call for artist in residency in 6 countries

WaterLANDS is a €23.6 million, 5-year EU Green Deal funded project that aims to restore wetland sites across Europe which have been damaged by human activity and to lay the foundations for protection across larger areas. Wetlands play a vital role in our ecosystems, from carbon storage to water purification and support for biodiversity as well as providing recreational, well-being and economic benefits to surrounding communities. When mismanaged, these essential services for landscapes and society are lost. Scaling up the restoration of isolated wetlands can work towards re-establishing former wetland landscapes and realising new opportunities for local communities. WaterLANDS will utilise lessons learned from ongoing and existing restoration ‘Knowledge Sites’ across Europe to inform hands-on restoration in six ‘Action Sites’ in Bulgaria, Estonia, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Interdisciplinarity, co-design, co-creation and stakeholder engagement are integral to the WaterLANDS approach at these sites, as is the aspiration to create a legacy which can be applied at scale in other locations.

How it will work Each of the six ‘Action Sites’ of WaterLANDS will identify an artist to engage with the site, the restoration team and the project more broadly, on a part-time basis (at least one month annually for four years from 2023 to 2026). The aim is for the artist to reflect on the restoration work ongoing at the site, as well as broader social processes, by interacting with relevant stakeholders and communities, including an instance of engagement or outreach each year. The artist is requested to create an artwork(s) inspired by the restoration activities by the end of the final year, although the form this can take is very open. This will culminate with an exhibition at the final project event in 2026, where accounts of the six artistic engagements will be exhibited, again in varied forms. Further, we hope to document this process throughout the project.

Locations: Dragoman Marsh, Bulgaria The Dragoman Marsh is an extensive marsh wetland representing part of a Special Protected Area for birds (NATURA 2000), and a Ramsar Site; a wetland of international importance (Dragoman Marsh Karst Complex). Following historical drainage, the hydrology of this site has partially returned. Located just 40 km away from Sofia, the Dragoman Marsh has turned into an attractive destination for recreation, education and scientific research with visitor’s infrastructure by the reeds and water lilies. A Wetland Education & Conservation centre, run by Balkani Wildlife Society in Dragoman, has welcomed thousands of students from Sofia and nearby towns since its foundation in 2009. 

Parnu catchment, Estonia  The Parnu catchment Action Site comprises a diverse mix of abandoned peat extraction sites in Lavassaare and in Kõrsa, and degraded wet forests in Kikepera nature protected area. In order to achieve wide-ranging restoration of drained peatlands and wet forests, those holding access and use rights of these parcels of land are beneficiaries of WaterLANDS; namely the Estonian Fund for Nature (ELF), the State Forestry Management Centre (RMK) and Tootsi Turvas (ToTu) as well as the general public. Actions are coordinated by the University of Tartu (UT). 

Cuilcagh-Anierin SAC, Ireland The LIFE-IP Wild Atlantic Nature project is currently targeting 35 Special Areas of Conservation as part of its ongoing work to restore upland peatlands in the West of Ireland. The WaterLANDS Action Site associated with this project will capture uplands contained within the Cuilcagh-Anierin Special Area of Conservation, and carbon-rich soils of surrounding farmland. Subsequent to early knowledge gathering and sharing stages, the implementation mechanism for restoration actions will be through a Results-Based agri- environment Payment Scheme (RBPS), piloted as part of the LIFE-IP project and building on other successful RBPS in Ireland and further afield. The RBPS will be supported by EU farming support through the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Strategic Plan for Ireland. Work in the area will also be informed by ongoing activities of the WaterLANDS model of Knowledge-Action-Legacy. Blanket bog ecology and restoration, community engagement and RBPS involving farming communities are of central importance to this site. A major challenge of this site will be supporting farming communities to improve habitat quality, promoting carbon storage, water retention and biodiversity. 

Venice Lagoon, Italy The Venice Lagoon is a vast but undervalued and overexploited natural asset, providing numerous ecosystem services. We are here Venice will coordinate the restoration of a specific area of saltmarsh (or barene) in the Venice lagoon to demonstrate to all the relevant public bodies the validity of the WaterLANDS “approach” to landscape-scale protection and regeneration of wetlands in order to scale up the area devoted to salt marsh in a much larger proportion of the Venice lagoon. Restoration efforts will necessarily involve extensive public engagement to promote scaling and public understanding of the importance of this work, by developing and encouraging an alternative approach to saltmarsh restoration that is less reliant on heavy engineering, artificial structures and complemented by soft interventions. Outreach, community engagement and advocacy will be key, to change behaviours and attitudes to saltmarsh use that have become ingrained in recent decades. Specific lessons on dealing with the negative impacts of human activities in the lagoon and governance failures that have obstructed the reconciliation of persistent issues will usefully inform a co-created toolkit for the WaterLANDS network of sites and beyond.

Eems-Dollard, the Netherlands Restoration at the Eems-Dollard Estuary will establish a long-term vision for sustainable coastlines in which nature development, conservation and socio-economic prospects are integrated. This site lies within a heavily utilised and historically modified estuarine system, which nevertheless provides numerous ecosystem services, including defense against rising sea levels, nutrient-rich sediment for agriculture and increasingly valued biodiversity support systems. To improve the protection of this system, Provincie Groningen will embed the WaterLANDS project within the larger ED2050 project, running since 2015. To achieve this, a specialist in engineering, ecology and spatial design will be contracted to build the ecological measures and shape the nature area of the twin dike project This natural area of the twin dike will also be created by a contractor within the WaterLANDS project. Apart from this we will do research and monitoring work on the scaling up of other restoration projects (salt marshes and inland silt traps) within the program ED2050. In total 14 projects are within the program. Finally, we will create a long-term vision on sustainable coastline in which nature development and conservation and socio-economic prospects are integrated, as part of the ED2050 program. We want to learn from the experience of the ongoing Twin Dikes Project and the other ED2050 projects. Licensing, ecological, hydrological and biogeochemical support will be provided by our partners (other governments, scientific institutes) but also, very important, the local communities. A significant challenge of this site will be reconciling the commercial interests of the numerous stakeholders in this area, including highly productive farmland harbour development. Further, how changing land use can mitigate the risks of climate-induced sea-level rise is less acknowledged by local communities, an issue which WaterLANDS and the wider ED2050 project aims to address through wetland restoration. 

The Great North Bog, United Kingdom Yorkshire Integrated Catchment Solutions Programme (iCASP) is an ambitious programme, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council and hosted by the University of Leeds. iCASP brings together academics and experts from organisations active in catchment management to find ways to use existing environmental science more effectively in rural and urban areas. iCASP through its role as WaterLANDS Action Site lead is supporting the Great North Bog (GNB) initiative to deliver large-scale peatland restoration across large parts of Northern England. The GNB initiative brings together the North Pennines AONB Partnership, the Yorkshire Peat Partnership, the Moors for the Future Partnership, the Northumberland Peat Partnership, the Cumbria Peat Partnership and the Lancashire Peat Partnership. The Uplands across Northern England are a unique and distinctive landscape with a strong cultural heritage. There are approximately 7000 square kilometres of peatland soils in the Protected Landscapes of northern England, storing 400 million tonnes of carbon, however many of these peatlands have become degraded through time as a result of human activities (both directly and indirectly) and are in need of restoration.