UK: Co-creation Citizen Science event with marginalised communities: Supporting Local Residents to Clean Up the River Lea

On Saturday the 6th of August 2022 our UCL team ran a successful workshop with the title ‘The River Lea: Conversations for Action’. The purpose of the workshop was to work with local residents in East London to understand the issues they are facing caused by the river’s pollution, the ways they currently interact with the river (or how they would like to interact in the future), and how UCL can support them through digital action (a citizen science project in this case) to clean up River Lea.

During the two-hour session, participants, who are very passionate about their local area and River Lea, identified over 30 separate problems that are impacting a four-mile stretch of river. These included environmental problems (e.g. sewage pollution, invasive species, declining wildlife), social issues (e.g. crime, lack of access to green space), health concerns (e.g. Weil’s disease), and political challenges (e.g. difficulty pursuing legal action against polluters). In the next step, the People Nature Lab team at UCL in a project led by Dr Izzy Bishop, will work further with the broader local community to design and run a citizen science project, which will aim to address some of the issues that were identified during our workshop!

We would like to thank everyone who participated in this workshop!

You can find more information about the workshop in this blog post on UCL’s website.