CoastARTS
Coastlines as Zones of Ecocultural Crisis: Shaping Resilience through Transnational Performance-based Arts
CoastARTS is a transnational research project that explores coastal zones as ecocultural spaces where environmental, social, and symbolic crises converge. Focusing on contexts from the Atlantic Europe and former European colonies, the project investigates how these zones operate simultaneously as material territories of vulnerability and as imaginary landscapes shaped by memory, conflict, and regeneration.
By combining archival, ethnographic, and performance-based methodologies, CoastARTS mobilises artistic practices grounded in performance both as analytical tools to understand past and present coastal crises and as forms of collaborative action with the potential to foster community resilience. In partnership with museums, cultural centres, and performing arts organisations, the project develops and tests innovative methodologies to apply performance-based arts in interdisciplinary and non-academic contexts, aiming to support processes of community-building and social transformation in vulnerable coastal territories.
The central goal of CoastARTS is to explore how performance practices, as situated forms of cultural expression and intervention, can contribute to the recovery and revalorisation of ecocultural knowledge, while simultaneously promoting the sociopolitical empowerment of local communities and strengthening their resilience in the face of systemic crises of ecological, social, and symbolic nature. The project’s methodological approach is grounded in a transdisciplinary understanding of performance, which includes not only conventional artistic expressions - such as theatre, dance, or music - but also community-based performative actions such as creative protests, sensory installations, participatory rituals, and spatial interventions that engage audiences as co-authors of meaning and transformation.
CoastARTS is expected to contribute to the development of new interdisciplinary methodologies that integrate performance practices into the analysis and response to coastal crises. The project aims to produce applied knowledge on ecocultural resilience, enhance community capacity in vulnerable settings, and inform public policies by valuing local knowledge and advancing environmental justice. Expected outcomes include the production of artistic and ethnographic documentation, the strengthening of collaborative networks between academia and the cultural sector, and the creation of replicable models of performative intervention in coastal territories affected by systemic risk.
Royal Holloway University of London, United Kingdom (Coord.)
University of Galway, Ireland
University of Oviedo, Spain
Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway