Data and Tides

Explore how tides shape us!

Data and Tides

How can data help us tell stories about the places we live?

This workshop explores the relationship between data, tides and stories, using Plymouth connection to the sea as a starting point. Participants will explore tidal data and consider what the numbers can—and cannot—tell us about our relationship with the sea.

We’ll look at simple tide data and discover how the sea changes throughout the day and across the year. We’ll then bring the numbers to life by sharing our own experiences: places we visit, things we notice, memories of the water, and the ways tides and the sea shape everyday life in Plymouth.

What do tides mean to different people? How do changing water levels affect the way we experience and use coastal places? And what can happen when we bring together quantitative data and the knowledge held by local communities?

The workshop connects directly with the AHRC Stories of Us project at the University of Plymouth, which explores how communities can combine data with lived experience to create richer stories about their places and strengthen local voices in decision-making. Rather than treating data as something abstract or separate from everyday life, the workshop invites participants to interpret and make meaning from data themselves.

By bringing together tides, data and stories, we will explore new ways of understanding Plymouth’s connection with the sea—and how different forms of knowledge can help us tell more inclusive stories about place.

Part of the wider Stories of Us approach, that explores how community stories and data can be combined to strengthen local voices and influence decision-making, with work taking place in Plymouth and Hastings.

Organiser: Katharine Willis, University of Plymouth

Description supplied by the event organiser.