DEFRA meeting (September 2011).