Our approach
Working creatively, with communities in place, to produce collaborative outcomes that support positive change.
Communities
Severn StoryLab is working with communities living on the River Severn in Tewkesbury and Shrewsbury. Both towns are rich in history and have enduring and intimate relationships with the water that flows through them.
The garnering of intergenerational perspectives and the involvement of children and elders in conversations around flood resilience and water security plans amidst worsening climate extremes are currently limited. Our approach, therefore, centres on knowledge-exchange involving less heard voices across generations.
In each Severn-side town we’ve worked with a group of elders and a group of children, gathering their personal connections to the town and concerns and hopes for its future. We’ve supported exchanges of wisdom across the generations using video messages and poetry.
Creative methods
Our StoryLab workshops have combined creative mapping, storytelling, drama activities and imaginative writing to generate a rich array of memories, reflections and speculations from the children and elders we’ve been woring with.
FuturesLabs
Developed from the stories shared by the children and elders during the StoryLab workshops, a brand-new living script will be produced for each town. These will then be performed at the Roses Theatre in Tewkesbury and the Theatre Severn in Shrewsbury, followed by creative audience interaction to explore how communities can adapt to change together.
Created by the Tewkesbury and Shrewsbury communities, written with acta Community Theatre, performed by Drama students from UWE, Bristol, the FuturesLabs are an exciting new way to locally envision collective futures.
Our Partners
Our Stakeholder Panel consists of five partner organisations with expertise in water risk management, culture and comunity engagement from cultural and environmontal sectors. This Panel represents one key strand of the Severn StoryLab, ensuring that different organisational voices for climate resilience have opportunities to be involved early in the applied theatre process and to feedback as the stages progress in the two case study settings.
The Panel and researchers exchange knowledge iteratively for mutual learning throughout the Severn StoryLab process. Panel members share local specialist science along with adaptive and legislative knowledge. Researchers feed forward and back, sharing participant voices in the development of the script and its performance in the FuturesLabs and interdisciplinary expertise integrating applied theatre.