Watery archives: Reflections on doing participatory archival research for climate action and audience engagement

Abstract This paper is based on our experience of running a one‐day participatory workshop at the Hull History Centre in the summer of 2023 titled ‘Watery Archives: Exploring Hull's flood histories’. The event was co‐designed by academics and archivists in direct response to feedback from our community participants as part of the Risky Cities project at the University of Hull. During the day, we invited participants to explore original historical material about Hull's flood histories from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, and then to produce creative and sometimes activist outputs that encouraged participants to critically engage with climate change today. The paper reflects on the value of community and participatory based approaches to open up access to archives and to unleash new learnings and discoveries. It considers some of the potential barriers to engagement in archives and shows how we addressed some of those challenges in our workshop design using methods of participatory learning and research. The paper shows how the 'Watery Archives' workshop built on the power of partnership between academic and heritage organisations to drive community‐led, place‐based research.