Coastlines as Zones of Ecocultural Crisis: Shaping Resilience through Transnational Performance-based Arts

CoastARTS treats the coastal areas of Europe and its former colonies as zones for analysing the convergence of ecological and cultural perspectives on crisis. The project uses performing arts research to develop methods and models that can be deployed across multiple disciplines to deepen understanding of the intricate links between historical crises and looming threats to the Earth. It thus lays ground for building resilience in communities and fostering adaptive responses to planetary change.

The archival and practice-led research of CoastARTS explores transhistorical, cross-cultural and transregional links to better understand what is life-giving in human and multispecies communities. A key aim is to retrieve neglected ecological knowledge from Indigenous and other marginalised communities. Working with museums, festivals, arts centres and theatre-makers, we will develop exciting new approaches to understand how coasts act, and interact, as crisis zones in iconic and material terms. We ask how these spaces – as sites of disembarkation, inundation, invasion, erosion, division and contestation – can inform the imaginary construction of crises past, present and future. We view coastlines as sites threatened by the climate and biodiversity crisis and by political contestation and discrimination as national borders are asserted to control migration flows into Europe.

CoastARTS is a comparative, multi-sited study proceeding in three phases (research and creative design, community-based practice, reflection and analysis), each lasting a year. It will produce new research, notably a book on how performing arts methods can be deployed in other disciplines. With cultural partners, we will co-create performances, exhibitions and sustainable digital resources that will be accessible to all. The work unfolds collaboratively in Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Norway and the UK, and serves as both an analytical window into coastal crises and a mode of collaborative action.