Why World of Water needs IWAC. Water runs through me and through you and everything we both do. Our bodies, our food, our homes, our industries, our beliefs, our clothing and every sneeze too. That is why World of Water is ‘World’ of water – a charity that sees each single object and action as connected with stories from life.
We want to build on that. Our idea is the International Water Awareness Centre, or IWAC, which needs the support of a growing global corpus of knowledge, collections and experience for it to live and do its vital work.
The Water Palace
We’d talked about a new dedicated water centre since Aber Gwen Mill closed. Tracy, a visitor to our ‘Wet Harvest’ exhibition in the early 1990s [Birmingham Nature Centre. UK], nicknamed our aim a Water Palace, and the name stuck.
When IBM backed our follow-on exhibition at the Birmingham Reference Library, we used ‘Water Palace’ as the title. It still describes a place where people stumble on water in unexpected ways and follow their curiosity from there.
But this Water Palace (or, more formally, IWAC) isn’t a conventional visitor centre with fixed routes, nicely printed labels and tour guides. Technology is changing all that. Tomorrow’s visitor won’t be issued with the sort of audio-trail I got at Philips Evoluon (the UFO-shaped building located in Eindhoven) when I was 18; no no not tomorrow. Tomorrow, you’ll maybe pick up an object, ask AI where it came from, hear its story in your own language, and then be pointed to related material held anywhere in the world. Though some of that technology exists it’s not generally used yet but we’re starting to design our collections and information now in such a manner that they’re ready for when it is.
Two ways of exploring
Within WOW today, every object in our collections and every activity at our field centre and in our outreach programmes opens onto much more. So photographs, artefacts, recordings, documents, research and people’s memories form ‘The Collection’ in a physical way, but what you can learn from them all isn’t limited by the space they occupy on a display shelf; in the hands of a WOW storyteller, the history of a Irish glass washboard can open up into a present day jam session down the road.
Beyond WOW, our visitors bring their own knowledge and they’re encouraged to go out and find other sources of their own. We help them compare accounts, check evidence and meet views they hadn’t considered. We never expect anyone to accept what we say just because it’s in one of our exhibitions or publications. Our job is to be clear about our sources, honest about what we don’t know, and to encourage people to keep asking questions.
One centre can’t hold it all
No building, and certainly no single curator, can hold everything there is to know about water. So IWAC needs to be both a connected resource as well as a place. Local and international collections, researchers, practitioners and communities will each be encouraged to contribute what they know, without any need to copy what others already know or hold. The smallest of small collections can be designed to lead into the very large and growing world of learning.
Commerce, communities and conservation
Farming, fishing, energy, manufacturing, tourism, governments and computing, to name but a few, all depend on water, as do the ecosystems around them. IWAC’s aim is to be right where these interests meet and talk. Think … irrigation and soil/food health, water quality and surfing, pollution and wildlife health …. decisions we make, connecting sectors with often unseen or untold effects on water and waterlife.
We’re not assuming everyone’s interests can be reconciled. But clean water is something we all depend on, even when we disagree about how to manage it. That’s a reasonable place to start a conversation.
Starting with what we have
IWAC will take years to develop and grow. We have begun now, with our collections, building relationships and providing experiences. Every exhibition, conversation and practical project is our chance to test how our bigger idea might work.
If you have objects, knowledge, research, skills or ideas to contribute or you’d like to explore how your work could connect with ours, please get in touch. We’re looking for water-related objects, people with water stories to film and places to pilot this”.
Contact World of Water to explore ways and collaborate.
Update Ref: iwac/m