The word ‘resilience’ is used a lot these days, but what do we really mean by it? We all face challenges and change in our lives, and our resilience allows us to respond to them.
The content in the following pages comes from an exhibition held at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall from November 2024 to January 2026. The exhibition was an interactive audio-visual experience exploring the resilience of people who live and work by the sea in Cornwall.
By entering the space, visitors activated glass audio buoys. The buoys play recordings of people describing disruptive events that they had experienced over their working lives, and how they have overcome them. We have reproduced the audio for you here. As you listen, we hope you will reflect on the different ways people have dealt with change. Did they absorb the effects of those changes, adapt, or perhaps transform their way of working?
The images below are credited to Ian Cross
We all face changes, whether in our work lives, our personal lives, wider society and even the environment around us.
People living and working on the coast can face more than their fair share of disturbances and they all respond in different ways.
We asked people who live by the sea about the changes they had experienced in their lives, how they were impacted by them, and how they responded. We were amazed by the variety of challenges they told us about.
What changes and disturbances have you experienced in your life? Were they big? Small? Personal? Imposed by others? How did they affect you?
The way we respond to change is a demonstration of our resilience.
This graphic is made up of quotes from our oral history interviews in Cornwall. It shows the range of change events impacting these important communities.
Image credit: A-side