Shared Seas: Coastal Encounters
4 JuneShared Seas: Coastal Encounters is part of the 'Can the Seas Survive Us?' season
What role must museums play in the climate crisis?
This urgent public gathering marks the opening event of Shared Seas: Coastal Encounters — a two-part programme hosted at the Sainsbury Centre, reawakening the radical ethos upon which the Centre was founded. Conceived in the 1970s as a rule-breaking experiment in what a museum could be, the Centre now reimagines its role as a civic force for climate action, justice, and collective care.
As the 1.5°C threshold becomes a lived reality, museums stand at a crossroads. No longer neutral repositories of the past, they must step into the foreground — to convene, to challenge, and to lead.
Programme Overview:
Part 1: Water Rights: A Dialogic Approach
Date: Wednesday 4 June 2025
Time: 9.00 – 11.20
Where: East End Gallery, Sainsbury Centre
Led by the Sainsbury Centre Learning Team in collaboration with community partners, this participatory session explores the transformative potential of dialogic methodologies within the museum context. Through collective conversation and co-creation, participants will examine how shared knowledge and dialogue can shape institutional responses to water rights and environmental justice.
Biographies: Space for Dialogue
Kate Dunton
Kate Dunton is Head of Learning at the Sainsbury Centre. A trained art historian, Dr Kate Dunton gravitated to the ‘third space’ between universities and the arts and cultural sector. At the Sainsbury Centre, Dunton leads programmes for all ages from toddlers to care-home residents. She aims to engage diverse audiences with the exhibitions, collections, building and sculpture park in mutually enriching and empowering ways.
Nell Croose Myhill
Nell is Learning Programme Manager for Adults and Young People at the Sainsbury Centre. Nell has worked for over ten years in the field of arts education, primarily in art galleries, universities and artist-led spaces. She has a breadth of experience in community-based programming for adults and young people, working across projects, events and exhibitions.
Iokine Rodriguez
Iokiñe Rodríguez is a Venezuelan sociologist, with an M.Phil. in Environment and Development from the University of Cambridge, England, a Ph.D. in Development Studies from the University of Sussex, England and a post-doctorate from the Centre of Social Studies of Science at the Venezuela Institute of Scientific Research (IVIC). She specializes on local environmental knowledge and conflict transformation in Latin America using participatory action-research.
Bridget McKenzie
Bridget McKenzie is a researcher, trainer and artist working to engage people with the Earth crisis. She presents and publishes internationally on Regenerative Culture, and delivers a course called Earth Talk, on dialogic approaches to environmental engagement. Her career includes being Tate’s Education manager and the British Library’s Head of Learning. She founded Climate Museum UK and co-founded Culture Declares, an international movement of cultural workers declaring a climate and ecological emergency.
Josh Hall
Josh Hall is a writer, editorial director, and artist-publisher. He runs Possible Worlds an independent publishing house and project space in Great Yarmouth, UK, producing physical and digital publications that explore new ways to create and share meaning. As a freelance journalist Josh Hall writes extensively on decentralisation, web3, and data justice, as well as arts and culture topics.
Part 2: Radical Museums: Catalysts for Climate Action
Date: Wednesday 4 June 2025
Time: 11.35 – 12.20
Where: East End Gallery, Sainsbury Centre
This public panel brings together leading voices in curatorial innovation and institutional change. Panellists Jago Cooper, Frances Morris, and Daisy Desrosiers will discuss how museums can evolve as agents of climate justice and social equity — becoming stewards not only of the past, but of transformative futures. Themes of radical pedagogy, museum innovation, and institutional accountability will guide this powerful exchange.
Biographies Panel
Jago Cooper
Director of the Sainsbury Centre and Professor of Art and Archaeology at UEA, Jago Cooper has spent over two decades working across museums, broadcast media, and heritage sectors worldwide. Formerly Head of the Americas at the British Museum, he curated the landmark exhibition Arctic: Culture and Climate (2020) and is committed to reframing museums as radical and living institutions, as recognised in The Guardian‘s description of the Sainsbury Centre as “the UK’s most radical museum.”
Frances Morris
Frances Morris is the chair of Gallery Climate Coalition. She is an internationally respected curator and former Director of Tate Modern (2016–2023), where she led major curatorial strategies that expanded the museum’s global reach, championed gender equity, and embedded environmental responsibility. She played a key role in Tate’s 2019 Climate Emergency declaration, leading pioneering initiatives in carbon reduction, sustainable operations, and climate-focused programming.
Daisy Desrosiers
Daisy Desrosiers is Director and Chief Curator at The Gund Gallery, Kenyon College. Her practice bridges artistic research, institutional change, and social justice. She has held key roles at the Lunder Institute and ICA Me&CA, and has curated major international exhibitions, including No Justice Without Love (Ford Foundation Gallery) and Sympathy for the Translator. She is currently on the board of the UCC Art Gallery, Ireland.
Rosy Gray
Rosy Gray is Head of Living Art at the Sainsbury Centre. As Head of Living Art, Rosy cares for over 5,000 artworks, overseeing conservation, loans, acquisitions, and collections research. In previous roles, Rosy has developed collections, projects, exhibitions, and artist commissions across a range of public institutions, including Ferens Art Gallery for Hull City of Culture 2017 and Norwich Castle as Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.
About the Gathering
Shared Sea: Coastal Encounters, a three-day programme bringing together artists, curators, designers, scientists, activists, researchers, policymakers, and community leaders to explore how art and culture can shape global climate action. The event is organised by the Sainsbury Centre, Norwich Green Film Festival, University of East Anglia, East Gallery and Norwich University of the Arts, in collaboration with originalprojects (Great Yarmouth) and Wolterton, with support from the Kingdom of the Netherlands Embassy, London.
The programme begins on Wednesday, 4 June at the Sainsbury Centre, from 9am to 12.30 noon, with afternoon sessions continuing at Norwich University of the Arts, followed by a film screening at Cinema City, hosted by the Norwich Green Film Festival.
Thursday, 5 June will be held entirely at Norwich University of the Arts. The optional third day, Friday, 6 June, includes a coastal encounter in Great Yarmouth, hosted by originalprojects. Please arrange your own transportation.
Please book each event separately with our partner organizations.
To book the sessions happening at Norwich University of the Arts, click here.
To book the sessions happening at the Sainsbury Centre, click here.
To book the sessions happening at originalprojects, click here.
Event curated by:
- John Kenneth Paranada – John Ellerman Foundation Curator of Art and Climate Change, Sainsbury Centre; member of the AAH Curatorial Committee’s Climate Working Group; researcher at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.
- Candice Alison – Development Curator, Bank Plain, Norwich University of the Arts.
Shared Seas: Coastal Encounters is part of the Can the Seas Survive Us? Programme
Image credit for photo on top: Julian Charriere, Midnight Zone, 2024, Copyright TheArtist, VG Bild Kunst, Bonn, Germany
