What it means to be of the mountains: ethnography of social embrace in Nivica, Albania

Aisling Tierney (right) with local Albanians during her research trip.
Aisling Tierney (right) with local Kurvalesh during her research trip to Albania.

In 2022, I made my fifth visit to the village of Nivica in the heart of the Kurvelesh mountainscape. It was a quick trip for lunch and to say hello to the community that has made me welcome there since 2017. Upon visiting the house of the first couple who hosted me, I was greeted with hot tea, sharp raki and sweet cakes. The older couple, Bame and Trendefille, cannot stop themselves from treating me like family. They embrace me. They take my hand to lead me to the indoor seating area. They hug me constantly.  

Just a week before the visit I lost my father after a long and terrible illness. There was something profound about feeling so loved in a familiar domestic setting. I was different now. How I received their outpourings of love felt more meaningful than ever. When they asked about my father they were heartbroken to hear of his death. Both my parents were invited innumerable times by the couple, but there was never a chance my mother would make the trip up the wild rocky roads! 

During the visit they shared stories of time together with my travel companions. My ego was certainly entertained by their generosity of spirit in these retellings. Amongst their chats, the man of the house said something so lovely and unexpected that I was left speechless. He said that I am Kurveleshi – that is, I am of the Kurvelesh, I am one of them. Coming from one of the most respected members of the community, it meant the world to me. 

To be of the Kurvelesh means a lot of things and will be different depending on who you ask. What seemed to be important to Bame was that I showed respect. Concepts like Besa and Kanun are important in the region. The former is all about keeping promises and acting honourably, like a pledge to do right by people. The latter is an overarching customary law governing all aspects of traditional life, passed on through oral tradition for centuries. The Kurvelesh is the last remaining area where Kanun survives beyond the Ottoman era and into the modern age. 

Bame compared my team of archaeological researchers to other foreign groups from a range of disciplines. He said we were different, we embraced the mountains and the local culture. We took a different mindset into our research practice that included the community in both personal and professional terms. It is not an exaggeration to say that the team feels like Kurvelesh is a second home. It is no longer a remote foreign place full of the unknown. For us, it is now a place of familiar and familial faces and friendships. 

We love the people of the mountains and they love us back. 

Mountains in Albania.
Mountains in Albania.

One of the most unexpected comments I received was why my team laughs so much! We are a jovial bunch, always singing and joking around. It seems less easy to laugh in the Kurvelesh. Life has been hard in the wake of Communism, which is still a sensitive subject for most of the older community. People do not like to talk about their experiences in forced labour groups and the suppression of cultural traditions. We do not push the subject. Like much of Albania, this is also a site of several war fronts, not least of which saw the razing of the whole village by the Greeks in 1913. Remnants of these warfronts constitute a large body of our collection of artefacts from fieldwalking surveys. These objects tell stories themselves. The bullet casings from one misfiring gun are found in several locations adjacent to the modern village. Decorative uniform badges are found in local fields. Artillery shells and rusted guns are even collected and hung on display in homes and the single village café. The past is visible, even if it is unspoken. 

We also received comments about how the team is managed. Curious locals asked me how I get my team to work without shouting at them. They were surprised that we were all volunteering our time unpaid and at our expense to investigate local heritage. The fact that we were not renumerated seemed to change their perspective on our intentions in a positive manner.  

The community were outwardly pleased that we were fully open about our research. They talked about their assumptions about foreign groups and how the archaeology of the country has been pillaged by others. Our efforts included welcoming anyone to visit the site at their leisure. We were frequently visited by the young and old alike, sometimes as a detour from a walk or while passing with a herd of goats to laugh at us working in the rain. We made our work even more visible by taking finds for cataloguing to tables in the local café, so that the whole community could see everything we had and how we worked with it. Informal lessons and visualisations helped the community to understand the breadth of our work. They were delighted to learn of our multi-period approach and began to bring objects for us to record. 

Over time, the community began to trust us. Through friendships and openness, they could see we were there for the right reasons. One local man showed up one day with a purple plastic bag filled with pottery sherds and bronze coins. He allowed us to photograph and record them onto our database. Every item was handed back to him the next day in perfect condition. This happened a few times. Each instance proved we meant what we said – we were not there to take anything, we were there to observe, learn and record only. At the end of each season, we handed all the finds to the local leadership for storage, with some pottery samples collected by the national Institute of Archaeology for their archives. 

The community were also surprised that we value their knowledge and insights. We were positively enthused when offered tours of sites that might interest our archaeological endeavors. Every suggestion and prompt from the community was cherished and integrated into our research, valued as of equal value to anything considered more “academic”. This respect for local knowledge also helped our reputation. 

The reports compiled after each season were hugely beneficial in communicating the value of the compiled data. They included drawings and maps that showed the community how the data comes together to tell their stories. They were also keen to see how we used LiDAR and drone imaging with our GPS records to map concentrations of finds across the landscape. The visual stories transcended linguistic barriers and helped everyone see why our work was useful and relevant to them. For example, local B&B owners typically spend the most time with visitors and our data is helpful in conveying the history of the landscape to those eager to learn, whether domestic or foreign. The community hopes that the information plaques that we have contributed to and walking trails supported by other international groups, created in recent years, will help foster better understanding of their local history. In the future, they will create a museum featuring artefacts collected by us and the community alike.  

Goats being herded in Albania along a winding mountain road.
Goats being herded in Albania along a winding mountain road.

What makes our research fieldwork a bit different than most is that we take with us interdisciplinary perspectives. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the lens by which we evaluate our work and contributions. This maps well onto local and national initiatives that seek to offset long-standing issues facing mountain communities. These issues include depopulation, losing traditional intangible cultural heritage, lack of attractive jobs, and environmental sustainability. Our heritage story is a small part of a much bigger picture. Rather than consider our work on our terms, we embrace domestic value systems and methods of seeing value. 

One of our team has undertaken a project interviewing the community about their lives and experiences culminating in an MLitt dissertation, How do rural communities negotiate the legacy of a contested landscape in contemporary southern Albania? (A. Donnelly 2020, 95pps). Her work explores the landscape, agricultural practices, ethnobotanical knowledge, local recipes, conflict and rebellion, unique worship practices, folklore, and music. A taught masters student also produced a dissertation, How can social media function as a tool for initial tourist development? Lessons from rural Albania (R. Sanders 2020, 77pps). Her research reviewed the multivocality of tourists, the power of word-of-mouth marketing, and authenticity of touristic experience as demarcated by local business owners. Other outputs include fieldwork reports in 2018 (Tierney et al. 131pps) and 2019 (Tierney et al. 41pps), and multimedia engagement through public-engagement videos and at conferences. Additionally, I have integrated learnings from fieldwork into both undergraduate and postgraduate teaching at two universities. Several peer reviewed papers are underway and will be published soon. They include a comprehensive overview of the SDGs at Nivica, fieldwork survey analysis and artefact analysis.  

In academia, quantifiable outputs and impacts are championed. Even in the realm of public engagement academic discourse, the value of authentic, deep and personal trusting relationships are muted. For me, hearts and minds in a framework of respect are worth more than anything else. If our research work enables us to contribute positively to a community that we adore, then our work is a success. I am optimistic that this personal narrative helps to contribute something to how we view ourselves as fieldwork researchers in relation to the places and communities that we encounter and, hopefully, embrace. In a world replete with mental health strain and professional angst, as the higher education system pinches more and more, there are things more valuable than traditional academic milestones. It is one thing to love one’s work, it is another to be truly loved back by the people we work for. 

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute for the Environment member, Dr Aisling Tierney.

Dr Aisling Tierney
Dr Aisling Tierney

‘Together we’ve got this’ – creating space for social sustainability in Bristol

Towards the bottom of Park Street large white letters against a pink backdrop read ‘Together, we’ve got this’. Alongside it the words ‘Bristol together’ are framed above an inscription reading: ‘Bristol’s safely reopening. Help us keep it open by washing your hands, wearing a face covering and keeping a safe distance from other shoppers. Thank you and enjoy your visit.’ I first spotted this sign in September last year. However, in the months that have slowly crept by since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic filled with lockdowns, isolating and social distancing, the word ‘together’ seems to have popped up all over the city. It can be found on street corners and shop fronts all along the Park Street-Queens Road-Whiteladies Road corridor that runs through the University’s campus, connecting the harbour and city centre to the Downs. Along this strip, a sign outside a cafe encourages social distancing with the words ‘We stand together by standing apart’, while a notice on the glossy sliding doors of a supermarket and the red and yellow of a post office poster remind patrons that ‘We’re all in this together’. Yet my personal favourite is the board outside a frozen food shop I spotted one day proclaiming ‘Together never tasted this good’ above a picture of a cheesecake. But what is it about ‘together’ that tastes so good? And, perhaps more importantly, what is togetherness? (If not an Eton mess cheesecake).

Two years ago I set out to explore the question ‘How do people live together in cities?’ through a PhD. Growing up in post-apartheid South Africa the idea of togetherness has always haunted me like an ungraspable treasure chest at the end of our so-called rainbow nation. As many readers will appreciate the dominant narrative about post-apartheid South Africa is one in which the lasting legacy of segregation is well documented such that the ‘post’ of post-apartheid is rendered something of a fantasy and a failure. And yet I had noticed that despite the country’s long history of apartness, urban life in South Africa seemed to be full of small moments of togetherness which defy the common grammar of apartness with which accounts of South African cities are typically written. One such moment arrived in April 2020 when, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic a collective called ‘Cape Town Together’ was born. Through neighbourhood based mutual aid groups residents in Cape Town came together under to self-organise and share resources and information in response to the pandemic. My research has been dedicated to studying practices such as these in answer to the question: ‘How do people live together in cities?’ and the related question of what togetherness is.

Three themes emerged in response to these questions which I argue are not only applicable to Cape Town, but also to cities elsewhere such as Bristol. First, in answer to the question ‘What is togetherness?’, I learnt that it is as much, if not more, a practice as it is a sentiment or a state of being. This is significant because the implication is that, despite what form it takes (whether it be empathy, solidarity, or sharing,) togetherness takes practice; through repeated action we learn to be together by practicing togetherness and in doing so forming new habits and repertoires for living together. Secondly, I learnt that togetherness has a spatial component. Public space in the city provides an ever present training ground on which people can practice togetherness; rehearse social interactions, test, and develop new repertoires of being together. But the practices of togetherness which emerge also shape and are shaped by by the spaces in which they occur. This means that the quality of public space in the city matters because it has an impact on shaping social relations. Finally, togetherness is mediated by institutions just like the University of Bristol which provide places and repeated opportunities for practice along with guidelines, and pre-existing repertoires for social interactions.

Earlier this year the Cabot Institute for the Environment put out a call for short video submissions about activities and ideas for how the University could create positive impact by addressing a sustainability challenge in Bristol. This blog piece stems from the idea I pitched to create spaces where people can practice togetherness as a step towards realising greater social sustainability in our city. To return to the cheesecake, perhaps togetherness has never tasted this good because we’ve never craved it this much. In the wake of COVID-19, which has introduced a host of new ways to be apart and to be together, the University and city are thus presented with an opportunity to build truly inclusive spaces which not only bring or ‘throw’ (to use Geographer Doreen Massey’s term) people together but encourage engagement and practice in learning how to be together.

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This blog is written by Cara Mazetti Claassen, PhD Candidate at the Cabot Institute for the Environment.

World Water Day 2021: What does water mean to the Cabot community?

 

It’s World Water Day (22 March) and we have joined the global public campaign on the theme for 2021 of valuing water. The campaign is designed to generate a worldwide conversation about how different people in different contexts value water for all its uses.
So we asked researchers, students and staff at the Cabot Institute for the Environment, what does water mean to you? Whether it is something learnt through research, personal experiences or simply what you think when you think of water, we asked our community for stories, thoughts, and feelings about water!
All responses including ours and many others across the world will be compiled by UN-Water to create a comprehensive understanding of how water is valued and to help safeguard this resource in a way that will benefit us all.
Cabot Institute for the Environment researchers and students are doing lots of wonderful and important work to deliver the evidence base and solutions to protect water (find out more). Here is what some of them shared with us for World Water Day #Water2me.

What does water mean to you?

“Water is the most special substance on Earth. Everyone has a relationship with it. It is ubiquitous yet still enigmatic. As a hydrologist I have been working for years to better understand where it goes after it rains. As a person who grew up in semi-arid Cyprus, I know that water scarcity can shape a culture as much as it shapes the landscape. As a person who has been living in the UK, I know that too much water can also shape a culture. Too little or too much – water is both a life giver and a life taker. It is everywhere, nowhere, hidden, precious, ever changing, elusive, wondrous, yet taken for granted.   Dr Katerina Michaelides, Co-lead of Cabot Institute for the Environment water theme 

 

“Liquid water can take any shape of its recipient. As water vapor, it becomes invisible and travels into the air… but it is still there. As ice and it can sometimes provide a hard surface. Water reminds me of adaptation and opportunities. We face a global challenge in ensuring water to all living beings on Earth, but the nature of water tells me that we must adapt to any changes coming in future years and turn challenges into opportunities to develop more sustainable and earth-friendly measures to tackle our societal needs.” – Dr Rafael Rosolem, Co-lead of Cabot Institute for the Environment water theme 

 

 

“Water is the essence of life and its tiny moving molecules connect almost everything on Earth – bodies of water in rivers, glaciers, oceans, atmospheres are connected to our bodies as humans. What happens in one body trickles down and impacts others, so we have to be careful with how we manage this vast cycle of water, and of life.” – Professor Jemma Wadham, Director of Cabot Institute for the Environment 

 

“When you grow up in a country, where 2/3 is a desert with 1 hour of water supply per 48 hours (mainly at 2am!), water is more precious than oil and sometimes gold.” – Dr Hind Saidani-Scott, Cabot Institute for the Environment researcher 
“Simply put, water means health, safety, and life 💧 Without clean water, access to this becomes limited, whereas with it – we can thrive 🌍” – Olivia Reddy, University of Bristol PhD candidate and member of Cabot Institute for the Environment ‘Cabot Communicators’ group.

 

As a kid to me water meant fun, it sparked feelings of joy and excitement for swimming in the ocean and having a good time. While water remained a magical thing to me, as I grew older, I began to consider its role as a global resource, its precarity, need for protection and how lucky I was to have access to it. Now as I undertake my research at Cabot, I am learning more about the spirituality and sacrality of water amongst indigenous cultures, not only as a “resource” but at as point for worship, ceremony, and community and something to learn from. Today I understand water as part of us as well as our world” – Lois Barton, post-graduate researcher, Global Environmental Challenges, Cabot Institute for the Environment       

 

 
“The first thing I would have said when asked to think about water two years ago is a refreshing glassful from the tap. But watching the film Cowspiracy and following this up with my own research into animal agriculture has made me look at water differently. Now, I think of water in terms of cows. 2,500 gallons of water are needed to produce one pound of beef. Animal agriculture is responsible for up to 33% of freshwater usage globally! For me, a new understanding of water and water-use was a key factor in prompting the decision to change to a plant-based diet and advocate that others do the same for the good of the planet and the people who do not have water on tap like I do every day. – Lucy Morris, post-graduate researcher, Global Environmental Challenges, Cabot Institute for the Environment

Hidden Water: Valuing water we cannot see 

Cabot Institute for the Environment is also hosting a public event for World Water Day (17:15 GMT, 22 March 2021) which is bringing together two leading researchers to discuss the value of ‘hidden water’ resources: groundwater and glaciers. 
 
Dr Debra Perrone, University of California, will discuss her research which revealed millions of groundwater wells and strategies to protect them. Professor Jemma Wadham, Cabot Institute for the Environment, will discuss the impacts of glacier retreat in the Peruvian Andes and solutions to adapt to these changes. Chaired by Cabot Institute for the Environment water experts, Dr Katerina Michaelides and Dr Rafael Rosolem. More information here

Join the discussion

What does water mean to you? Tag @cabotinstitute and #WorldWater #Water2me on Twitter to let us know.

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This blog is written by Adele Hulin, Cabot Institute Coordinator at the University of Bristol, and Lois Barton, Cabot Institute for the Environment MScR student and temporary communications assistant at the Institute.
Adele Hulin
Adele Hulin

Capturing the value of community energy

Energise Sussex Coast and South East London Community Energy are set to benefit from a new business collaboration led by Colin Nolden and supported by PhD students Peter Thomas and Daniela Rossade. This is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council with match funding provided by Community Energy South from SGN. In total, £80,000 has been made available from the Economic and Social Research Council Impact Accelerator Account to launch six new Accelerating Business Collaborations involving the Universities of Bath, Exeter and Bristol. This funding aims to increase capacity and capability of early career researchers and PhD students to collaborate with the private sector. Match funding from SGN (formerly Scotia Gas Network) provided by Community Energy South for this particular project will free up time and allow Energise Sussex Coast and South East London Community Energy to provide the necessary company data and co-develop appropriate data analysis and management methodologies.

The Capturing the value of community energy project evolved out of the Bristol Poverty Institute (BPI) interdisciplinary webinar on Energy and Fuel Poverty and Sustainable Solutions on 14 May 2020. At this event Colin highlighted the difficulty of establishing self-sustaining fuel-poverty alleviation business models, despite huge savings on energy bills and invaluable support for some of the most marginalised segments of society. Peter also presented his PhD project, which investigates the energy needs and priorities of refugee communities. With the help of Ruth Welters from Research and Enterprise Development and Lauren Winch from BPI, Colin built up his team and concretised his project for this successful grant application.

The two business collaborators Energise Sussex Coast (ESC) and South East London Community Energy (SELCE) are non-profit social enterprises that seek to act co-operatively to tackle the climate crisis and energy injustice through community owned renewable energy and energy savings schemes. Both have won multiple awards for their approach to energy generation, energy saving and fuel poverty alleviation.

However, both are also highly dependent on grants from energy companies such as SGN with complicated and highly variable reporting procedures. This business collaboration will involve the analysis of their company data (eight years for ESC, ten years for SELCE) to take stock of what fuel poverty advice and energy saving action works and what does not, and to grasp any multiplier effects associated with engaging in renewable energy trading activities alongside more charitable fuel poverty alleviation work.

Benefits for ESC and SELCE include the co-production of a database to help them establish what has and has not worked in the past, and where to target their efforts moving forward. This is particularly relevant in the context of future fuel-poverty alleviation funding bids. With a better understanding of what works, they will be able to write better bids and target their advice more effectively, thus improving the efficiency of the sector more broadly.

 

It will also help identify new value streams, such as those resulting from lower energy bills. Rather than creating dependents, this provides the foundation for business model innovation through consortium building and economies of scale where possible, while improving targeted face-to-face advice where necessary. It will also explore socially distant approaches where face-to-face advice and engagement is no longer possible.

With a better understanding how and where value is created, ESC and SLECE, together with other non-profit enterprises, can establish a platform cooperative while creating self-renewing databases which enable more targeted energy saving and fuel poverty advice in future. Such data also facilitates application for larger pots of money such as Horizon2020, and the establishment of a fuel poverty ecosystem in partnership with local authorities and other organisations capable of empowering people instead of creating dependents. This additional reporting will capture a wider range of value and codify it to be submitted as written evidence to the Cabinet Office and Treasury at national level, while also acting as a dynamic database for inclusive economy institutions and community energy organisations at regional and local level.

People

Dr Colin Nolden is a Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow based on the Law School, University of Bristol, researching sustainable energy governance at the intersection of demand, mobility, communities, and climate change. Alongside his appointment at the University of Bristol, Colin works as a Researcher at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford. He is also a non-executive director of Community Energy South and a member of the Cabot Institute for the Environment.

Peter Thomas is a University of Bristol Engineering PhD student and member of the Cabot Institute for the Environment investigating access to energy in humanitarian relief by combining insights from engineering, social sciences, and anthropology.

Daniela Rossade is a University of Bristol Engineering PhD student investigating the transition to renewable energy on the remote island of Saint Helena and the influence of renewable microgrids on electricity access and energy poverty.

Partner Companies

Energise Sussex Coast Ltd

South East London Community Energy Ltd

Community Energy South

Contact

For more information on the project contact: Dr Colin Nolden colin.nolden@bristol.ac.uk

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This blog is written by Dr Colin Nolden, Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow, University of Bristol Law School and Cabot Institute for the Environment.

Colin Nolden

Rebuilding Bristol as a city of care

I was asked to speak at an event organised by the Mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees and the City Office team that brought together academics and other interested in rebuilding Bristol. I was asked to respond to the following question and thought people might be interested in reading the full text here:

‘Bristol, along with cities all over the globe, is facing an unprecedented health, economic and social crisis. This brings both a challenge and an opportunity to rebuild our city. If we do it well, Bristol will be more inclusive, more sustainable and more resilient in the face of future shocks. If we do it without thinking, falling into old assumptions (i.e. badly), the opposite is true. How should we rebuild our city?’

In 5 minutes I can only hope to raise some issues and matters of concern. There are many present here today who will know a lot more than me about aspects of social justice – especially around race, disability and class and I hope they will join in afterwards with comments and concerns. This is intended to be a provocation for ongoing conversations that bring diverse knowledges and expertise together so that we can begin to rebuild our city to be more inclusive, sustainable and resilient.

We knew before this pandemic struck that many communities and organisations were facing an ongoing crisis – a crisis in which inequalities are growing, where austerity and a desire for growth at all costs had pushed cities around the world into a situation where social, economic and environmental justice were comprised.

The pandemic has helped to make visible where people and communities are falling through the cracks in our cities and illustrated more widely that a return to business as usual is not an attractive option for those of us interested in social, economic and environmental justice. It is not an option for those families living in crowded accommodation who don’t have enough food on a daily basis, it’s not an option for those living with disabilities or ill health who rely on inadequate, time rationed segments of care delivered by care workers who are undervalued and underpaid. It’s not an option either if we want to take our responsibilities to the planet seriously.

So what have we seen during this crisis that helps us to understand our challenges as a city and the assets that we have to draw on in rebuilding them.

We have seen the incredible efforts of the community and voluntary sector in the city who have built on established and designed new alliances to tackle their communities’ needs. These initiatives have gone way beyond reactively responding to the everyday, urgent needs of their communities. For instance, Knowle West Alliance, developed over the last two years, brings together large and small community organisations- they have set up a community food bank, coordinated volunteers, communicated through digital and postal service with all community members, used the amazing Bristol Can Do platform to recruit volunteers and assign them to a brand new befriending service and committed to reflecting and learning as part of this discussion. The Support Hub for older people, set up in 2 weeks in order to bring together organisations in the city concerned with the needs of older people, were determined to draw on their collective expertise to provide a range of support for older people including practical and emotional support but also virtual activities. These examples, and many others, demonstrate how through working collaboratively across sectors and alongside our communities we can go way beyond provision of ‘crisis’ support. They have shown the value and strength of the civil society sector in the city in working alongside communities at the margins building on their ongoing, long term work and trusted relationships with the communities that they serve.

We have finally appreciated and valued the key workers who support systems of care in the city – the care workers, teachers, food delivery workers and community development workers. Raising questions around how we might change our systems of value in the city.

Our neighbourhoods and streets have fostered intergenerational and cross cultural discussion and we have made new friends – we have come together in Whats App groups and through socially distant street gatherings to share our concerns, to provide care where this has been needed and, importantly, to laugh and cry together. A question we might want to explore here relates to how we might develop ‘community’ across our neighbourhoods providing the support we all need across generational and cultural difference, in and between hyperlocal areas?

Our green spaces have provided the space for those without gardens to enjoy fresh air and exercise, whilst socially distancing. Roads, free of cars, have provided new found space for children and families to play and cleaner air, particularly in those areas of the city where poor air quality is a particular concern. Lizzi has already suggested the need to capitalize on this in bringing forward environmental change in our city and globally.

I would argue that in Bristol’s response to COVID 19 we have seen that our city is a place resplendent with learning, creativity, innovation and care.

I want to pick up particularly on this last word which I think is highly relevant. I want to suggest that if we want to tackle issues of social, economic and environmental justice we need to retain a focus on the role of care in the city. I draw on the feminist scholar Jean Tronto’s definition of care as ‘everything that we do to maintain, continue and repair ‘our’ world so that we can live in it as well as possible. Feminist approaches to care foreground our interdependencies, and encourage us to take notice of peoples’ lived experiences, their existing knowledges and expertise and the stories they tell about them. They encourage us to do what Jane Jacob’s the great American City planner suggested – to take notice of the complexity of our city, to look closely ‘at the most ordinary scenes and events and attempt to see what they mean and whether any threads of principle emerge.’ (Jacobs, 161, p.23). I think we have seen a lot of these ordinary scenes during this pandemic but that we need to work quickly to recognise the threads of principles and new values that might emerge.

My suggestion is that we need to work care-fully together to build on the wide range of vital and lively existing learning, innovation and creativity in our cities. However, a word of caution. We must not make assumptions that there is consensus on what these principles or values might be and we need to recognize that ‘rebuilding Bristol’, especially if we want to challenge concerns around social, economic and environmental justice, will not be easy. We will need to continually ask ‘who is not involved?’ We will need to ensure that we work with others who are ‘not like us’ or with whom we disagree. We will need to design new processes and methods for this and we will have to be open to building new relational capacities in the process, with each other but also with the environment surrounding us.

I want to finish by saying this is a moment that we need to grasp head on drawing on the many assets that we have in the city, many of which have been made more visible through this crisis. We have achieved so much in the city during this pandemic which will support us to work differently to challenge questions of social, economic and environmental justice in the city.

**Watch Helen discuss this subject area in more detail in our Annual Lecture 2019 below**


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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Helen Manchester, Associate Professor in Digital Inequalities & Urban Futures at the School of Education, University of Bristol and a Bristol City Fellow. This blog was reposted with kind permission from the School of Education blog. View the original blog.

Helen Manchester

Local students + local communities = action on the local environment

As part of Green Great Britain Week, supported by BEIS, we are posting a series of blogs throughout the week highlighting what work is going on at the University of Bristol’s Cabot Institute for the Environment to help provide up to date climate science, technology and solutions for government and industry.  We will also be highlighting some of the big sustainability actions happening across the University and local community in order to do our part to mitigate the negative effects of global warming. Today our blog will look at ‘Climate action in communities.

Geography students from the University of Bristol spent February 2018 working on air, soil and water quality research projects for local organisations and community groups, including Bristol Green Capital Partnership members. Below is a summary of each project, the findings and next steps.

Bristol City Council – Bristol Urban Heat Island effect

Students investigated the effects of urban and suburban heat islands within Bristol compared to local rural areas. Urban Heat Island can impact human health, air and water quality and energy demand in the City with implications for future planning and city resilience. This project aimed to provide early groundwork for Bristol City Council in developing a better understanding of the Urban Heat Island in the city. The group used fifteen Tinytags across the city to collect temperature data and gained secondary data from local weather stations and building management systems. The group used a contour graph (see image below) to illustrate the UHIs they found, there was significant differences (c.1.3C) between rural sites, such as Fenswood Farm, Long Ashton compared to urban sites in close proximity, such as Hotwells Road. Bristol City Council will be using this data and other insights generated through participation in the project to inform i) the co-development of an urban temperature monitoring network and ii) further research into the Urban Heat Island effect.

Malago Valley Conservation Group – water pollution in the River Malago

Students investigated how water quality varied along the River Malago in Bishopsworth and what biological impact the dam has on microplastics and pollution in the river. Initially the group collected GPS data to map the river course and used water quality samples from 40 sites along the river to record nutrient, chlorophyll and microplastic data. The team found that some microplastic build up was evident before dams and weirs along the river and nitrate concentrations increased downstream through nitrification which suggests there may be impacts on the ecology of the river. Overall the river was found to be relatively healthy according to DEFRA and Environment Agency data, but there were recommended actions to protect its health in the future. The Malago Valley Conservation Group will be using the findings to plan conversation work programmes with their volunteers.

Bristol Avon Rivers Trust – water pollution in Three Brooks Lake

Students investigated the Three Brooks Lake and accompanying urban brooks in North Bristol to see if there was a difference in pollution levels entering the lake from two brooks from separate local residential areas. The group collected twenty water samples from the site and secondary data from the Environment Agency to examine variations in the pH, nutrient concentrations, turbidity (cloudiness of the water) and microplastics levels at the site. The findings suggested that there is likely to be a difference in the water quality of the two brooks and that the lake may be a sink for water pollution in the area. The Three Brooks Nature Reserve group will use the findings to support the development of a local management plan and the Bristol Avon Rivers Trust will be using the findings to contribute to their existing knowledge base for the catchment and to search for funding to develop the research further and to undertake any necessary improvements.

Friends of Badock’s Wood – wildflower cultivation in Badock’s Wood

Students investigated the soil conditions in Badock’s Wood to support the cultivation of wildflower meadows. The group collected soil cores from three meadows and a control meadow to analyse the soil moisture and organic matter content in the lab. Most wildflower species prefer calcareous soils (>15% calcium) with low phosphorous and high nitrogen content to grow optimally. Findings showed that two meadows have calcareous soils and two were on the borderline, all meadows had low phosphorus and low nitrogen content. In the present conditions, although some wildflowers do grow, the soil isn’t optimal to sustain the growth of many species but measures could be taken to improve the soil and more robust wildflowers could be selected to cope with soil conditions. The Friends of Badock’s Wood will be using the findings to revise their management plan for the site.

Dundry and Hartcliffe Wildlife Conservation Group – water pollution in Pigeonhouse stream tributaries

Students investigated water quality variances in five tributaries of the Pigeonhouse stream in Hartcliffe and whether this is influenced by land use in the area. The group collected samples to analyse the pH, nutrient content and temperature of the streams. The findings showed that the tributaries were healthy and unlikely to be contributing to water pollution levels in the Pigeonhouse stream and further downstream in the River Malago. The group suggested that high levels of nitrate in one tributary and Pigeonhouse stream were likely to be a result of run-off from neighbouring fertilised agricultural fields. E. Coli was prolific in all areas, the source of this will be a subject for future students to investigate. Dundry and Hartcliffe Wildlife Conservation Group will present the findings to the local neighbourhood partnership group.

Dundry and Hartcliffe Wildlife Conservation Group – effects of urban development and refuse on the Pigeonhouse Stream

Students investigated water quality along the Pigeonhouse stream in Hartcliffe. The group collected water samples to analyse for pH, nutrient content, turbidity and microplastic levels in the stream. Findings showed that microplastic pollution increased and turbidity (water cloudiness) decreased downstream as urbanisation increased. Ammonia and nitrogen concentrations were found to be high in the stream, but average compared to other streams in the region and within DEFRA safety standards. In-flow pipes from the surrounding urban areas are likely to be influencing the water quality in the stream. Dundry and Hartcliffe Wildlife Conservation Group will use the report to work with Bristol Waste to reduce fly-tipping in the area and with the local neighbourhood partnership to develop strategies to reduce pollution from the in-flow pipes.

Friends of Bristol Harbourside Reed Bed – impacts of reed beds on water quality in Bristol Floating Harbour

Students investigated spatial variation in water quality across the reed bed. The group collected twenty-one water samples and analysed for E.Coli, heavy metals, pH and nutrient content. Findings showed usual levels of heavy metals, except for zinc which was ten times higher than expected. There was no evidence that the reed bed influenced nutrient concentrations or pH levels, but this may be different if the research was conducted in summer during peak growing season. High levels of chlorophyll were found over the reed bed which can result in algae blooms. The group recommended that the reed beds should be cut back annually in autumn, this will reduce the amount of dead plant matter in the water to maintain healthy levels of zinc and chlorophyll in the reed bed. Friends of Bristol Harbourside Reed Bed will be using the findings to inform their management plan of the reed bed.

Friends of Bristol Harbourside Reed Bed – the health of the Bristol Floating Harbour reed bed

Students investigated concentrations of heavy metals and microplastics in the reed bed which would impact the reed bed ecology. The group collected ten sediment samples and five reed samples to test in the lab. Findings showed usual nitrate and phosphate levels, but zinc and potassium levels were higher than in comparable rivers which may be due to houseboats dumping excrement in the water. Microplastics were prolific in the sediment samples and identified as a major pollutant in the reed bed. The reed beds were filtering some pollutants in the water, particularly potassium, but these will re-enter the ecological system if the reeds are left to die back. The group recommended that reeds were cut back annually to reduce pollutants in the water. Friends of Bristol Harbourside Reed Bed will be using the findings to inform their management plan of the reed bed.

Bristol Zoo – air pollution at Bristol Zoo

Students investigated CO2 levels as an indicator of air pollution levels at Bristol Zoo. The group collected data using CO2 probes and gas samples at five sites at Bristol Zoo and two control sites at Fenswood Farm, Long Ashton and Bear Pit Roundabout, City Centre. The analysis accounted for environmental factors such as temperature and windspeed. Findings showed that air pollution was higher at the boundaries of Bristol Zoo than in the centre, but not as high as in the city centre. The group suggested further investigations into the impact of the high boundary wall and roadside vegetation on air pollution at Bristol Zoo would be useful. Bristol Zoo will be using the findings to as a baseline for more research into air pollution at the site.

Narroways Millennium Green Trust

Students investigated the impacts of firepits on soil pollution and compaction at the Narroways Hill conservation site in St Werburghs. The group collected twenty soil samples to test in the lab. Findings showed that soil compaction was high in some areas of the site, but no evidence linked this to firepits at the site. Soil moisture was found to increase further from the firepits. There was not significant evidence to show heavy metal pollutants at the sites, except for arsenic which the group are investigating further. Narroways Millennium Green Trust will be using the findings to inform public communications around fires at the site.

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This blog is written by Amy Walsh from Skills Bridge. If your organisation would benefit from similar research, please email amy@bristolgreencapital.org.



Read other blogs in this Green Great Britain Week series:
1. Just the tip of the iceberg: Climate research at the Bristol Glaciology Centre
2. Monitoring greenhouse gas emissions: Now more important than ever?
3. Digital future of renewable energy
4. The new carbon economy – transforming waste into a resource
5. Systems thinking: 5 ways to be a more sustainable university
6. Local students + local communities = action on the local environment

Community volcano monitoring: The first weeks at Volcan de Fuego


Volcan de Fuego (Volcano of Fire) is an active volcano close to the Guatemalan city of Antigua. The volcano is one of the most active volcanoes in central America with a lively history of life-threatening eruptions.  It is thought that around 60,000 people are currently at risk from the volcano.

Monitoring the volcano is challenging with a limited availability of resources in the developing country. Bristol volcanology PhD student Emma Liu and colleagues are currently in Guatemala implementing a novel program to monitor ash fall from the volcano using community involvement. Volcanic ash is a hazard to human health, as well as to aviation. Additionally it holds vital clues into the activity of the volcano that can help us to understand past eruptions and predict what it may do in the future.  Once ash falls to the ground it is easily blown or washed away meaning lots of valuable information is lost in the hours and days after an eruption. Collecting ash as it falls can be challenging over a large area so Emma is roping in the local population to help.

Her cleverly designed ‘ashmeters’ are made almost entirely from recycled plastic bottles and are being installed in the gardens of local schools and houses around the volcano.  The components are easily replaceable and can be found locally. The ash falls into the meters and can be then collected and bagged by the residents. So far the meters have been installed in nine locations all around the volcano allowing Emma and her team to sample ash from almost any possible type of eruption.  As well as being indispensible from a scientific perspective, Emma hopes the scheme will help to improve the relationship between scientists and the volcano’s residents as she explains; ‘By engaging local communities directly in volcano monitoring, we hope to improve the two-way dialogue between scientists and residents, thereby increasing resilience to ash hazards’.

The scheme so far has been a great success, with the ashmeters being welcomed into people’s homes and attached to roofs and fencepost. Within a week of the ashmeters being deployed, they were tested by a large eruption on the 1 March 2016. Three ashmeters were installed during this eruption, all of which successfully collected ash. The Bristol volcanologists have now been able collect the ash which will be brought back to the University of Bristol for analysis.  The Bristol group will remain out in Guatemala for another few weeks in the hope they will able to distribute more ashmeters and gather more vital information for the management of volcanic hazard in the area. Emma received funding from the Bristol Cabot Institute Innovation Fund to set up this project.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Keri McNamara, a PhD student in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol.

Delivering the ‘Future City’: engaging or persuading?

In Bristol’s European Green Capital year, the University of Bristol and its Cabot Institute have been working with the Bristol Green Capital Partnership and its members to convene a series of four conversations between Bristol academics and city ‘thinkers’ from across public, private and civil society exploring how Bristol delivers the ‘future city’ –  what capacities it needs to be resilient, sustainable and successful and how it can start to develop these in times of changing governance and tightened finances. The conversations will be reflected in a series of four blogs (the third below) and then brought together as a policy report for the Festival of the Future City in November.  You can read the other blogs from this series at the bottom of this post.

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In this third conversation we considered how the range of civil society in the city is or could be effectively engaged in the future of the city. Our earlier debates (on governance and austerity) have suggested that a limited range of the spectrum of thought in the city is really engaged in shaping the future so how can engagement be widened in a way that brings people in because they want to be involved. But first, are we asking the right question in seeking new forms of engagement when maybe we don’t sufficiently value what is already happening? After all, isn’t everyone engaged in some way? What would be different in Bristol if the contribution of every individual, group and community was celebrated, connected and valued? If they felt they had both a stake and a role and were already part of delivering a better future? Would there be different questions asked, or different projects, processes and policies designed for the future?

Utopia and dystopia

A strand of discussion that captured the collective imagination was the idea of utopias – not as an impossible goal but rather as a method to help us move beyond the immediate issues of what we know now. Particularly in the current economic and environmental crises, the use of visions of utopia as a method for imagining a better world and alternative futures is a great tool – although we can also imagine the opposite, the dystopian vision of social disruption in an overcrowded, overheated world fighting for limited resources.

Dystopia. Image taken from PlayBuzz.
We have set an important, ambitious target for combatting climate change: that by 2050 we must have an 80% reduction in our carbon emissions; and we’ve been talking about the profound inequality in the city and the lack of social mobility for years – neither of these will change with incremental efforts. The Utopian approach allows us to imagine beyond what we know now, to think further ahead. Continuing to work in 5 year cycles is only tweaking when what is needed is system change – we can wait for the ruptures or be bold in addressing the big problems. We know that the city will be very different in the future, that the potential is there for dystopia if we don’t act.

‘We need to start thinking about how we best plan for the type of world we want, because if we just carry on the way the current narrative is playing out, it feels more like dystopia than utopia’. 

Could we try to imagine out of that dystopia what the possibilities are? To use a great phrase from Seamus Heaney, we need to ‘make space for the marvellous as well as the murderous’, the utopian vision coming out of crisis. But of course there are tension between what we think will happen and an imagined ideal future and we need to work with the first to get the second – and work out what will make the difference in what we end up with.

Utopias are liberating: an imagined goal to work to
Visions are constraining: just limiting variations of now 

Spaces of encounter and trust

Living in cities allows us to collaborate and survive better. But cities also allow anonymity (for better and worse) and non-participation, creating boundaries between different communities and the segregation that many perceive, generationally and culturally and within and across communities. How could the infrastructure be changed to allow the creation and connection of neutral spaces in order to facilitate interaction? Could a city be designed to actively help people to get to know each other? A city designed to break down barriers between differences, and that values and perceives diversity in all its guises to be a ‘fantastically wonderful, magical, absolutely life-enhancing, collaborative opportunity’.

We do know how to do some of this this, but it’s not happening and more needs to be done if a city’s infrastructure, services and technologies are to make positive contributions to building trust across communities, cultures and generational groups. Infrastructure could then be an enabler of bringing people together, creating spaces for encounter and reasons for interaction and discovery, celebrating and sharing stories and creating connections.

In overcoming intergenerational barriers, there are great examples from around Europe: ante-natal care in old peoples’ homes in Switzerland or co-housing students and older people in Amsterdam. The class and ethnicity barriers seem to be harder to crack – children in schools work together but increasing segregation occurs after age 16, so understanding why and what could be done to build trust and communication between communities is needed.

Trust came up strongly in the conversation, the need to build networks of trust to start to erode boundaries, having conversations to build lasting relationships, finding and using ways for neighbours to know each other. Across Bristol, neighbourly gatherings are building local encounter – like street parties and Playing Out.

Playing Out grew out of discussions amongst friends and neighbours with
young children, living in a built-up, residential area of south Bristol.
Image taken from Playing Out.

Looking further ahead, should we start with envisioning how would we all want to be with each other and treat each other in 50 years’ time in order to have society that works? Can this help to create a Utopian image of human relationships and forms of engagement to work towards?

Who are ‘we’ and are we right?

There’s a danger with all these good intentions that what we really think is that all that needs to happen is everyone else should think like ‘us’. Is there therefore a risk that engagement is really more about persuasion? There are many forms of engagement and many people are engaged in different ways. It is important that we celebrate and value different contributions so that everyone feels like they have a role. For example, surely someone supporting a kid’s after-school basketball club in Southmead is engaged – they’re helping young people to learn leadership and team working skills. They’re encouraging low-carbon, high-community activity (rather than playing sedentary electronic games or engaging in other more antisocial behaviour). They are actively and directly community building and, although they might not use these words, they’re engaged in Future Cities too.

Are certain types of engagement the only valid ones? What about the new political engagement that the Scottish referendum brought about for example, through harnessing new places and by engaging young people more successfully. Riots are also a form of engagement, bringing people together and making something happen – in Bristol, the St Pauls Riots of 1982 resulted in change – this type of engagement is more profound than elections but it’s also messy and disruptive. Mob engagement, civil disobedience, communities collaborating to be exclusive, these are all forms of engagement… are we then talking about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ engagement?

So perhaps everyone can coalesce around the common human aim of having a better future for us and ones we love with human (and environmental) flourishing at the core of everything, tackling issues of equity and justice and not forgetting the climate imperative that might force us to act more decisively together.

Politics, democracy and big institutions

We talked in previous debates about who has the power. Here we also discussed democracy and the democratic mandate of the big organisations that have power in the city. The city council of course has a democratic mandate through its elected councillors and mayor but other major ‘anchor’ organisations do not. These still have the ability to shape and influence policy – organisations such as the universities, health services, travel providers and big businesses in the city.

However, even where there is a democratic potential, not everyone exercises their rights to participate in democracy. For example in the last mayoral election, around 12% voted in parts of south Bristol, compared to over 55% in the more affluent northern areas, leading to a huge democratic deficit which demonstrates that current forms of engagement in the running of the city are not working. There is something about the current idea of politics which is not engaging so, as we’ve reflected above, new engagements which address building trust, inclusion and the embracing of diversity are necessary.

The large institutions in the city do have power but they are seen as impenetrable, unaccountable and not good at democracy and yet they have the resources to do much good where the city council is constrained by its bureaucratic processes and lack of resources. Grassroots activities should also have a role in the formal democratic processes, allowing power to be diffused and giving more communities agency, influence and a voice.

People involved in Green Capital have been described as the ‘emerald city’ and they are just a small group within the overall population of over 400,000. But how many ‘degrees of separation’ are there to reach the whole city? How can we, as a future city, build on the levels of engagement and ambition for resilience and sustainability started in this Green Capital year, working through all the networks and across the separations?

In conclusion

In this third session we talked about engagement through the ideas of Utopia (and dystopia), spaces to facilitate encounter, and the necessary building of trust. We questioned what is meant by ‘engagement’ – whether we’re missing valuable contributions by holding onto a narrow definition and that what ‘we’ might really mean is more akin to persuasion. Some forms of engagement are messy and disruptive but sometimes ruptures are needed to force the radical change that isn’t happening through the routine tweaking of the familiar. The exercise of imagining the future opens up a conversation about what to do tomorrow in seeking a better future for us all, making ‘space for the marvellous as well as the murderous’. It should be less ‘we engaging them’ and more ‘us all co-creating’ a thriving city for now and in the future.

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This blog is written by Caroline Bird, Future Cities and Communities Knowledge Exchange Manager at the Cabot Institute.
Caroline Bird
 
Other blogs in this series

Blog 1: Delivering the ‘Future City’: does Bristol have the governance capacities it needs?
Blog 2: Delivering the ‘Future City’: collaborating with or colluding in austerity?