Poetry, Painting and Change on the Edge of England

In this article we discuss our creative research on and with a contested coastal community on one of the U.K.'s last existing plotlands, the Humberston Fitties in North East Lincolnshire. Our cross-disciplinary collaborative practice between poetry and visual art explores open, environmentally-aware engagements and methodologies with landscape and rural place. We investigate the relation of social, environmental and energy politics, looking out to land and sea and back to the community. We aim to show that the effects of radical open form text and paintings, presented innovatively together, challenges audiences' assumptions, asking whether local people respond to "their" rural places differently after engaging with such work and associated memory workshops and discussions. Our results include original art and poetry presented in exhibitions and books, in addition to local people's responses to our methodologies and the work itself.