Coasts in Mind

Following up on the success of the CITiZAN project, MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) is launching Coasts in Mind (CIM), a citizen science project focused on uncovering evidence of coastal change in the UK from the 1920s onward. CIM aims to create a geospatially map of archival documentation provided by local communities and institutions, including photographs, pictures, and documents. The Heritage Centre's resources will also be investigated.

The collated evidence will form an open-access online repository fit to increase the public understanding of risk in coastal communities and promote discussion around resilience and longer-term safety and sustainability.

Impact

CIM will widen communities' recognition of the value and contributions that individual knowledge, memories and experiences, have for resilience and the understanding of change and risk. CIM will empower community members by sharing their stories and experiences, connecting individuals and community groups, and reducing social isolation.

Local heritage, including intangible heritage, will be better identified and its value explained through the voices of local people. This will produce data that can be used by policymakers and community groups to influence future coastal management strategies.

The recording of community information in the CIM Community Archive mapping platform will present new community-held knowledge and records, providing new heritage information and additional contextual information about local heritage and coastal change. CIM’s global connections through the steering group will ensure that data collected is widely interoperable with and complementary to similar datasets elsewhere in the world. 

The project is structured around five thematic strands of activities to be implemented over three years, from 2024 to 2027. 

1. Celebrating Memory, focuses on valuing local knowledge and experiences, particularly from older community members, to enhance understanding of coastal change. Activities include oral history interviews, group memory workshops, and walks, where participants contribute with their experiences and share and discuss documents and images. These activities help preserve local memories and integrate them into broader discussions about coastal change.
2. Creating Connections, aims to engage structurally disadvantaged groups through creative workshops and dissemination events. These events, co-designed with creative partners to explore coastal change themes. Perceptions and evidence of coastal change will be shared publicly through exhibitions and presentations. This approach ensures that a diverse range of voices is heard in the conversation about coastal change and community resilience. A conference to share project learnings and discuss potential global scaling will be held in the third year of the project.
3. Equipping Communities, focuses on upskilling young people from coastal communities aged 16-25. Through archival and foreshore training events, participants learn how to use records and contribute to the Community Archive. This theme emphasises the importance of building a knowledgeable young generation that can engage with and respond to future climate change challenges.
4. Future-Proofing Communities, offers two paid placements to local young people outside of work and education, providing them with practical skills and experience in coastal change research and community archive building. The placements include training in a wide range of skills, from oral history recording to public speaking and event management. These placements aim to empower local youth, ensuring that they can actively contribute to and benefit from coastal management initiatives.
5. Mapping Change and Building Global Networks, involves the development of a digital mapping platform that serves as the Community Archive. This platform will be a repository for data on coastal change and will be used by community members, policymakers, and the public. The platform’s development includes design, testing, and training phases, after which members of the local communities will upload records from the project’s priority regions. Additionally, the project aims to expand its methodology globally, with a steering group guiding this process through annual workshops.