'Working Waters' explored the rain, rivers and run off and their disregard for the systems that govern them. Bringing together the different relationships & logics that sit at the centre of our attempts to manage water, it resulted in a 'war room' strategic operations model in which multiple stakeholders shared their knowledge and acted out their frustrations.
Commissioned by Arts Catalyst and working with anthropologist Dr Megan Clinch, the project spanned five years and at each turn, who we met and what we found shaped the direction the project took. Different tools, props, artworks and techniques were devised to enable conversations and new perspectives, histories & framings.
Working Waters took the wide-ranging concerns people had around water, flooding and governance and share them with one another. Gatherings were structured through a series of role play scenarios offering people the opportunity to not only understand the complex picture, but also, create a world through which future actions could be imagined and debated.
As the model toured the Calder we developed our skills and thinking around collaborative and equitable spaces for imagining environmental futures. This experience helped establish the foundations for ‘Towards a Common Waters Policy'.
