About the project
Severn StoryLab is a creative research project exploring changing community relationships with water – past, present and future – in the River Severn-side towns of Tewkesbury and Shrewsbury.
Outline & Aims
Climate change impacts bring challenges and opportunities for communities in specific places. Often the voices involved in decision-making are limited to traditional groups and demographics.
Severn StoryLab is a creative research project exploring changing community relationships with water – past, present and future and flooding in the River Severn-side towns of Tewkesbury and Shrewsbury.
Focused on gathering intergenerational perspectives, we are working with older (60+) and younger (under 18) groups, using drawing, drama and storytelling to reveal local understandings and experiences.
Our aim is to find new and meaningful ways that communities can contribute to idea-generation and decision-making on climate action in the places they call home.
Severn StoryLab is part of the international Climate Collaboratorium project,working with less listened to communities in the UK, USA, Canada and Germany to explore how arts-based insights and methods can support community involvement in climate action to improve infrastructure, water, and livelihood security.
Meet the team
The Severn StoryLab team brings together academics and creative professionals from different disciplines and practices.
Lindsey McEwen
Principal Investigator
Professor of Environmental Management
Lindsey is a risk geographer and former Director of the Centre for Water, Communities and Resilience.
She delivers creative, interdisciplinary, co-produced research in different risk settings, working with diverse stakeholders, including less heard groups within communities.
Sarah Berridge
Theatre Maker
Senior Lecturer in Performance
Senior Lecturer in Performance at the University of the West of England, (UWE) Bristol.
Her teaching and research focus on socially engaged theatre, devised theatre practice, and mixed-media performance-making, with particular interest in the body in performance, participatory and feminist pedagogies and ecological performance.
Sarah’s current practice-based projects explore community theatre, ecological storytelling, and immersive performance-making.
Ingrid Jones
Scriptwriter
Associate Director, acta Community Theatre
Ingrid has has worked for acta community theatre since 1993.
She has written and directed numerous performances working with vulnerable and socially disadvantaged people.
She has worked on various university projects that use theatre to disseminate research. Ingrid has worked on various national and international community theatre projects and festivals.
Sun (Kwok Chun)
Climatologist & Hydrologist
Dr Kwok Chun is a geographer specialising in climatology and hydrology.
His work focuses on nonstationary environmental processes and extreme hydroclimate events.
He develops models to assess climate risks and promotes inclusive interdisciplinary approaches in water research, contributing to global climate adaptation and mitigation initiatives.
Kate Monson
Social Scientist
Research Associate
Kate’s work focuses on the shifting ways humans relate to and interact with watery environments in the context of socio-ecological crisis.
Spanning human geography and environmental humanities she uses creative and ethnographic methods to explore and express unexpected and hidden engagements within our more-than-human world.
Cliodhna Ryan (Clio)
PhD Candidate
Community Understandings & Experience
Clio has a background in both art practice and social science. She is interested in exploring and developing community and grassroots approaches to creating radical and emancipatory social ecological transformations.
She is inspired by feminist social ecological economics to consider ‘the economy’ as broader than usually understood, and containing all the ways in which we collectively meet our needs which shape how we relate to each other and our environments.
Project locations
Tewkesbury and Shrewsbury are historic towns situated on the River Severn. Both have rich river cultures and a long history of flooding.
Our collaborators
Severn StoryLab could not have happened without the support and input of a wide range of institutions, organisations and individuals.
Thanks first goes to the communities of Tewkesbury and Shrewsbury and our project participants who have so generously shared their stories with us.
Thanks also to the local organisations and institutions who have so supported our work.
Our funders
The Climate Collaboratorium project is supported through the International Joint Initiative for Research in Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation, and funded through the International Science Partnerships Fund (ISPF).
In the UK, the Severn StoryLab project is funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (Grant no: ES/Z000238/).
