Paper short abstract:

A historian’s views on the pluses and minuses of collaborative visualisations in the making of a documentary film on why the past and present management of local water drainage boards is important to millions of people’s lives in England – not an easy task.

Paper long abstract:

Setting out to make a documentary about local drainage boards that people might want to watch is not an easy task and trying, at the same time, to tell their long and rich histories, and why this is important to tackling the impact of climate change, makes it only harder. Teaming up with a visual anthropologist and filmmaker, we tell the story of a generic local water board at five “key” times of the day, as narrated by different stakeholders representing what they do, what they used to do, and who benefits from their actions. The water slowly draining through the watercourse, filmed in different ways and lights, provides the central narrative to the documentary, giving it structure as well as highlighting the central function of water level management now and in the past.