A Day At The Seaweed
Added at 13:01 on 10 March 2025
The Peat, Diesel and Seaweed project is using poetic inquiry to find out how local people think and feel about the green transition in coastal communities in the northwest Highlands of Scotland. The research has involved an online survey, interviews and various interactive workshops using creative techniques. The last of these was held with students from Kinlochbervie High School, in January 2025 and it focused on seaweed. Seaweed is important because it sequesters carbon out of the atmosphere, and because there are plans afoot in our communities to start a new industry cultivating seaweed. There is a growing demand for seaweed products, which can replace other more carbon-intensive materials in food, fertiliser, packaging, cosmetics etc.
We started out on the seashore, sharing knowledge of seaweed and exploring what species we could find. Then we headed indoors for hot drinks and spent time thinking about the future. We used a methodology for this based on one developed in the Cultivate Project, with facilitation from Catrion
a Mallows. This process helps communities to create a shared vision for the future, find the seeds for this in the present and work out how we can help these seeds develop towards the future we want. We modified the metaphor so that our envisioned future consists of fronds of seaweed and grows from spores we can find in our communities today. The students had loads of ideas, from sports clubs and music to housing and jobs. With the help of artist Caitlin Turnbull, the students created a visual representation of their thinking, using paper made with seaweed to make this rather lovelyseascape of their ideas.
When I started this project, and surveyed local people about climate change, I was shocked by how negative most people's feelings are on the topic. I'm interested in how creative and forward-looking approaches might help people to find hope, so I began the day by asking people what they feel about climate change and the future - these are the words written on the seashell-shaped pieces of paper. I closed the day by asking people how they feel about climate change and the future now, and these are the words written on the blue paper fish.
If you'd like to read what the students find cool about seaweed, and the change in their feelings about climate change over the course of the day, I have condensed them into these two 'poemish' pieces, using all and only their words on these questions.
What is cool about seaweed?
There’s loads of different kinds of seaweed.
Their categories - egg wrack, sugar kelp…
There are 3 main types – red, green, brown,
different shapes, colourful green and brown shapes.
You can eat seaweed.
You can eat it.
It can be eaten.
They are edible.
It has many uses -
carbon capture, ecosystems, food, fertiliser.
It helps the biodiversity of our seas.
Lowers carbon.
It is versatile.
It grows on each other.
They all grow on each other.
They can reproduce.
They can have sex.
They pop!
(with thanks to the students from Kinlochbervie High School S1&S2 Rural Skills class)
The Future
In the morning…
I feel baad
Bad
Disappointed by slow progress
Scared
I feel scared and hopeless
Worried
Worried
Apprehensive
Climate change
Climate change
Plastic pollution
It is in chaos
Tipping point
Warm
Deisel (finished)
By the afternoon…
How do I feel about the future? A little terrified to begin with.
Warm ☹
Too warm and bad for the planet.
I feel that the government should be doing more.
More bike trails.
Hopeful from activities like this but also quite scared.
Hopeful
Optimistic
Hopeful & excited!
Good
Great
Good
Great
Goooood
OK
Interested
Curious
The future is bright
At least seaweed will survive!
(With thanks to the students from Kinlochbervie High School S1&S2 Rural Skills class in Lochinver on 22 January 2025, who were asked at 10.30am ‘How do you feel about climate change and the future?’ and at 2.30pm ‘How do you feel about climate change and the future now?’)