“Taps Aff!” Voicing experiences of water scarcity in rural Scotland

The Project

This twelve-month project will run across rural Scotland. It will develop and test methods for communicating experiences of water scarcity and its management with those planning responses to water scarcity and a wider public.

This project will address:

• The growing water scarcity crisis in rural Scotland and its effects on water supply users
• Issues of sustainable management of environmental resources
• The need to support bottom-up and joined-up responses to environmental change and crisis management.

Methods

This project will develop a reflexive, responsive methodology in collaboration with knowledge-holders that addresses the complexities of this crisis and the specificities of the context. We will build a framework for the use of social science methods as part of rapid crisis response activities.

We will focus on images and film, but we anticipate including other creative modes, for example, narrative storytelling, engaging with local artists, and audio-visual methods incorporating ‘walking with water’ approaches.

Stakeholders will include:

• Practitioners, decision-makers and community members involved in developing responses to both water scarcity and climate change
• a wider public who will have a stake in both action and decision-making processes associated with everyday water stewardship
• researchers and other knowledge-holders looking for methods to document and communicate events that require rapid response.

Guiding Principles

Building on their established expertise and knowledge-holder group contributions a project code of conduct will be paired with a risk assessment. This will embed ACCESS Equality, Diversity & Inclusion and Knowledge Co-Production best practice principles while including considerations for the specific project themes.