Event Details

Organised by the People and the Ocean Knowledge and Action Hub (Pentland Centre), this event brings together creative practice, community voices and science to explore how people live with, shape and care for the marine environment.

Event description:

Organised by the People and the Ocean Knowledge and Action Hub (Pentland Centre), the event brings together creative practice, community voices and science to explore how people live with, shape and care for the marine environment. The event features interactive stalls and displays on seaweeds, salt marshes, corporate biosphere stewardship, and people’s sense of place to the coastal and marine environment.

Visitors will be able to:

• Listen to place-based stories (Ebbs and Flows audio play)
• See photographic productions from young people about their sense of place around the Bay
• Try hands-on activities about seaweeds and salt marsh ecology
• Talk with researchers about their work and practical approaches to coastal care

The event will also screen the film "A Future Archive”, the result of a community-led filmmaking workshop exploring Morecambe though local people’s attachments to its heritage and views about its future as a former seaside resort and touristic attraction.

Audience:

Academics, coastal and marine practitioners, arts organisations, local businesses, community groups, educators, young people and anyone curious about the human–ocean relationship.

Refreshments will be available. The event will take place in the LUMS WP Break Out space 2&3, Maze map location can be found here: https://link.mazemap.com/EobXdQ0k

Hosts:

Dr Celine Germond-Duret is a Lecturer in Environmental Politics and Policy, and she leads the People and the Ocean Knowledge and Action Hub of the Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business. Celine is the Project Investigator of the Leverhulme Trust funded project “Ocean Justice and the Blue Economy”. She also conducted a photography project with young people from the North-West of England to document their sense of place in relation to Morecambe Bay.

Dr Dalila Missero is a Lecturer in Film Studies and PI of the AHRC-IAA project “A Future Archive: Re-imagining Morecambe through film and audio heritage". The project brings to the community the history of Morecambe’s cinemas and entertainment through the discovery of films and audio recordings from the North West Film Archive (courtesy of Manchester Metropolitan University), the British Film institute (BFI) and Lancashire Archives, the official Preston-based archive of Lancashire County Council. Dr Missero’s project CI is Professor Claire Nance from Linguistics and English Language.

Professor Jan Bebbington is the Director of the Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business and has an interest in how corporations operate across ocean spaces and impact on possibilities for nature and people to thrive. The way she frames this work is through the notion of ‘corporate biosphere stewardship’: a framing that is still being imagined.

Serena Pollastri is a Lecturer in Urban Futures at ImaginationLancaster, part of the School of Art (Architecture). Her practice-based research is concerned with developing and applying design methods and approaches for posthuman coastal futures, particularly through collaborative, hands-on approaches. She is currently working at the intersection of craft, design, and ecology to develop small scale structures for saltmarsh regeneration in intertidal areas.

Suzana Ilic is a Senior Lecturer at Lancaster Environment Centre, working at the interface of coastal engineering and science. Her research focuses on coastal hydrodynamics, sediment processes, and the impacts of climate change and human interventions on coastal environments. Since arriving in Lancaster, she has worked on projects to improve understanding of coastal processes in the local area. Her current projects in the Morecambe Bay focus on evaluating nature-based solutions for saltmarsh regeneration and long-term coastal adaptation. She is passionate about empowering local communities to shape the future of their coastlines.

Jo Carruthers is Senior Lecturer in English Literature and has a long-standing interested in place-based literature, including the edited collection Sandscapes: Writing the British Seaside (2020). Her work focuses on the aesthetics of the seaside town and specifically roughness as label that has negative connotations but huge potential for embracing seaside creativity. In 2025 she, Taj Hayer, Izzy Hoggmascall and Jill Walmsley, with Ragged Edge Production and Stefan Escreet, were funded by a Joy Welch Award to interview people in Morecambe to ask them about loss and renewal in the coastal town. The result was Ebbs and Flows, an audioplay housed at https://raggededgeproductions.co.uk/sample-page/audio-work/ebbs-and-flows: snatches of the play will be available to listen to as part of the event.

Health & Safety and access information

* In order to safeguard everyone's health, if you test positive for Covid-19 before the event, or are feeling unwell in any way, please don't attend (and please let us know).

* Please maintain good hand hygiene, washing your hands regularly/before eating or drinking, and making use of hand sanitiser.

* The room is on the ground floor, is wheelchair accessible. There is a wheelchair accessible toilet nearby.

* The nearest disabled parking spot is in Gillow Avenue, Maze map location can be found at this link: https://link.mazemap.com/HqG6O3KU