Estuarine and coastal cities are acutely vulnerable in the face of climate uncertainty. 40% of the world's population lives within 100km of the sea and coastal populations are directly at risk from rising sea levels and the combined effects of storm surges, fluvial flood risk and increased rainfall. Society needs greater resilience at the local, national and global scale: estuarine communities and businesses must learn to 'live with water' in an uncertain future. Yet engaging diverse communities with water challenges is a significant problem for agencies and governments, with the most vulnerable in societies often the least well informed about resilience actions. Here we bring innovative arts and heritage solutions to bear on the problem of engaging these communities with flood risk and building resilience in one flood-prone city, Kingston upon Hull, UK. Hull is recognised globally for its vulnerability to flooding in the face of rising sea levels. It is one of five global cities selected to participate in the Rockefeller Foundation's and Arup's City Water Resilience Framework development programme. Yet international awareness of Hull's future flood risk finds little reflection in local communities. And this despite serious flood events in 2007, 2013 and 2015, as well as an 800-year history of living with water challenges in the city. Hull's excellent archival records and literary and dramatic works - combined with the University's expertise in flood science and modelling, environmental histories and literature, community engagement and cultural sector evaluation - offer unrivalled opportunities to explore histories of risk and resilience in the city and surrounding area. In this project, we develop research-informed learning histories to build resilience for the future, with the ambition of leveraging a year-on-year improvement in resilience to flood risks and uptake of resilience actions in and around Hull. Working alongside arts partners and practitioners, flood agencies, young people and local communities - who will contribute to the co-production of research agendas as well as academic and policy-relevant outputs - we employ these learning histories in community-based arts and heritage interventions and large scale productions by national arts organisations including Absolutely Cultured and the National Youth Theatre (NYT). Supported by three artists in residence, our research addresses three thematic clusters of questions (specified in the Objectives and CFS), and the research outcomes both inform and are in turn shaped by the engagement activities planned for the project. The substantial collaborations agreed with project partners leverage significant wider reach for our ambitious arts and heritage programme (see PTIs). Using a combination of social science methodologies and participatory tools for arts evaluation co-designed with community and youth groups, we interrogate the effectiveness of arts and heritage interventions to raise climate awareness and deliver an uptake in practical resilience actions, evaluating models for engagement and developing best practice that can be applied nationally and globally. In doing so, we aim to improve climate change awareness and flood resilience in risky cities in the UK and beyond. Outputs from the project include: a programme of combined arts and heritage engagement in schools, community and youth groups in 'at risk' wards; a flood festival; high profile, city centre artistic productions informed by our learning histories and created by community and youth groups in collaboration with national arts organisations, the NYT and Absolutely Cultured; a sound walk; articles in major international and interdisciplinary journals, some of them co-authored with arts practitioners and community members; a policy report and associated public policy brief launched at Westminster; a short film; a workshop; and a public facing website hosting podcasts, blogs and teaching materials.

This follow-on proposal will provide significant additional impact by empowering young people to engage directly and creatively with research developed during the AHRC-funded "French Theatre of the Napoleonic Era" project (2013-2017). In performing a new play about the Caribbean Revolutionaries held at Portchester Castle in 1796, members of the National Youth Theatre and local Hampshire community groups will bring that research to both a live audience and a global virtual one. A recording of the production will be the centrepiece of a range of educational resources to help English Heritage tell a forgotten part of Black History. The original research showed how important theatre was in shaping debates about nationhood and political legitimacy during the First Empire and how prisoner-of-war theatre fostered cultural exchange, themes that will be echoed in the new play. In 1807, French prisoners of war on board the prison hulk The Crown, moored in Portsmouth Harbour, opened a Theatre of Emulation (the name comes from one of the popular Boulevard theatres in Paris) and premiered a 4-act historical drama, The Revolutionary philanthropist or Hecatomb on Haiti, which tackled the incendiary topic of the Haitian Revolution. A manuscript of the play survives and it shares a number of themes with the only other known surviving French prisoner-of-war play manuscript of the period, Roseliska, which premiered at Portchester Castle in 1810. Ideas of freedom, imprisonment, resistance, patriotism and loyalty suffuse both texts but, unlike Roseliska, the Revolutionary Philanthropist is unperformable in a 21st-century context because it reproduces 18th-century notions of racial difference that are wholly unacceptable today. In 2019, sound artist Elaine Mitchener subverted the intention of the anonymous author of the Revolutionary Philanthropist to highlight Black agency in the struggle for emancipation by using extracts from it in a Warwick-commissioned sound installation, 'Les Murs sont témoins /These Walls Bear Witness' at Portchester Castle. This has revealed the potential for working creatively with the play as a means of exploring the Revolution in the Caribbean and Portchester's role in global history: over 2000 Black revolutionaries from St Lucia, St Vincent, Guadeloupe and Haiti, including women and children, were captured by the British in 1796 and sent to Portchester. Their lives mirror those of the on-stage rebels in the Revolutionary Philanthropist. Heritage Lottery Funding has already paid for me to work with a director, Mumba Dodwell and a playwright, Lakesha Arie-Angelo since July 2020, and for 2 weeks of R&D [research and development] workshops under English Heritage's flagship youth engagement programme Shout Out Loud. Two powerful work-in-progress performances have been transformational for those involved. The NLHF money was never going to be enough to cover a full production and it is clear that the legacy of the project will now fall short of its full potential unless the new play is performed on site at Portchester to engage meaningfully with decolonising Portchester's history as a prison-of-war depot. Follow-on funding would enable us to continue to work with playwright and director and record the production to use as the focal point of a range of educational resources. A live streaming of the play will be broadcast simultaneously on the EH and NYT YouTube channels, which between them have 1.3 million subscribers. The new play, written in conjunction with young Black actors from NYT, explores fundamental questions about human rights, discrimination, identity and power. It moves beyond traditional narratives of the enslaved as victims and celebrates the role of women in Revolution. Bringing it to production would allow us to reach new audiences, especially in the Caribbean, significantly enhance the value and wider benefits of the original research project and enable young people to take ownership of history.