Using Acousmatic storytelling for flood risk engagement in unreached communities

Global flood risk is set to double by 2050. Adaptation to flood risk in a changing climate necessitates a radical reimagination of how we manage that risk. This reimagination has included a move away from using hard engineering solutions to one where interventions ‘work with nature’ & recognise rivers as complex, dynamic systems. Effective interventions using Nature Based Solutions (NBS) are increasingly recognised as capable of delivering multiple benefits including mitigation of drought & flooding, sediment capture, & habitat & biodiversity net gain. However, more importantly there is a recognition that NBS can also meet a wide range of community needs beyond biophysical goals, including support of community health & wellbeing & nature connectedness. Traditionally, the design & monitoring of NBS schemes has been data-intensive & localised with a ‘top down’ approach delivered by ‘experts’, retaining a hard engineering mindset. There has been little capacity, & appetite, for embedded community co-design of schemes and where community stakeholders are involved, engagement tends to be one way. As such, implementation of NBS schemes often meets resistance since they are at odds with community perceived values & interests and have little regard for community ownership. For successful broad-scale implementation of NBS, an improved scientific knowledge base needs to be coupled with effective co-production of shared narratives, purposes & goals with communities. Further, these shared visions need to reach out to communities that are not traditionally engaged in this sphere using methodologies that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries. Here we show the outputs from a project using Acousmatic storytelling which is a way of telling stories that uses recorded spoken word set within a composed soundscape that evokes memories and narratives of specific places and time periods. We worked with an intergenerational group of participants to develop an acousmatic story around the riverscapes of Liverpool, UK, detailing their experiences and memories of flooding as well as beginning to elicit what participants would want from the riverscapes in the future.