River is the Venue

The project will engage with both the local community and tourists/visitors to the City of Bath and will develop a unique inclusive arts environment for people with disabilities, encouraging social and cultural well-being across local communities. Through an interactive and creative approach involving artwork, spatial historic information and ICT, the audiences will be exposed to fascinating elements of the water history of the City. Since the focus of the project is on historical flooding events, the targeted groups will also have the opportunity to improve their understanding of flood management strategies on a local scale as well as obtaining a global persepcive on flood disasters. The project team will work closely with the local water-related stakeholders (e.g. Wessex Water, Environment Agency, B&NES Environmental Team), thereby creating potential added value and providing new opportunities for future collaborations. The venue holders (galleries, museums, public spaces) will be exposed to and gather new audiences across a wide range of social groups. The project will offer a great chance for educational activities aimed at young people (e.g. primary schools) and develop the groundwork for building collaborations across educational insitutions located in Bath (e.g. Bath Spa University, Bath College). Working with 44AD associate / RUH artists (through commissioned work) and the venues will allow further promotion and awareness of the flood-related research currently undertaken at the University of Bath. Through a series of workshops, commissioned artworks/trail will involve public participation to shape their outcomes. Resultant artworks/trail placed within a public space will have an impact with the local community and tourists. The digital platoform will create an opportunity to collect data in a collaborative and accessible way with the general public for project awareness and research purposes. The project will bring together academics, artists, local community, stakeholders and new audiences to examine and further the understanding of the flood-related research, which will be presented in an approachable way within creative and high footfall environments.

The project will engage local community and tourists/visitors to the City of Bath and will develop unique, inclusive public artworks about the history of flooding in Bath. Working with University of Bath, 44AD associate / RUH, artists will also develop a series of workshops, exhibitions in a public space and a website with descriptions of the artworks and artists.