This research funding provides opportunities for a large arts and humanities centred interdisciplinary research team to continue the development of an innovative strand of collaborative research which was conceived at the "Communities, Cultures, Environments and Sustainability Research Development Workshop, Bristol, 22-24 May 2012". This has been subsequently developed in team meetings and email exchanges. The aim is to develop the notion of hydrocitizenship through a multi-faceted programme of arts and humanities research in collaboration with other related disciplines - particularly geography, planning, landscape design and community studies. This research will involve non HEI partners (Landscape Institute) and will be co-developed with key stakeholders including the Environment Agency, local authorities other water/environment focused agencies. It will be located in three major national science and research contexts; United Kingdom Water Research and Innovation Framework (UKWRIF); National Ecosystem Assessment (NEA), and Making Space for Water (DEFRA 2005). The development programme will explore basic questions about how arts and humanities centred interdisciplinary research can investigate conflicts, issues and potentials relating to water resources and within communities. And from that base, make a difference in communities in terms of both social and environmental transition and resilience. Broader findings regarding the co-development of social and environmental sustainability in communities in the UK will be disseminated to both academic and policy communities. The research will focus on how a range of values, such as sense of place, can be integrated into emerging polcy/goverencance agenca of ecosystems services and cultural ecosystem services. A basic tenet of this proposal is that thinking beyond the social is a vital element of any large Connected Communities initiative which seeks to address questions of sustainability. Communities are often not aware of the systems which bring them a range of ecosystem services (and risk e.g. flooding) and this includes hydro-social cycles. Water is taken as a fundamental and pressing area of environmental concern and social justice. Questions of water security (flood, drought, water quality, access, water based ecosystem services) are some of the most important facing communities today in the UK and globally. Water issues interconnect local, regional, national, and global territories, and relate to multiple eco-social interdependences within and between communities. They also ask challenging questions about what communities are, how they work internally, how they are embedded in wider networks of connectivity (e.g. in river catchments). Water issues also offer very palpable examples of how individuals and communities (human and non-human) depend on, and are linked by, physical processes. Water is a particularly accessible way to engage communities with questions of sustainability in relation to a range of high profile eco-social challenges. We also seek to explore the challenges and benefits of moving water focused research from single issue foci (flood, drought) to a holistic approach, and how can the arts and humanties research play a central part in this?

This research aims to understand the value of the landscapes created around infrastructure projects in post-war Britain. As these landscapes are altered, it is important to understand their cultural value, amenity value and heritage value, alongside their environmental and ecological qualities. At the moment there is no established way of looking at all of the complicated factors that are involved in changing these landscapes. There are some existing ways of assessing landscapes, but it is hard to measure certain types of value, especially in and around the landscapes of infrastructure. Together with new and existing partners from universities, industry, government and the cultural sector, through a series of meetings and events, we will develop guidelines to help inform assessments of, and future decision-making about, landscapes of this type. In the sweeping modernisation of the post-war period, as the motorways, power stations and reservoirs were built, railways were closed and sites like open cast mines were recovered, there was official policy in place to create spaces for leisure and amenity alongside industrial development or reclamation. Landscape architects were employed to address issues of composition and visibility and the profession itself expanded in scope and scale as a response. The particular circumstances of governance and finance created an innovative and research-led holistic approach to infrastructural design. In February 2019 we held a conference about the Landscape and Architecture of Post-War British Infrastructure and one of the emerging themes was to do with the role of these landscapes to the public. Many of the sites are now more than 50 years old and their habitats, as well as their use, are well established as playgrounds, golf courses, sailing clubs, nature reserves, bridleways, cycle paths and sports fields. Like much of the peri-urban landscape in Britain, infrastructural landscapes are under development pressure, this research will provide new ways of thinking about the less obvious and multi-layered values of these sites by inviting contribution from a broad range of interested parties. Traditional forms of landscape assessment are based on quantitative methods and visual analysis, here we wish to understand the historic and socio-cultural values of these landscapes, the things that are hard to measure - like atmosphere, enjoyment, fulfilment, wellbeing, memory and association. One way of finding this out is to talk to those who use these sites, in a variety of ways. The social, cultural, ecological and amenity value of landscapes of infrastructure are closely tied to the communities where they developed, where lots of people relied upon them for employment. As these sites change, we seek to discover how to measure some of the intangible aspects of these landscapes and those aspects which should be thought about when assessing, protecting or developing them. In order to do so we will use skills that are typical of architectural research: we will find maps, plans, policy documents, government records and correspondence, and cross-reference these to give an account of the history and geography of particular sites. We will make new diagrams, maps, drawings and models using this information to visualise the change of landscapes to help us talk to artists, local communities and user groups about how they use the landscapes of infrastructure and how they value such spaces. We will ask our invited artists to share their methods of working with infrastructural landscapes and the values they place upon them. We will invite students to engage with the research and its synthesis and allow the wider public to share their views through the production of an exhibition. At the end of the project we will produce a collaborative report that summarises our findings and provides guidance to those forming decisions about the heritage and futures of the landscapes of infrastructure.

This research aims to understand the value of the landscapes created around infrastructure projects in post-war Britain. As these landscapes are altered, it is important to understand their cultural value, amenity value and heritage value, alongside their environmental and ecological qualities. At the moment there is no established way of looking at all of the complicated factors that are involved in changing these landscapes. There are some existing ways of assessing landscapes, but it is hard to measure certain types of value, especially in and around the landscapes of infrastructure. Together with new and existing partners from universities, industry, government and the cultural sector, through a series of meetings and events, we will develop guidelines to help inform assessments of, and future decision-making about, landscapes of this type. In the sweeping modernisation of the post-war period, as the motorways, power stations and reservoirs were built, railways were closed and sites like open cast mines were recovered, there was official policy in place to create spaces for leisure and amenity alongside industrial development or reclamation. Landscape architects were employed to address issues of composition and visibility and the profession itself expanded in scope and scale as a response. The particular circumstances of governance and finance created an innovative and research-led holistic approach to infrastructural design. In February 2019 we held a conference about the Landscape and Architecture of Post-War British Infrastructure and one of the emerging themes was to do with the role of these landscapes to the public. Many of the sites are now more than 50 years old and their habitats, as well as their use, are well established as playgrounds, golf courses, sailing clubs, nature reserves, bridleways, cycle paths and sports fields. Like much of the peri-urban landscape in Britain, infrastructural landscapes are under development pressure, this research will provide new ways of thinking about the less obvious and multi-layered values of these sites by inviting contribution from a broad range of interested parties. Traditional forms of landscape assessment are based on quantitative methods and visual analysis, here we wish to understand the historic and socio-cultural values of these landscapes, the things that are hard to measure - like atmosphere, enjoyment, fulfilment, wellbeing, memory and association. One way of finding this out is to talk to those who use these sites, in a variety of ways. The social, cultural, ecological and amenity value of landscapes of infrastructure are closely tied to the communities where they developed, where lots of people relied upon them for employment. As these sites change, we seek to discover how to measure some of the intangible aspects of these landscapes and those aspects which should be thought about when assessing, protecting or developing them. In order to do so we will use skills that are typical of architectural research: we will find maps, plans, policy documents, government records and correspondence, and cross-reference these to give an account of the history and geography of particular sites. We will make new diagrams, maps, drawings and models using this information to visualise the change of landscapes to help us talk to artists, local communities and user groups about how they use the landscapes of infrastructure and how they value such spaces. We will ask our invited artists to share their methods of working with infrastructural landscapes and the values they place upon them. We will invite students to engage with the research and its synthesis and allow the wider public to share their views through the production of an exhibition. At the end of the project we will produce a collaborative report that summarises our findings and provides guidance to those forming decisions about the heritage and futures of the landscapes of infrastructure.

We aim to investigate and develop what we are calling hydrocitizenship:- the extent to which hydrocitizenship is emerging in local areas and how it can be enhanced by arts and humanities centred interdisciplinary research (AHIR) conducted with community groups. Hydrocitizenship implies an awareness of, and responsibility for, water as a vital social and environmental resource at both the individual (citizen) and community level. Being a 'hydrocitizen' means recognizing the complex and interconnected nature of water issues in modern society; that choices and conflicts arise from the differing demands we put on water resources; and that climate change presents added sets of challenges to future water resilience. We seek to move beyond single issue foci of water (e.g. flooding, drought, water supply security, waste disposal security, water related biodiversity, water as amenity and cultural asset) to a more holistic approach which sees these issues as interdependent and operating in catchment and engineered systems which connect communities in numerous way (upstream, downstream, across the rural urban divide, across local and even national legislative boundaries). At the same time as addressing these water-community issues we will ask a series of questions about what (local) communities are (networks/place based); how they are formed/practiced 'internally'; how they are connected to other communities around them, and if, through thinking about environmental (water) based resources communities inevitably share (and are sometimes in conflict over), we can contribute to community and environmental resilience in interconnected ways. The detailed aims are to identify and study how local communities (and other agencies) are re-assessing their relationships with water assets and issues help enhance (or establish) local community connections to local water assets and issues consider water in a holistic, joined up way, rather than in a series of single issues (such as flooding, supply security, pollution) use water as a means of rethinking how local communities are formed and practiced consider how thinking about various water networks and issues, connect differing communities; for example up and down stream, conflicting uses of water course seek win-win synergies through addressing community/social challenges and environmental challenges in tandem place the above in national and local water focused policy initiatives reflect upon and share how arts based interdisciplinary participatory research with communities can make a significant impact in key social-environmental challenges A matrix of activities will take place across four study areas in England and wales. The overall academic team of 15 researchers from 9 universities will work with selected arts practitioners and community groups to conduct a series of participatory research project elements which will include performance, film, historical narratives. The exact form and direction of the activities will be the outcome of the preparatory co-working conducted with arts consultant and community partners. The interdisciplinary academic research linked to these elements will not only bring approaches and methods from related social science disciplines but aloes allow the research to be relevant in a range of disciplines and policy arenas.

Through a variety of co-produced public facing and academic activities this project will commemorate the network of women and their collaborators who have had a major impact on shaping the post-war designed landscapes of the British Welfare State. The project will challenge existing approaches in landscape history that focus on individual designers and key flagship design projects. 'Women of the Welfare Landscape' will shift attention to networks of professionals, their work as educators, campaigners and advocates, and projects of the everyday: landscapes in service of communities. As opposed to an object-focused analysis of exemplary private gardens, this project will analyse landscapes of public housing, public and country parks funded by municipalities and landscapes of infrastructure commissioned by publicly owned, nationalised industries, as material examples of landscapes for social benefits and 'fair share for all': a key objective of Welfare Planning. The project will examine whether the growing importance of the landscape profession in the post-war period, its shifting focus from private clients towards communities and a more available education system, led to a change in the professional habitus and social background of landscape architects. By using a contextual biographical approach, the project will place the collaborations and networks of Brenda Colvin (1897-1981) at the centre of the research, through which the wider questions will be explored. Brenda Colvin was born in India and, after being educated in Swanley Horticultural College, started her independent practice in 1922. She was the first woman to be elected president of any leading built environment institute, when she took on the role of President of the Institute of Landscape Architects in 1951. Her work not only defined the future of the Institute - and the profession - but also had lasting impact on the education of landscape architects. Her collaboration with Hal Moggridge through their practice Colvin & Moggridge ensured the lasting legacy of her work: the practice is now the longest running in the country and will celebrate its centenary in 2022. While the academic angle of the research will analyse and map Colvin's networks in a national and international professional, as well as British imperial context, a series of public facing events will commemorate the centenary of her practice and will contextualise this body of work within the questions of female leadership, the changing profession of landscape architecture, and the role of these landscapes in the current debates around accessibility of green spaces highlighted by the COVID19 pandemic and the Climate Crisis.