Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on 'water management', and draws attention to the shifting sense of meaning that water takes on in different contexts, embodiments and relationships. It explores creativity both from the perspective of creative practitioners and from academics seeking more creative ways of participating in, and engaging with, people and water, doing so through exploring interactions and interfaces in different ways. The book offers insight into how creative practice can surface alternative relationships with water and how creative facilitation can create space for different types of knowledge to come into contact. It also focuses on the use of creative methods within an academic project focused on collaborative water management. The book also explores a similar but different interaction with the sea and considers how surfing might be seen as a 'creative compulsion'.