The fellowship addresses a pressing question of methods to promote future-orientated thinking in relation to climate breakdown. Creative practitioners are increasingly using immersive and embodied participatory techniques, such as role-play, to help people imagine different futures and how these might be achieved, in response to the multiple crises facing the planet. These techniques involve invoking new relations with the world and with each other, intended to inspire a sense of agency, stimulate imagination and promote different kinds of sustainability. Yet little is known about how the design and structure of such 'experiences' create effects. This research uses fine-grained interviewing and observation techniques to explore, with leading practitioners, how these embodied encounters might be working to engage people, how they link personal meaning-making to global issues, and which aspects of embodied, immersive and participatory engagements work best to inspire change across which contexts. With failures of leadership in addressing climate and other ecological crises, there is an 'urgent need to understand how to imagine and enact cultural change' (creaturesframework.org/index.html) and find new mechanisms for societal transformation. The research explores people's feelings and ideas - moment by moment - when they experience role-play (and related immersive embodied 'experiences') designed to change their eco-social orientation, agency and ideas for action. Arts and humanities initiatives that channel affective experience in the service of transformation are gaining momentum because they can offer hope and new pathways for action, inspiring deeper reorientation than information from science alone can. Different alternative futures can be designed and presented through immersive play, affecting people's sense of potential and provoking sensorial, relational, embodied and/or emotional encounters with possibilities. The fellowship research will explore these visions of change and how their design - to enable people to imagine difference by experiencing it - can best be worked into types of immersive situations. By gathering and analyzing accounts from people who have been involved in four locale-based activities (Sussex coast, London Borough of Camden, Suffolk coastal town, Scottish region), it will be possible to derive pointers for designing experiences that help neighbourhoods relate to global challenges, understanding more of the personal elements such encounters inspire and drawing out the commonalities that make such work possible to apply more broadly. This creates new knowledge about the potential of arts-informed methods to perform cultural change and suggests how personal responses, collective change in neighbourhoods and managing global crises can come together in fruitful ways. It will also serve to deliver the kind of detailed research that shows the arts and humanities have an important role to play in creating sustainable and liveable futures, beyond the technical, to look at how lives can be made meaningful at a time of multiple threats. The development component involves two secondments with policy makers to support the fellow's learning. This will give insight into decision-makers priorities, while, at the same time, having impact and learning how impact can be furthered. The engagement component brings research and development together in the commissioning a short immersive participatory workshop to be toured, to capture and share learning from the fellowship about transformative practices at micro-level and their relations to global challenges. The work will be showcased as essays, a book and a short workshop 'taster' of the relevant experiential learning.

Project Partners: Transport Scotland, Scottish Water, SGN, SEPA, Inverclyde Council, National Centre for Resilience, Climate Ready Clyde, Adaptation Scotland/SNIFFER a) Our objective is to develop a game based approach to understand climate change impacts and adaptation on interdependent infrastructures. Using Inverclyde as a case-study, we will develop a transferable approach that identifies local scale interactions and interdependencies, and allows diverse infrastructure partners to jointly think of adaptation solutions. b) Inverclyde is a local authority in the west of the Greater Glasgow region. The urban coastal strip forms a vulnerable corridor. Our project will bring together major infrastructure partners (Transport Scotland, Scottish Water, SGN), with regional partners (Clydeplan, Inverclyde Council), SEPA and national knowledge brokers (Adaptation Scotland, National Resilience Centre) in a 6 month project that focuses on using a game to develop a shared understanding of key multi-hazard risks to infrastructure in the region due to climate change. c) Despite increasing capability to assess specific climate risks to infrastructure, our partners need to better understand vulnerability of infrastructure systems to climate-influenced environmental risks, and key interdependencies between them. Key challenges identified include: (1) translating climate projections into impacts on infrastructure - in particular with event succession, cumulative effects, long-term stresses, and/or multiple hazards; (2) identifying key location hotspots where there is a high multi-operator composite risk that may not be recognised by current practice; (3) understanding interdependencies between infrastructures operations, including varying resilience levels in regulation and license conditions; (4) considering impact of services provided by infrastructures and the socio-economic implications of service degradation or failure. d) At the end of the project, our partners will have: (1) an improved understanding of why and when service interruptions may occur; (2) an improved understanding of the interactions between multiple infrastructure networks; (3) identified key hotspots where the greater risk may not be currently recognised; (4) identified key risks; and (5) access to a game approach for identifying key risks. e) We plan a 6 month project employing one PDRA and contracting out design and development of the card game component. The total cost of the project is £50,777.45 at 80% FEC (£62,596.81 at 100% FEC).

ResAnth addresses the interlinked risks of climate change, coastal flooding and erosion, and the UK's historic waste legacy for coastal community and ecosystem resilience. Coastal flooding and erosion will accelerate under climate change. Our past industrialisation has left a pollution legacy of over 1,700 historic coastal landfills and 3,000 hectares of contaminated land also at risk from coastal flooding and/or erosion (CCC 2018; POST 2021). By 2100 the number of people exposed to coastal floods and erosion, and therefore legacy coastal waste, will increase significantly and almost half legacy waste sites are within 100m of environmentally sensitive areas such as protected wetlands or bathing waters (Brand et al. 2018). Many sites are already eroding, releasing pollution, plastics, asbestos and/or medical waste into our coastal environments with limited understanding of pollution risk to people or the marine environment. Without intervention one in 10 could erode by 2055. Many UK coastal landfills are at increasing future risk e.g., at Lyme Regis, the Spittles Lane landfill contains 50,000 tonnes of waste on an eroding cliff top and will "almost certainly erode" releasing material to the beach without intervention (Nichols et al. 2020). How we manage the intergenerational burden of our past coastal waste disposal and its accelerated risk to society and ecosystems in a changing climate is a "burning imperative" (Environment Agency 2022). In a "call to arms", coastal Local Authorities have identified the enormity of this problem with almost 50% reporting waste sites eroding, or 'at risk'. Yet we do not have sufficient evidence to: 1) build robust business cases to manage (by defending, remediating or 'letting alone') these sites; 2) inform sustainable coastal management decision-making (Shoreline Management Plans) that takes account of the presence of waste; and 3) engage and support those communities who will live with these decisions. Working in 3 'at-risk' UK geographic areas we will: Investigate the risk of waste and pollution release under more severe flooding and coastal erosion scenarios. Assess the harm this pollution will do to coastal environments and adjacent communities. Increase collaboration between a range of stakeholders to understand the different kinds of environmental and social challenges involved. Facilitate inclusive debate on future efforts to manage these risks using established methods and arts-based activities to reach new audiences. Work with communities and policy makers to explore and co-develop policy options and practical actions that will build resilience, and identify potential co-benefits for people and place. Ensure the project's approach, methods and key findings for coastal resilience measures can be scaled across the UK. Assessing the range of risks associated with coastal waste release and building an inclusive and practical 'toolkit' of responses will benefit: 1) organisations who manage the coast, conserve and protect people and habitats; and 2) landowners and communities who use and appreciate the coastal environment for its amenities and cultural value. We have designed a novel 'Community Atlas' to share information, conclusions, and arts outputs with these groups, and that allows citizens to upload their own information and stories about coastal change. ResAnth has been co-conceived with our Project Partners through collaboration, in particular, with; 1) Environment Agency, local authorities, and coastal partnerships to identify research needs; 2) the Climate Change Committee and Policy Connect to understand policy gaps; and 3) engagement with communities through arts-science initiatives.

Establish a transdisciplinary and cross-sector Community of Practice to share knowledge and best practice and unlock better-informed and improved resilience actions; Co-design researcher, community and practitioner training and guidance to improve partnership working and nurture the next generation of resilience champions; Use a needs-led approach to identify and respond to priority needs using the Flexible Fund to deliver small projects and secondments; Collate key insights, case studies and resources for policymakers and practitioners through a web platform, policy briefs and foresight documents; and Build ongoing practitioner and community-led evaluation and reflection to shape future learning, legacy and funding opportunities. Our activities will be complemented by four projects funded under the main call. These will be integrated within the N+, where we will work to amplify their significance and reach by providing a network for knowledge exchange, support for new collaborative initiatives, and to share findings with local, national and international stakeholders. The novelty of programme lies in our transdisciplinary team, innovative needs-led approach, and long-standing experience working on questions about place, scale and the exchange of knowledge across distinctive social, economic and environmental contexts. Crucially, all our activities are co-created with community stakeholders, policymakers, and UK coastal and marine management sectors, responding to their needs, existing knowledge assets and lived experiences to deliver robust policy impacts and toolkits with application to communities and places worldwide. Alongside co-designed events, workshops, secondments and training, our co-created outputs will include: Digital Engagement Platform; toolkits and cases studies; two foresight documents; two solution-focused reports; high-impact scholarly articles; and evaluation reports. In doing this, COAST-R will pioneer transdisciplinary, place-based and whole-systems approaches for better understanding coastal change, enhancing coastal and marine literacy, and building community resilience in precarious coastal places.