PUBLIC PRESENTATION + DISCUSSION

Rising Waters
Robert Joe and Jessica Silvey, Raph Shay, Laura Kozak

Thursday March 26, 5PM – 7PM

We invite you to join us for the launch of Field School: Rising Waters, a multi-part, interdisciplinary gathering that brings together artists, designers and storytellers alongside staff from regional and local municipalities, to consider shared questions of our ecological, infrastructural and cultural entanglements with water. Sea levels are rising and will continue to for the generations to come. Atmospheric rivers, coastal flooding, melting snow-caps and warmer climates have become common, shared and recurrent experiences. Today’s King Tides are expected to be our regular daily tides by 2050. This discussion brings together diverse perspectives to consider the real transformations that we are witnessing in our communities, and along the vast shorelines that connect us. The recently released “Coastal Flood Mapping Project” provides a detailed look into future flooding risks on the Lower Coast. And in the midst of these narratives of catastrophe and grief, artists as storytellers are helping us think with these rising waters.

Robert Joe and Jessica Silvey: Great snow, floodwaters and other stories from the shíshálh swiya
Join Robert Joe and Jessica Silvey for stories of rising and receding waters.
shíshálh oral narratives describing the great flood, the great snow and the great landslide speak to significant events in the collective history of the shíshálh swiya. Elder Robert Joe led the Nation’s rights and title department. As litigation coordinator, he assembled a team of experts, among them an anthropologist, archeologist and historian, to develop, collaboratively, a case “that we owned the land, we defended the land and we used the land.” Jessica Silvey is an artist, weaver and the Indigenous faculty advisor at kálax-ay | the Sunshine Coast Campus of Capilano University.

Raphael Shay: Coastal Flood Mapping
This presentation will share the Coastal Flood Mapping Project, a collaborative mapping project that included the Sunshine Coast Regional District, Town of Gibsons, District of Sechelt and Islands Trust. It forecasts, based on data, flooding for the Sunshine Coast under different scenarios. Raphael is the Sustainable Development Manager at the SCRD where he led the Coastal Flood Mapping Project for the Sunshine Coast. Raph loves unearthing the leverage points that foster collaboration, entrepreneurial projects, and innovative policy. He also enjoys playing in the mountains, canoeing with his family, and foraging for mushrooms.

Laura Kozak: Water as Connector: Practicing Place-Based Ethics
Laura Kozak is a design researcher and Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Culture and Community at Emily Carr University. Her work focuses on relational, place-based ethics, and asks how designers contribute to relationships with communities, land, water and ecological beings through decolonizing and anti-oppression practices. Through projects such as a Climate Justice Field School and Water Equity and Reconciliation Lab, she has collaborated extensively to bring public sector teams from the City of Vancouver into learning relationships with Indigenous Nations, Elders and Knowledge Keepers, artists, designers and community climate practitioners.

Project Collaborators: Sunshine Coast Arts Council, Sunshine Coast Regional District, Emily Carr University

Project Funders: Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, Sunshine Coast Regional District, Emily Carr University, District of Sechelt

Field School is interested in working across different knowledge systems – water management, land-use zoning, aquaculture, conservation, Indigenous ways of knowing, and creativity. Field School seeks to intentionally cross-pollinate an interdisciplinary team, to see how the information about flooding is translated, expressed and experienced. Field School is intended to benefit the participants most directly, but also our community members through storytelling and art.

Field School: Rising Waters (Call for Participation) CLOSED
March 26-27, 2026 + April 23, 2026

Project Collaborators: Sunshine Coast Regional District, Emily Carr University
Project Supporters: Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, Sunshine Coast Regional District

Field School: Rising Waters is a multi-part, interdisciplinary gathering that brings together artists, designers and storytellers alongside staff from regional and local municipalities, to explore our ecological, infrastructural and cultural entanglements with water.

This year we will consider the recently released “Coastal Flood Mapping Project” that provides a detailed look into future flooding risks on the Lower Coast. Sea levels are rising and will continue to for the generations to come. Today’s King Tides are expected to be our regular daily tides by 2050. Field School seeks to translate the complex information from the Coast Flood Mapping Project into meaningful and comprehensible information, by working with artists and designers who will bring creative thinking to it. When faced with catastrophic information within the climate crisis, our tendency is to often act defensively and reactively.

The initial gathering will take place on March 26 – 27 and will include presentations and discussions from municipal staff alongside site walks at Sechelt’s waterfront. It will culminate in a second gathering on April 23, 2026 where participants will be invited to share their thoughts and ideas with our community through a public presentation and dialogue.

Field School is interested in working across different knowledge systems – water management, land-use zoning, aquaculture, conservation, Indigenous ways of knowing, and creativity. Field School seeks to intentionally cross-pollinate an interdisciplinary team, to see how the information about flooding is translated, expressed and experienced. Field School is intended to benefit the participants most directly, but also our community members through storytelling and art.

SCHEDULE

Thursday March 26, 2026
5PM Public Presentation and Discussion
7PM Dinner Discussion (Fieldschool Participants)
Friday March 27, 2026
10AM Breakfast and Gathering (Arts Center)
11:30AM: Site Visit: Trail Bay – Ocean Level Rising
1PM: Lunch (Arts Center)
2PM: Site Visit: Porpoise Bay – Tidal Flats and the Memory of the Marsh
3:30PM: Debrief, roundtable discussion, planning for April
5PM: Exhibition Opening + Reception

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION: We are inviting applications from individuals across the Coast who are inspired by the intention of this year’s Field School and would like to be part of it. Limited to 10 participants, Field School is interested in bringing together creative thinkers from across the Coast to engage with our ongoing ecological and climate crises, and explore ways to challenge floods and rising waters. Deadline to submit is Saturday February 28th, 2026.

All Field School participants will receive an honorarium for their participation.