What's On

In recent years, research in various disciplines has demonstrated the importance of inclusive and transdisciplinary modes of water governance (if this is even the right word) for both human and non-human health and wellbeing.  Bringing this about in real world contexts of inequalities and competing interests can, however, be something else entirely! This challenge has encouraged scholars to experiment, to push their usual modes of engagement and thinking across disciplines and publics.

Last year, the Ilkley Clean River Group’s (ICRG) (https://sites.google.com/view/cleanwharfeilkley/home) citizen-led campaign achieved a first for rivers in the UK – bathing water status for a stretch of the Wharfe, Yorkshire. As a key figure in the ICRG, Kathleen Roberts will share some of her experiences within this potentially transformative process.

In April 2021, Vania Belén Suárez and Amy Sharrocks met on a street corner in Leeds for a conversation about water as part of The Ballad of Crown Point Bridge. By the banks of the River Aire, at the very point that it connects with the Leeds & Liverpool Canal and the Aire & Calder Navigation which bisect England, they began a conversation about water as a natural element which led them into the connections of water with migration, mobility among nation-states, border control and race.

In recent years, a great deal of research across various disciplines has demonstrated the need to develop inclusive and transformative modes of water governance (if this is even the right word) that can make space for a multiplicity of water knowledges, experiences and values. Actually doing this in real world contexts of competing interests and forms of evidence is another question of course! Some of the most inventive and promising approaches toward addressing this conundrum have come from the arts. As part of the Water@Leeds water governance webinar series (https://cgd.leeds.ac.uk/events/), The School of Performance and Cultural Industries and the Water Value Research Group invite you to a presentation and discussion involving three fantastic speakers who will share some of their experiences of working with water, people and art in the UK and South Africa.

This GCRF project, part of Changing the Story, emerges from a partnership with Tshisimani Centre for Activist Education, Bottomup NGO and researchers from  the University of Leeds – Schools of PCI and Geography. We worked with 25 young people from the Cape Flats and nearby, this project considers how young people in South Africa perceive and respond to the post-Apartheid social and political landscape, examining the arts and education as methods that generate active partnerships to address and transform issues of hopelessness, injustice and lack of visibility among the country’s youth.