This exhibition is the outcome of creative practice research, supported by the Sandbox Residency of Areté, the Royal Society Challenges Research Fund, UK, SC Johnson, the Ateneo Research Institute for Science and Engineering (ARISE), the School of Science and Engineering (SOSE), the Department of Environmental Science, The Vietnam National University, the British Geological Survey (UK) and Queen Margaret University (UK).

 

The purpose of the study was to bring together researchers working in multi-hazards and resilience, in three countries: the Philippines, Vietnam and the UK, to share and compare their cultural experiences of flooding rivers to form different viewpoints to accompany their research in disaster alleviation.

 

Often researchers, policy and decision makers who work with problems associated to natural disasters have never experienced for themselves the moment of a natural disaster, yet their work influences guidelines, frameworks, policies, and decisions relating to these disasters. Viewing natural disasters with a purely objective approach forms a positional relationship of the researcher, policy, or decision maker as being on the “outside” of the occurring natural disaster. Only knowledge formed through subjective experience can create a viewpoint for understanding disasters from a position of known experience. Experiences cannot be objectified, as they are difficult to describe, but they provide important local knowledge in terms of being resilient, maintaining social empathy, being creative and many other qualities which are shown in this exhibition.

 

This exhibition was created to form a subjective experience as a journey through three different spaces to reflect upon the importance of experience:

Space 1 is an introduction to three rivers in three countries: Vietnam, the Philippines and the UK. Read more...

Space 2 is an installation providing extracts of people's experiences of flooding relating to the introduced rivers in Space 1. Read more...

Space 3 is a space where we can learn from one another's cultures and experiences and think about how we could become more resilient to living with rivers. Read more...