Immersive Places: Digital Storytelling for Ecologically Informed Behaviour Change Across Dartmoor National Park

This project explores how creative, place-based storytelling can translate ecological data into forms that are meaningful to the publics whose everyday activities impact on river environments. Despite increasing scientific knowledge about river health, there remains a persistent gap between ecological evidence and the ways people understand and respond to environmental change in the landscapes they value. Addressing this gap is critical for organisations responsible for managing fragile river environments such as those on Dartmoor.

Working in partnership with the Dartmoor National Park Authority and the Duchy of Cornwall, the project will investigate how immersive, digital storytelling can support more effective communication of ecological issues at high-pressure river sites. Through narrative interviews with river-user groups - including swimmers, anglers, walkers, climbers, and canoeists, the research will document how people connect to specific Dartmoor places and what environmental knowledge they currently hold. These lived-experience narratives will be brought into dialogue with existing ecological datasets.

These materials will be translated into immersive film and projection-based
storytelling outputs presented at selected Dartmoor “places of intersection,” where rivers, landscapes, infrastructure, and visitor activity converge. Public screening events will invite both contributing user groups and wider audiences to encounter these narratives in situ, enabling ecological evidence to be experienced within the landscapes to which it relates. These engagements will generate qualitative insight into how audiences interpret environmental information, understand their relationship to river health, and reflect on behaviours that affect fragile ecosystems.