The goal of the Watercasting project is to encourage bilateral engagement among public health researchers and policy makers using cultural artifacts as participatory media to drive critical thinking about personal, community and policy decisions affecting water and public health management.
Public engagement is conducted in 4 steps:
1) co-create artifacts with public health researchers and the community to elicit peoples' physical, emotional, and social relationships with water and its effects;
2) illustrate these and other data as publicly-accessible maps of the cultural and physical territory of water and its health consequences in everyday life;
3) using video, explore the ‘flow’ of water through individuals, animals, infrastructure, locations, policy decision points, and use the results for discussion about the relationships of water and health,
4) distribute these films to stakeholders for reflection, including a working group of policy makers, economists, game designers, public health researchers, and educators tasked with developing guidelines for a strategic game about water futures and health-conscious behaviors.
We call this process “Watercasting” because it strengthens the field of public engagement through communication and coordination, resulting in the transfer of knowledge between public health researchers, policy makers, and other stakeholders.
The work is being carried out by the Center for Experimental Media Arts and CSTEP along with strategic partners in water advocacy and public health with seed support from the Wellcome Trust, UK.
Rising Wisely: NGI Lab blog