Research Spotlight – ‘Blue Heritage: The Role of Ocean Art and Culture in Ocean Science and Management’

In June, the Creative Writing Against Coastal Waste project team attended one of the many ongoing UNESCO World Oceans Day events: ‘Blue Heritage: The Role of Ocean Art and Culture in Ocean Science and Management’. Centred on the premise that ‘more attention needs to be given to the human-cultural dimension of the ocean and its use’, this thought-provoking event brought together an international selection of leading scholars in the field of marine heritage and ocean literacy to discuss some of the research and case studies that will be presented in the forthcoming Palgrave Handbook of Blue Heritage, edited by Rosabelle Boswell, David O’Kane and Jeremy Hills.

Chaired by Eden Charles (University of the West Indies) who also acted as a thoughtful respondent for each speaker, this event raised some relevant questions for our own project relating to the role of the Arts and Humanities in driving policymaking and meaningful knowledge exchange. Charles opened by arguing that ocean art, culture and science ‘play an important part in ensuring that there is effective ocean governance’ because they force us to move beyond the conclusions drawn by communities of academics to the ‘ordinary folk’ that government policy ultimately impacts.

Segueing neatly from this emphasis on inclusion, Rosabelle Boswell opened the discussions by presenting an overview of the diverse range of chapters in the new Palgrave collection and the book’s core arguments. The primary purpose of the collection, she argued, is ‘investigating both the tangible and intangible heritage of the ocean’ and how we engage with it. An important aspect of this process involves acknowledging that human interest in the oceans is not new, and needs to be historicised if we are to understand the role played by storytelling in shaping ‘human relations with the sea’. The Palgrave collection therefore emphasises a turn in cutting-edge research in the field of ocean governance towards the importance of narrative. This in turn provides a crucial theoretical framework for the story-based outputs Creative Writing Against Coastal Waste has planned for its own communities: interventions that Boswell’s emphasis on historicising ocean-human relations through narrative shows to be particularly timely.

Continuing this focus on storytelling, another fascinating presentation afforded by this event was delivered by Kira Irwin, who discussed the role of narrative and storytelling within discussions about coastal policy in South Africa. Irwin began her presentation with the idea that South Africa is ‘embarking on the idea that oceans are huge frontiers for growth’. Moving from this fact, she posed three widely relevant questions about the interrelatedness of storytelling and ocean governance:

How do we contend with these warring desires to enter/protect the oceans?
How are those decisions creating spaces that are often dominated by economics and science?
What do people feel with and for the oceans?

To address these questions, Irwin’s project collected voices and transformed them into a theatrical production entitled ‘Listen to the Ocean’ which tells ‘intergenerational stories’ that aim to deconstruct problematic hierarchies of knowledge about the ocean that place scientists at the top and religion or heritage at the bottom.

Irwin also noted that one character in the play was a marine scientist, in order to acknowledge the continued importance of this role, but that the emphasis of the production was cultural heritage. For this reason, the production drew upon ‘African traditions of call and response’ in its format. Irwin emphasised that the impact of this play lay in its creation of an ‘opening’ for dialogues with the audience about ocean governance. In contrast, in his capacity as respondent, Charles noted that ‘listening to the ocean is listening to local communities’, suggesting that littoral communities are not only key to effective ocean governance, but can also provide valuable clues as to the kinds of messaging are most effective in driving change at a local level. This idea is one that might valuably shape our own thinking.

The event also included two notable presentations about Ghanaian fishing communities, and the role of tradition in keeping sustainable narratives and behaviours alive in coastal areas. The first, delivered by Georgina Yaa Oduro and John Ansah, discussed the sustainability benefits of non-fishing days in Ghana. Non-fishing days originally arose as a result of local spiritual beliefs, but have more recently declined due to the local rise of Christianity and the undermining of the power of traditional leaders. Yaa Oduro and Ansah argued that there was an urgent need to change the frame of reference so that this sustainable impulse is not permanently lost. Since the spiritual consequences of not observing non-fishing days are no longer effective deterrents, they suggested, it is important to foreground the implications of overfishing for coastal sustainability instead. In the second presentation, Eric Otchere discussed his work relating to the recording and analysis of Ghanaian fishing songs, concluding that this research is especially timely because these songs are acutely aware of and become vehicles for communicating climate change, technology, modernity, and the pollution of the oceans. Like many of these presentations, Otchere emphasises the arts and humanities as at the very centre of environmental awareness.

In this respect, while each presentation was based on an individual case study, this event was wonderfully effective in joining up local, national and global priorities relating to the oceans and for centralising the potential for the Arts and Humanities to play a much richer and more significant role in ocean governance. It should also draw attention to our assumptions about the importance of behaviour change, by providing several examples of sustainable behaviours in littoral communities that have been working effectively for long periods of time. This might prompt us to consider that sustainability projects in the arts and humanities are as much about facilitating spaces for the exchange of existing knowledge and narratives as they are about the creation of new stories and approaches.

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Research Spotlight – ‘Blue Heritage: The Role of Ocean Art and Culture in Ocean Science and Management’