The Fair Water? exhibition, hosted at the University of Oxford’s Museum of Natural History from November 2023 to September 2024, is an interesting and successful example of interdisciplinary public engagement. Based on extensive collaboration between REACH researchers and the museum exhibitions team, the exhibition used art, interviews, animations, interactive displays, and specimens from the museum to reveal some of the global barriers to water equality and explore how researchers, communities and policymakers are working together to shape a fair water future.
Across the year, the exhibition received 273,370 visitors, and 4,134 people attended an array of interactive and interdisciplinary events associated with the exhibition. Evaluation by the museum based on visitor surveys suggest that over two thirds of the people engaging with the exhibition emerge convinced of the power of research to influence decisions by government, industry and individuals in the home.
The team behind Fair Water? have been working with museums and international organisations on plans to bring the exhibition to wider public and policy audiences in countries where the research was undertaken – Bangladesh, Kenya and Ethiopia – and more widely. The online version of the exhibition will also remain on the museum website as a lasting resource and legacy of the project.
