[Image from the beautiful cover of the Cultures of Water Special Issue published this September in the Cultural Studies Journal]

Culture is a slippery, complex concept. The MobileWorlds project is focused mostly on how culture affects mobility, and what cultures of mobilities are and could be. Alongside this, however, I (Kim) have also worked a lot on the question of “Cultures of Water”, and how cultures relate with spatial planning and heritage. I’ve been exploring the topic of Cultures of Water together with a wonderful team of colleagues from various backgrounds – Clara Roberti, Bruno Lopes, Gisele C. Conceição, Rui Monteiro, Rui Pedro Almeida, and many others. This subject (and team!) has allowed reflections on how to understand “culture”, how it is intertwined with heritage, various environments, identities, and the value and importance of arts-based methods for understanding, communcating, and engaging various publics. Here is an overview of what has emerged from this so far:

• This week, we published Exploring the potentials of rural tactical action for co-creating Heritage: the case of the ‘Minante’ project in the Heritage & Society Journal.
• In print since this September, the special issue on Cultures of Water in the Cultural Studies Journal, see here, featuring the article, Interweaving environment, heritage, and society through Cultures of Water. An introduction as the Issue’s introduction.
• A few months ago, the article, From Riverbank to Ocean: Involving Young Generations With Their Territory Through Artistic Practices, in the Journal Ocean & Society.
• In 2023 already, the article, (Re-)valuing and co-creating cultures of water: a transdisciplinary methodology for weaving a live tapestry of Blue Heritage, in the International Journal of Heritage Studies.

Much of this is connected to the wonderful Minante project, conducted in 2023 and 2024, in the context of the European Commission’s New European Bauhaus.