Water and People

Held at a variety of venues across Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, ‘Water and People’ was a group exhibition exploring ways of seeing, experiencing, and relating to water. Through painting, sculpture, poetry, sound, and embroidery, artists explored how we communicate about water, and whose voices are heard in conversations around water security, river health, and climate change.

Alongside artwork flowing from the River Tyne and the Northeast of England, we shared creative outputs from community-focused research from the Water Security and Sustainable Development Hub by our partners in Colombia, Ethiopia, India, and Malaysia.

The exhibition was accompanied by ‘Confluences’ – a series of creative workshops, open to all, designed to bring people together to discuss the material, social, cultural, and political aspects of our relationships with water. 

"The arts are really important in addressing global challenges such as water security because they help us to connect with people and tell stories, and also help people to understand their own connections and that personal feeling towards things such as water and our natural resources.” - Dr Cat Button, Newcastle University

“I think art and creative methods help us understand the challenges, but they also help us come up with creative solutions.” – Dr Jaideep Gupte, UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)

“I think what art does, is it helps us pause, and it helps us think more meaningfully about some of the challenges that we face today.” – Shveta Mathur, Janya Collective

“Good art also has a power of transcendence, to take us out of our every day and see both the beauty of water, and what, perhaps, we ‘re losing." – Professor Tom Curtis, Newcastle University