Coasts in Mind is a MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) project made possible by The National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Since our Coasts in Mind (CiM) mapping platform launched in autumn 2025, community groups and event participants from Poole Harbour, Swale, Sefton and North Devon have been adding records from their own collections and local archives. Now our Coasts in Mind team are asking members of the public to join in and share their memories of England's vanishing coastlines.
Contributors do not need to be experts in coastal change – or have spent years recording erosion in their local area. Changing coastlines have been unintentionally tracked over the last 100 years by locals and visitors alike, through records such as old holiday snaps and wish-you-were-here postcards.
The team are interested in recording all aspects of change, and value insights from people from all walks of life. From fishing and marine biodiversity, to water sports, sea defences, community heritage traditions, boats, coastal archaeology, and land erosion.
Coasts in Mind Project Manager, Lawrence Northall said:
“The Coasts in Mind team are hugely excited to roll out the public use of our CiM Mapping Platform, which will allow communities vulnerable to the effects of climate change to add evidence of coastal change by mapping historic images, documents and local knowledge.
As climate change increasingly threatens our natural coastal environments and their associated ways of life, the CiM Mapping Platform will serve as a tool of empowerment - giving communities a greater voice and helping to preserve their unique and valuable forms of cultural heritage. In this way policymakers and local authorities will be able to learn more about how their decisions are affecting coastal communities and work more closely with them in shaping responses to an uncertain future.”
The current phase of the CiM project is running between 2025-2027, uncovering a century of coastal change around Poole Harbour, the Sefton Coast, the Swale Estuary and the Taw-Torridge Estuary. It is hoped in the future the digital archive will be widened to include other affected coastal communities across the UK.
To find out more about the project, or to create an account and start contributing to the mapping platform,visit https://cim.mola.org.uk/sign_up
Visitors to Poole Museum in Dorset and the Fleur de Lis Museum in Faversham, Kent can also view exhibitions about the Coasts in Mind project, co-curated with members of the local community. Find out more, including museum opening times at www.poolemuseum.org.uk/discover/exhibitions/coasts-in-mind-a-lifetime-of-change and https://favershamsociety.org/fleur-de-lis-museum/.
