Coasts in Mind is a MOLA project recording a century of coastal change in Poole Harbour, Swale Estuary, Taw-Torridge Estuary and Sefton Coast through oral history, foreshore archaeology, and historic images. We are aiming to empower local coastal communities to act on climate change. We will be collecting people’s memories of coastal change and recording their personal archives of postcards, oral histories, holiday photographs, and diaries. With the help of the local community our team will use these sources to plot how the coast has changed over the last hundred years. These records of small scale, local change will help cast a light on how the climate crisis is impacting specific sections of the coast. It will also help us predict how the coast will change in the future. While at the same time recording lost archaeology and changing intangible heritage. All this information will be put on a digital map that people can explore for free. Creating a community-generated resource puts local knowledge at the forefront of the climate discussions. It also provides a framework for coastal communities to respond to the impacts of climate change and engage with policymakers. We’ll be hosting a series of memory walks, community archive recording sessions, and coastal heritage skills training workshops across the next three years. To help embolden local communities to understand and react to the changing coast and the continuing climate crisis. We’ll be starting work from January 2025 in Poole Harbour, the Swale Estuary, the Taw and Torridge Estuary, and along the Sefton coast. Our partners in the project are Humap and Dig Ventures. We are funded by the National Heritage Lottery Fund and the Lloyds Register Foundation.
