How do individuals and communities understand Deep Time? A relatively short-term perspective is dominant in contemporary societies as they face the complicated ongoing consequences of landscape change on every aspect of the human life, from agriculture and provision of food and energy to the protection of natural or cultural landscapes. A more holistic and deeper knowledge is required. This 18-month project - 'Orkney: Beside the Ocean of Time' - aims to generate new understandings of the interrelationship between human community, Deep Time and landscape change using an interdisciplinary approach, in which five Early Career Researchers with backgrounds in Social Anthropology, Literature, Archaeology, Palaeoecology and Geology, will work together to find innovative ways to investigate and represent time-depth in landscape, using Orkney as a model. The project will develop and pilot an interdisciplinary methodology that will enable new insights into Orkney's rich literary, geological, palaeoenvironmental and archaeological heritage, which is coupled with contemporary concerns over coastal erosion and the political and economic importance of energy generation. The project will address three main research questions: - How do communities respond and adapt to landscape change? - What is the time-depth of people's engagement with place? - How do we make Deep Time visible? Responding to the challenge of understanding human engagements with the time-depth of landscape change requires the combined insights of Arts, Humanities and Sciences. Researchers will combine their expertise to undertake interdisciplinary fieldwork on Orkney to include: analysis of 19th and 20th century Orcadian literature; investigation of the impact of flooding, the Storegga slide, volcanic ash, and other geological activity; a reanalysis of the Orcadian palaeoenvironmental data; an online database compiling and evaluating legacy Orkney radiocarbon measurements; ethnographic fieldwork (see below). Working together with our project partner, the Pier Arts Centre (Stromness), and in collaboration with a local artist, we will explore creative ways of communicating and representing the results of the fieldwork, and making Deep Time visible. The project will culminate in a public Festival of Deep Time, which will include an exhibition of the artist's collaboration, and a series of public workshops, talks and field-trips, that will enable us to undertake further ethnographic fieldwork, by involving the community in a dialogue about perceptions of time-depth and landscape change. The research findings of the project will also be made available via a project website containing geotagged images, video and other research data, and through the development of a toolkit for researchers wishing to undertake interdisciplinary Science, Arts, and Humanities research in relation to time and/or environmental change. 'Orkney: Beside the Ocean of Time' contributes to the Science in Culture Programme by providing opportunities for public engagement with the effects of time on landscape change. It will enable community dialogue about the ways in which the lived environment of Orkney has been, and will continue to be shaped by human and natural activities, in the deep and near past, the present moment, and perhaps most significantly, the as yet, undetermined future.

The Design Innovation and Land Assets (DI&L) FoF project will connect academics, designers, artists, rural sustainability experts, human geographers, cultural policy workers and community groups. The contextually located programme will focus on the articulation of island communities shared land assets and use in relation to social, cultural, economic (including non-monetary economic) factors and associated wellbeing domains. The programme will comprise of a series of site specific co design workshops in Orkney, Shetland and Mull. The triangulation of insights from the three island contexts will in turn inform decision-making, for example, regarding the repopulation of Ulva, which is now in community ownership. Through sharing participatory and co-design methods, island communities will be equipped with the skills to transform their decision-making practices as well as their approaches to governance. The proposed DI&L team from the GSA's Innovation School comprises of Professor Lynn-Sayers McHattie as Principal Investigator, DI&L Co-Investigator Dr Brian Dixon, University of Ulster continuing in the role of Co-Investigator with Elio Caccavale, GSA Reader in Transdisciplinary Design joining the team as a specialist researcher. Prof. McHattie has extensive experience of directing and delivering UKRI projects, including AHRC funded projects; Dr Dixon has expertise in practice-based research methodologies, as well as the theoretical linkages between design and place; Elio Caccavale's work at the intersection of design and science explores the relations between humans, nature and landscape. A Research Assistant will also be recruited to support the team. DI&L will be enhanced with the inclusion of Project Partners Chris Fremantle, Saoirse Higgins and Dr Katherine Champion who each respectively hold expertise in: ecological theory and practice; art ecology and the Anthropocene; and cultural policy formation. Beyond this, Graeme Howell, Shetland Arts Development Agency and Carol Dunbar, Pier Arts Centre will join as Project Partners - the PI has long standing relationships with both organisations. The PI and Dr Anna Hicks of AHRC funded Landscapes of the Mind Network have identified synergies across their respective projects, particularly related to Orkney, and Dr Hicks will also join the DI&L team as a Project Partner. All Project Partners have issued Letters of Support and confirmed "in kind" contribution to the DI&L programme. Further stakeholders will include Mull & Iona Community Trust, Scottish Government representatives and Highlands & Islands Enterprise. DI&L FoF will take place over the course of 18 months, commencing 1st February 2020 in parallel with and building on the DI&L Network and will involve three inter-related phases: scoping and planning; delivery; and evaluation. A series of co design workshops will investigate how design innovation principles and practices can provide more holistic approaches to support effective, embodied and experiential insights into land-use decisions that reflect the diverse environmental and historical assets of indigenous island communities. A further workshop will develop a call for a Special Issue of CoDesign Journal on Land Assets, supported by Professor Janet McDonnell Editor in Chief CoDesign. The programme will conclude with a DI&L symposium in May 2021, which will simultaneously draw together, evaluate and disseminate the insights and findings. Impact beyond academia will be an embedded component within the project, in the sense that real issues will be explored in the workshops with community members and activists. Dissemination of the project will occur through the production of a publication/report, visual assets (videos and photography) to be distributed both physically and digitally amongst all partners, relevant regional and international policy-makers and wider publics.

The current shift to marine renewable energies, with UK investment to top £150bn, will likely transform the sustainability (the balance between economic growth, social well-being, and environmental care) and resilience (adapting to change, adversity and new opportunities) of coastal communities and adjacent seas. History tells us that previous energy transitions have led to profound environmental and socio-cultural change for local communities due to their often boom-and-bust nature. Yet most analyses focus on technical and economic criteria and rarely address environmental, social, cultural, and institutional impacts or whether transitions are just (i.e., that they are as fair and inclusive as possible for everyone concerned). This oversight must be addressed to reduce carbon emissions in a way that also improves outcomes for coastal environments and communities. TRANSECTS will address this oversight using a novel transdisciplinary approach, co-developed with coastal resilience stakeholder partners and combining sociology, economics and geography with engineering, ecology, history, law, archaeology, and creative arts. We adopt a place- and time-based research design using learnings from the experiences of different coastal communities during past energy transitions. We combine natural and social sciences with arts and humanities to explore the shifts from non-renewable marine energy sources (whale oil in the 1800s through to offshore oil and gas in the later-1900s) to more sustainable renewable energy sources in the early-2000s. We will analyse differences across geographical scales (small areas to large regions), between mainland coastal and island communities and between different UK regions. The TRANSECTS project has three primary aims: 1) Use historical and current case studies to understand marine energy transitions and their impacts on the sustainability and resilience of coastal communities and adjacent seas 2) Integrate creative methods with community dialogue and scientific research/expertise to enable communities to explore their roles and responses to energy transitions 3) Establish a 'theory of change' for marine energy transitions which will assist coastal communities to improve social, economic and environmental sustainability and resilience, and transform decision-making To achieve these aims, we will explore three cases: the Humber Estuary, the Orkney Islands and east-coast Scotland. Each has changed their main marine energy economic activity from whale oil via offshore fossil fuels to marine renewable energies and has experienced changing economic fortunes, marginalisation and (often hidden) hardship caused by these transitions. TRANSECTS will examine the raw energy sources (whales, oil & gas deposits, offshore wind plus associated habitats and seabed): how much and where they have been located. It will consider the services provided by these resources. The project will assess how nearby communities have been affected during transitions by analysing - for example - migration, employment, and mental and physical health. TRANSECTS will combine empirical data with human stories (from archives and creative methods) to 're-people the past'. It will investigate the fairness and equity of decisions made during energy transitions ('just transition'). Importantly, it will work with communities to develop strategies to enable energy transitions that increase the resilience of coastal and marine ecosystems and the communities that depend on and interact with them.