Levenmouth Adapts

The Levenmouth Adapts project aims to promote climate ready decision making in a way that incorporates community interests and champions the value of creative approaches to bring about change.

Taking place over eight months, Levenmouth Adapts is helping decision makers and those living, working and studying in Levenmouth to gain a better understanding of how climate impacts will affect the area. Artist Nathalie Taylor has been employed as an Embedded Artist with Creative Carbon Scotland to support this process by helping to find new ways to think about climate impacts and encourage imaginative responses. Opportunities are also being created to work directly with young people living and studying in the area, helping them to understand climate readiness and how to achieve it.

Levenmouth Adapts is a partnership between Adaptation Scotland, Creative Carbon Scotland and Fife Resource Solutions/Fife Council. The project is funded by the Scottish Government’s Adaptation Scotland programme which is delivered by sustainability charity Sniffer.

Project phases

There are five key phases to the Levenmouth Adapts project:

Phase 1: Information gathering phase to build climate evidence and create scenarios for Levenmouth

Phase 2: Preparing the ground with Levenmouth decision makers at a workshop to raise awareness of adaptation and explore what climate ready means for Levenmouth

Phase 3: Engaging with young people studying at Fife College through a Creative Minds competition where students will develop visions of a Climate Ready Levenmouth in 2030.

Phase 4: Working with Fife Council Communities and Neighbourhoods Team to integrate Climate Ready into Place Standard with the Leven community

Phase 5: Learning, reflection and celebration.

Creative Minds

The competition involved 1st year Creative Industries students from Fife College being taken for a field trip which included hearing how the area would be affected by impacts such as flooding and sea level rise predicted in the latest UK Climate Predictions report, as well as ambitious regeneration plans for the area including the River Leven Catchment Project and visits to the Levenmouth seafront and the CLEAR Buckhaven orchard (a community-led regeneration initiative). They then had 48 hours to develop a creative work which addressed the themes of place, future and climate for Levenmouth in a thought provoking way. Here’s a quick video the students made about the competition:

The competition was judged by representatives from the Levenmouth Adapts partnership and academic and administrative staff from Fife College. In the next stages of the project students will be invited to share their work and perspectives on the future of the area with partners including the Fife Environment Partnership. You can see the winning entry “Improve Scotland” below.

Project legacy

After the project, decision makers and the local community will have a better understanding of how climate change will impact their local area, and understand how future plans and responses can build climate resilience. The learning from this short term project will have longer term value and will be applied to ongoing engagement with Levenmouth.

Project Partners