Helping Isaac Find His Apple: Promoting the University of Brighton’s WetlandLIFE project at the Royal Society, London

This week, on the 28^th and 29^th October 2019, the final Valuing Nature (VN) Programme Conference took place at the Royal Society in London, under the watchful gaze of Sir Isaac Newton (see picture below). The VN Programme, supported by a consortia of UK Research Councils including the AHRC, ESRC and NERC, funded seven research projects orientated around two research enquiries; the impacts of potential ecological tipping points for natural resources within the UK and the importance of nature for human health and wellbeing for British citizens. The University of Brighton was involved in the latter research area, human health and wellbeing, through their involvement within the WetlandLIFE project which is drawing to an end in January 2020.

Dr Mary Gearey and Sir Isaac Newton

Dr Mary Gearey, senior lecturer in Human Geography and board member of the university’s Centre for Aquatic Environments, led the empirical research working closely with Professor Andrew Church and Professor Neil Ravenscroft, now based at the Royal Agricultural University. Their work has been orientated around social science fieldwork to understand how specialist interest groups, including birders, botanists, walkers and spiritual practitioners, use, value and enjoy wetlands as part of their recreational activities, their income generating work, and as a fundamental part of their life. Developed through one to one interviews, collaborative focus group discussions and an immersion into the wetland situated work of the respondents, the outcomes of the research team’s work has been channelled into forthcoming book English wetlands; spaces of nature, culture, imagination to be published in 2020 by Palgrave Macmillan.

The Brighton team, presented their findings at the final VN conference alongside their fellow WetlandLIFERs. Key discussion points included the importance of wetlands for green infrastructure, for underpinning nature based solutions to climate change adaptation strategies and, fundamentally, to support the ‘3D’ of human health and wellbeing; physical, mental and social revitalisation and replenishment. The WetlandLIFE team have always aimed to incorporate a collaborative and truly interdisciplinary approach to research as part of their modus operandi – as illustrated by one of our project artist’s installations at the VN event. Creative writer and lecturer Victoria Leslie enabled a pop up ‘word hide’, a wetland bird hide in which people can visit to read, think and write as well as undertake in-situ ornithological contemplations (see picture below). Victoria Leslie’s The word hide

It seemed pertinent that the ‘word hide’ and our discussions with colleagues concerning wetlands and humans, took place under the watchful gaze of one of Britain’s most eminent natural scientists and scholars, Sir Isaac Newton. His quizzical look, as if he was still searching for his apple of inspiration, was a great reminder that connective thoughts and startling insights can happen in any place and at any time; and this is most certainly true of our discoveries in wetlands for WetlandLIFE. As a team we continue to be dedicated to sharing our insights, through multiple platforms and in multiple ways, with others both within and across the research community.

Some of the WetlandLIFERs deep in conversation at the VN Conference at the Royal Society