Eastern Arc Conference 2022: The Collaborative Coast
Welcome to the Eastern Arc conference 2022.
This year our conference is focussed on our coast. Stretching from the Wash in the north to the Channel in the south, it offers huge opportunities – but also significant challenges.
Our conference is a chance for academics and regional stakeholders to come together to discuss key questions facing the coast, from addressing health inequalities to preparing for climate change, from harnessing renewable energy to supporting our creative community.
Together, we will identify the issues, make connections and start to develop solutions.
Location
The conference will take place at Wivenhoe House Hotel. To get there:
- The postcode CO4 3FA
- The what3words are narrow.dice.else
- The location on Google maps is here
- The building is marked L on this map (pdf).
Programme
The programme is given below, or click on the image on the right for the downloadable pdf. For each session there is a dedicated webpage with a full abstract, speaker biographies, films and slides. To go to the relevant page, click on the links below, or the QR code in the downloadable programme.
Rooms for each session
The sessions will be taking place in four rooms:
- Hooper and Woods
- Grove
- Signature
- Drawing
To find out which room your session is taking place in, click on the session webpage or look at the table below.
Delegate list
The full delegate list will be available in the delegate pack, and online for those who attend are attending the conference.
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- Phil Ward, Director of Eastern Arc
Venue: Garden Suite (Hooper, Woods and Grove)
Phil Ward will open the conference with a few words about the day, giving an overview of the programme and what to expect.
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- Professor Anthony Forster, Vice Chancellor, University of Essex
Venue: Garden Suite (Hooper, Woods and Grove)
The University of Essex has led Eastern Arc this year.The University’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Anthony Forster, will welcome delegates to the conference, and offer some initial thoughts on the importance of regional collaboration to address the challenge of issues such as climate change and health inequalities, but also to build on our strengths in areas such as renewable energy and the cultural and creative industries.
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- Professor Jules Pretty OBE
Venue: Garden Suite (Hooper, Woods and Grove)
Much of the narrative around the regeneration of coastal towns is based on a historic view of their prosperity, focusing on the economic high water mark of the late nineteenth century.In his keynote, Jules Pretty OBE will suggest that future prosperity will not come from this model, which sees the sea as a barrier and a problem for movement and growth. Rather, we need to face out, seeing the sea as a unifier, bringing together communities with similar locations around the southern North Sea and beyond.
Professor Jules Pretty is Director of Public Policy and Engagement at Essex, and a Professor of Environment and Society. His book, This Luminous Coast, was short-listed for Writers Guild non-fiction book of the year and won the New Angle Prize for Literature. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and the Royal Society of Arts, Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, former Deputy-Chair of the Government’s Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment, and has served on advisory committees for BBSRC and the Royal Society.
In 2006 he received an OBE for services to sustainable agriculture, and an honorary degree from Ohio State University in 2009.
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A brief break, and an opportunity to meet others and discuss the points raised in the plenary.
Venue: corridor and terrace outside the Garden Suite
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At this point there will be four parallel sessions that map on to the four EARC thematic priorities. When registering, you will be asked to choose which of these you wish to attend so that we can estimate attendance numbers for each session and adjust the venue accordingly.
However, in keeping with the fluid, open and engaged nature of the day, there will be the opportunity to dip in and out of the sessions and get a flavour of the on-going discussions in each of the areas.
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- Chair: Murray Smith (Kent)
- Discussants: Sarah Dance (England’s Creative Coast, Creative Estuary) and Emma Wilcox (Creative Estuary)
Venue: Drawing Room
This session will examine two parallel but separate programmes that supported creative engagement with the coast. England’s Creative Coast was an ambitious project that aimed to shift the approach to cultural tourism in the South East of England. Creative Estuary is an ambitious programme to develop the creative industries spanning both sides of the Thames Estuary from Southend to Margate.Sarah Dance (Project Director for Creative Coast and Chair for Creative Estuary), Emma Wilcox (Project Director, Creative Estuary), and Ruth Melville (who evaluated the Creative Coast) will explore the opportunity and value of such initiatives, and the part they have to play in place-making, identity and levelling-up.
Full details of the session are available here.
Photo by Engin Akyurt
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- Chair: Andrew Fagan (Human Rights Centre, University of Essex)
- Discussants: Koldo Casla and Dr Lyle Barker (Human Rights Centre, University of Essex)
Venue: Signature Room
Launched in 2020, Human Rights Local is a project of the Human Rights Centre of the University of Essex that aims to make human rights locally relevant. It challenges the notion that international human rights laws and principles are somehow alien to people’s daily lives.Using international law as a reference point, campaigners and community groups in the UK and internationally are vernacularising human rights; in other words, they are building on lived experience to acknowledge local narratives while remaining loyal to the global pillars human rights are built upon. The session will provide an opportunity to present the ongoing work to make human rights locally relevant in and near Colchester, and will present the findings of a new report on Poverty and Social Rights in Essex.
Case study: How to approach to best practice in addressing emergency homelessness assistance
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- Lucy Davies (Essex Law Clinic, University of Essex, and Suffolk Law Centre), Benjamin O’Connell (Student Director at University of Essex Law Clinic), and Michelle Wilkinson (Beacon House Clinic)
The right to housing and shelter is a basic human right. Given limited provision of specialist housing advice in the region and limited collaboration, how can we identify issues and solve them and ensure rights and responsibilities known about?
One issue is the provision of s188 emergency accommodation at crisis point and the idea for a project between Essex law clinic and beacon house in Colchester to improve provision in this area, drawing lessons and learning from other practitioners and local authorities to improve assistance to street homeless and sofa surfing homeless/homeless at home.
Davies works across Suffolk and Essex and sees an opportunity to create a regional community of practice in regard to the legal rights of homeless people for assistance and helping local authorities with their duties. There are both practical and policy implications for this session but it is hoped it would be the start of an ongoing network for improving provision of support to the homeless and access to legal support.
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- Chair: David Watson (UEA)
- Discussant: Pinar Guven Uslu (UEA and the Eastern Health Services Network), and Esmee Wilcox (Socially Adept)
Venue: Grove Room
Regional approaches to health and social care are being overhauled with the introduction of Integrated care systems (ICSs).
These are a new form of organisation that will integrate health and social care across different organisations and settings. They will be in charge of joining up hospital and community-based services, physical and mental health as well as health and social care.
In England there are 42 ICSs which will have statutory duties from July 2022. The ICSs in the East of England are currently designing their work processes that will shape health and social care delivery in the next few years.
This session will bring together researchers and regional stakeholders to have an open dialogue about challenges and opportunities of introducing ICSs particularly in coastal regions and the role of communities in place-based approaches to wellbeing.
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- Chair:Prof Sheng Qi (UEA) and Dr Christa Brunnschweiler (UEA).
- Discussants: Shalk de Beer (Central Pharma Biotechnica), Willie Athill (Norfolk Seaweed Ltd), Nigel Hargreaves (Synfo), Tiziana Luisetti (Cefas), Gill Malin (University of East Anglia), Rikke Nagell-Klaven (Hethel Innovation), Katy Owen (Norfolk County Council)
Venue: Hooper and Woods
Climate change is forcing coastal communities to rethink the way they manage coastal environments. This can bring challenges but also potential opportunities, for example for capturing green (or blue) finance, opening up ecotourism, and protecting inland areas.
This session will first present one such area of opportunity, namely seaweed farming. The East of England, bordering the southern area of the North Sea, presents an as yet unexploited potential to address multiple challenges including climate change, nutrition, biodiversity and erosion. Macroalgae farming at scale has a role to play in offering solutions to the above challenges through the propensity of seaweed to fix carbon rapidly and provide biomass, rich in nutrients, that can be made into valuable products through onshore processing.
The waters of the south North Sea have been identified as a suitable environment for large scale seaweed cultivation that would not only enhance habitat for biodiversity regeneration but also offer protection against scour and coastal erosion. We see opportunities in colocated wind and seaweed farms eventually helping to meet the growing plant-based nutritional demand in the UK and elsewhere but in doing so, also supporting carbon sequestration with an environmentally positive product life cycle.
Prof Sheng Qi (UEA) and colleagues will look at how a sustainable seaweed circular economy in the East of England can fix carbon rapidly and provide biomass, rich in nutrients, that can be made into valuable products through onshore processing.
In the second part, we will open up the discussion to a wider set of opportunities with a panel discussion with representatives from CEFAS, UEA Low Carbon Innovation Fund, regional government, conservation charities, as well as the seaweed farming initiative.
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A simple buffet with vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free options available.
Venue: Brasserie
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As with the morning, the afternoon will be focussed on four parallel sessions that map on to the four EARC thematic priorities. When registering, you will be asked to choose which of these you wish to attend so that we can estimate attendance numbers for each session and adjust the venue accordingly.
However, in keeping with the fluid, open and engaged nature of the day, there will be the opportunity to dip in and out of the sessions and get a flavour of the on-going discussions in each of the areas.
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- Chair: Michael Tymkiw (University of Essex)
Venue: Grove Room
Following on from the morning’s session on art as a driver for place-making and levelling-up, we will hear from a range of projects that engaged with local communities to develop a sense of identity, understanding and pride. AR ‘scapes: Voices from the Concrete Barges
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- Kate McLean and Richard Perks (University of Kent), and Rosa Woolf Ainley (RCA)
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This project sought to establish ways to access and disseminate concepts of ‘future heritage’ and ‘multiple-perspective local heritage’ through creative technologies and media, with a focus on the concrete barges and surrounding forms of nature (including, for example, pipets, water rats and voles) at Rainham Marshes, Essex. Many local sites of interest go unnoticed, especially to local populations; this project facilitated the development of a prototype AR experience to draw attention to such a place, its inhabitants and its ‘scapes. By combining text, sound-art, illustration and image with modern technologies, as well as additional artistic contributions sourced from the local community, this prototype presents a potential AR experience, capable of enhancing the site both physically and imaginarily. Phase two will develop the project further – in collaboration with AR specialists – to build a fully functional mobile device app that can be rolled out across multiple sites along the Thames estuary, by creating, and respectively configuring a range of site-specific ‘assets’.
This session will outline the approach we took during phase one, to develop visual, sound and text-based assets for promoting estuary heritage. We will showcase two prototype AR-scape experiences which merge the real world with the digital one with the aim of engaging new audiences. We are seeking honest feedback on the respective value and engagement of each to help direct the future of the project.”
Queering the Estuary; Unfiltered Coast
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- Lavinia Brydon, Declan Wiffen, and Rob Barker (University of Kent)
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Drawing on several recent and on-going research projects, this session looks at how the arts and/or creative practice can be used to engage local communities with the coast. It considers what works and what doesn’t in terms of public engagement activity in coastal areas accounting for different demographics (e.g. young people) and, accordingly, different viewpoints and approaches.
The research projects that serve as initial anchor points for the session include the AHRC-funded “Unfiltered Coast” and the Creative Estuary-funded “Queering the Estuary”. In keeping with the collaborative nature of these projects and the Eastern Arc conference, we have invited a young person who assisted us on the “Unfiltered Coast” project and contributed to the subsequent art exhibition to co-deliver this session. Examples of the art from this project are on display in the plenary chamber.
Finding Emerson Open
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- Julia Devonshire (originalprojects) and Marián Arribas-Tome (UEA)
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Originalprojects is a charity that works with contemporary artists and communities in Great Yarmouth, co-creating ambitious objects, experiences and developmental activities that respond to the place and people, building relationships for a sustainable future.
Working with Marián Arribas-Tome, ‘Finding Emerson Open’ was a collaboration with photographer Mark Cator. He invited members of the community to submit images of Yarmouth in the same naturalistic vein as P. H. Emerson, a Victorian photographer-pioneer who was drawn to rural subjects and was fascinated by East Anglia’s traditional ways of life, which he documented.
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- Chair: Juliane Thieme (University of Kent)
- Discussants: Graham Galpin (Placechangers), Wei Liu (University of Essex), Paul Rabbits (Southend on Sea City Council)
Venue: Drawing Room
The aspiration to revive seaside resorts comes with many opportunities but also significant challenges. This session will examine these, from new businesses and entrepreneurs, employment opportunities in tourism and hospitality (but also staff shortages), gentrification, community involvement (e.g. in planning) and community reliance (e.g. services the councils do not/cannot provide such as beach clean-ups), guest responsibilities and how to address them. -
- Chair: Tracey Loughran (University of Essex)
- Discussant: Farah Virani (Kent County Council), Susan McPherson (University of Essex), Edyta McCallum (Kent County Council)
Venue: Hooper and Woods
Kent and Medway Listens was the largest and deepest county-wide engagement exercise ever undertaken focusing on the mental wellbeing of the population.It was a partnership between various community partners including Involve Kent, Kent equality cohesion council, Rethink Mental Illness, Social Enterprise Kent, Medway Voluntary Action (MVA), the Medway Diversity Forum, Befriending Together, MEGAN CIC, Centre for Independent Living, Medway Gender and Sexuality Diversity Centre and Medway Plus.It took the form of interactive, online workshops to give stakeholders, residents of Kent and Medway and those who have not been listened to, the opportunity to come together to hear what is impacting the population.Farah Virani was involved in running the project and will discuss the outcome of the project, lessons learnt from it. She will then be joined by Edyta McCallum (Research, Innovation & Improvement (RII) Senior Programme Lead, Kent County Council) will talk about what KCC is doing now in terms of developing a Joint Health & Wellbeing Strategy.Finally, Susan McPherson (Professor of Psychology and Sociology in the School of Health and Social Care, University of Essex) will talk about the wider and more general challenges of building mental health research capacity within a region. -
- Chair: Jenny Fairbrass (UEA)
- Discussants: Ian Pease (Orbis Energy / GENERATE), Fiona Gilmore (Suffolk Energy Action Solutions (SEAS))
Venue: Signature Room
Offshore wind is a central element of the UK government’s energy strategy. The 2020 Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution sets the objective of increasing offshore wind capacity from 8 gigawatts (GW) to 40GW by 2030.The South North Sea (SNS), which borders East Anglia and Suffolk, has a large number of existing and planned offshore wind projects (22GW) and is therefore a crucial area for offshore wind development and the achievement of national objectives. These projects have attracted national and international companies and investors. The rapid, large-scale development of offshore wind in the SNS presents opportunities in terms of energy security, industrial development, job creation and coastal regeneration for the whole region.
At the same time, offshore wind projects have also attracted controversies and been challenged by local communities, triggering local opposition focussed on disruption, wildlife destruction and landscape impacts. This session aims to explore the challenges and opportunities of offshore wind development across the Eastern Arc from a multidisciplinary perspective.
Full details of the session are available here.
Photo by Pixabay
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A final break before the closing plenary, and an opportunity to share notes with others about the breakout sessions.
Venue: corridor and terrace outside the Garden Suite
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- Chair: Professor Chiara Di Cesare (Essex)
- Video presentation: Professor Chris Whitty
- Discussants: Lucy Wightman (Essex County Council), Ed Garratt (Suffolk and NE Essex ICB) and Abraham George (Kent County Council)
Venue: Garden Suite (Hooper, Woods and Grove)
In 2021 the Chief Medical Officer looked at health in coastal communities, and suggested that the available data on health and wellbeing were poor. He recommended that this should be addressed. Eastern Arc has taken the first steps towards doing this with two workshops in July exploring the challenges of coastal health data, but what else could or should be done? The session will start with a recorded address from Prof Chris Whitty, followed by a panel discussion with external stakeholders and policymakers.
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Join us for a drink and an opportunity to talk to colleagues, discuss some of the issues raised over the course of the day – or just unwind and enjoy the company!
Venue: Brasserie