Entangled Shorelines: Translating tacit knowledges for coastal stewardship

The Entangled Shorelines project addresses ecological transitions in the Wadden Sea by piloting an innovative, arts-based approach to improve collaborative dialogue between small-scale fishers and coastal management. Recognizing the often-overlooked sociocultural and emotional dimensions of coastal stewardship, the project aims to mobilize the tacit knowledge embedded in local fishing communities— the experiential and intuitive know-how rooted in place-based practices and perspectives. Through co-creation between fishers and artists (acting as communicative bridgebuilders), the project aims to surface and share this knowledge via artistic storytelling-based works, opening pathways for more inclusive and emotionally resonant policy dialogues. Structured around two phases, the project explores artistic methods for the co-investigation of tacit knowledge and the imaginative transmission to coastal management stakeholders. As an outcome of this pilot, a fieldguide on the use of co-creative storytelling for the mobilization of tacit knowledges is produced for creative practitioners, fishers and coastal management policymakers. Following this pilot, we plan to expand the investigation together with a wider network of partners and communities around the North Sea, generating broader, trans-local dialogues about coastal governance and the tacit dimensions of coastal community connections to their changing shorelines.