Our Water Futures
Exploring children’s everyday experiences of water, and the implications for the design of water futures.
About the project
This research invites children to explore and reflect upon their everyday experiences of water using creative, film-based methods. The film-based method provides children with a unique lens to explore and communicate about their sensorial, and often intangible relations with water.
By foregrounding these child-water relations, we can begin to query how they shape children’s perceptions and responses to water-related issues, such as water security and climate change. This has implications for how we understand and approach water-related challenges in future.
This research project is led by researchers at Monash University in partnership with children (aged 10 - 11 years) and their supporters. It is currently being carried out in Australia and Bangladesh. We are keen to extend this research to other parts of the globe.
Researchers
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BRONWYN CUMBO (RESEARCH LEAD)
Bronwyn is a design researcher, musician and composer in the Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University. Her current research sits at the intersection of Human Computer Interaction, Science and Technology Studies, and Participatory Design, with a particular focus on more-than-human contexts, and how our relationships with other species, environments and technologies shape how we re-imagine future possibilities. Bronwyn is a composer for The Archival Futures Collective.
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ROWENA POTTS (FILMMAKER / RESEARCHER)
Rowena Potts is a filmmaker, anthropologist, researcher, writer, and editor. Her short films have explored a wide range of subjects, from the entanglements of people and animals in urban settings to the ethics of our unfolding relationship to off-Earth environments. She is a co-founder of The Archival Futures Collective. Rowena holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from New York University and a graduate diploma in documentary from the Australian Film Television and Radio School.