Marine Exeter Blog, Tanya Venture
My name is Tanya Venture and I’m a collaborative doctoral partnership (CDP) PhD student with the University of Exeter and Historic England.
My PhD is focusing on understanding and communicating what heritage loss on the coast means to the people who live, work and visit and care for these important places. The loss of coastal heritage is a highly emotive and difficult process to manage, but unfortunately one that will become more and more necessary as the effects of climate change become more acute.
My work looks at understanding and communicating what that loss actually means including what opportunity may come about from a change coast which can include new discoveries and ways to engage with the past.
To do this I’ve created an interactive documentary (i-doc) called Visualising Loss to help open dialogues between heritage professionals and the wider public through engaging with the conversations around loss in a different way. The interactive documentary (i-doc) is like a chose your own adventure novel where you – the audience – can navigate your way around fragments of conversations filmed with 39 participants around four key case study sites in the south west all undergoing some form of loss or change.
It may be confusing at first, the i-doc is meant to challenge you to create a narrative base on the stories that you’ve heard and the people you’ve managed to interact with. The aim is to help create a dialogue between heritage professionals and the wider public about what loss really means to them personally and the places that they love.
Information about the project as well as a link to engage with the i-doc and optional questionnaire can be found at https://www.visualisingloss.com/
Feedback via the questionnaire will feed directly into my research and will give you the chance to win one of 3 amazon vouchers.
If you would be interested in getting in contact with me directly to hear more about my research or to organise a workshop please email me at t.venture@exeter.ac.uk