Contribution short abstract:

Sharing TEK alive in land- and sea-based learning and ways of crafting (a living) on Barra & Vatersay, this paper considers ambitions to co-create - cognisant of more-than-human socialities – coastal practices that are appropriate to people, place and our times of poly-crisis.

Contribution long abstract:

Our paper draws from year one of an Engaged Science project, Muir is Tir (Sea and Land (Gaelic)), which is the collaborative vision of the communities of Barra and Vatersay in partnership with social and environmental scientists and creatives from four universities. Together we desire practical approaches to coastal change that we can collectively craft and that can support quality of life for the islands’ communities and a flourishing coastline, both. Our paper describes, with reference to creative approaches and specific craft techniques, our attentiveness to the more-than-human –including in the sense of world-shaping non-human energies such as those felt in extreme weather events and of the more-than-human others with whom human islanders are related and entangled such as seagrass, cow or scallop. Cognisant of the wisdom that sits in the places (Basso, 1996) of Vatersay and Barra, we will share the way in which the ecotone (which in Ecology describes a transitional area between two biological communities) has become a powerful poetic concept for us as we grapple with literal and metaphorical shifting sands, with change and transition here. It speaks to the project’s efforts to produce both so-called ‘nature-based solutions’ and new stories of adaption, that are both rooted in traditional island culture and informed by science. Learning from life in ecotonal areas seems fitting as traditional forms of living shift and are reinvented, as eco-anxieties swell whilst ecoliteracy is pursued, as coastlines shift, communities rally, and publics form around both concerns and hopes for futures.