JISC

The project will enhance an existing digital archive resource focused on community flood histories by using digital stories and other Web2.0 technologies to engage communities. The project integrates the trial of two different approaches to the generation of digital stories by and with different communities for social learning.

The digital resource will be accessed by different types of learner in communities (including public in community settings; local government; emergency services; environmental regulators) and within Universities (students; teachers; researchers; trainers).

This project builds on an existing digital resource – the Lower Severn Community Flood Information Network. This was led by Professor McEwen, University of Gloucestershire (UoG) as one outcome of a Royal Society ‘Connecting People to Science’ (COPUS) project (2004-2006) that involved engaging communities in the middle/lower Severn with their local flood histories and learning about flood risk/climate change. The original website was designed by multimedia students at UoG, with subsequent modification.

A further output was a national good practice guide for community engagement around flood risk (McEwen, 2007)1. A key learning point from this project was the identification of oral history of past floods (like the extreme March 1947 flood), particularly from older community members, as an untapped learning resource. There has since been a catastrophic flood in the Severn catchment in July 2007 that impacted significantly on communities; this provides an additional drive to enhance this archive as a significant community learning resource.