Vesper Hill enables action for social and climate resilience through creative exploration

Vesper Hill tackles complex social and ecological challenges with their unique engagement process, rooted in interactive storytelling and facilitation. As a Bright Spot, they demonstrate the power of stories to shape and change the world.

Founded in 2022 as a social enterprise by Steve Scott-Bottoms, a drama professor at the University of Manchester, and Angel Scott-Bottoms, a therapist and facilitator, Vesper Hill develops interactive workshops, performances and engagement strategies. Their goal? To humanise difficult challenges, address them, and build personal and collective resilience.

One of their latest works, Inundated, is an immersive storytelling experience that enables participants to see and feel incentives for climate resilience through a story of flooding and community action. Co-developed with community-interest initiative the Aire Resilience Company, postdoctoral researcher Milo Harries and director Si Brewis, its debut performance was held in March 2025 in Leeds, and has since been performed to diverse audiences, with future stagings planned.

By bringing participants into the story of one community taking natural flood mitigation action to protect their homes and livelihoods, the experience builds their understanding of the economic, social, environmental and personal incentives needed to unlock action on resilience.

How is Vesper Hill different from mainstream climate resilience solutions?

Whereas other organisations or coalitions might seek to solve climate resilience issues by developing solutions, testing and implementing them with affected communities, Vesper Hill takes a personalised, bottom-up approach. It invites people to see and feel incentives for climate action, and equips participants with the technical knowledge for resilience and the collaboration model needed to drive action.

This way of learning through storytelling doesn’t rely on support from outside the community, but rather turns participants into agents of change by showing the social and financial benefits in building resilience locally.

Photo: One of Vesper Hill’s performances, Who Ya Gonna Call? (in event of emergency), which explores the UK’s state of preparedness for a changing climate, with the July 2022 heatwave as a backdrop.

How does Vesper Hill change the way citizens approach climate challenges?

Vesper Hill changes the way collective responsibility and individual action is understood by people and makes the case for action on resilience at a workplace or community setting clear, understood, personal and high priority. Taking Inundated as an example, although the topic of the ‘play’ is flooding and natural mitigation techniques in a city in Northern England, the accessible and personal approach makes it valuable for audiences to relate to their own contexts.

Beyond building participants’ capacity, Vesper Hill illuminates the potential for adopting and scaling its model of collaboration to a wide range of climate and social resilience issues.

"Vesper Hill makes intimate, interactive theatre performances. This might seem counter-intuitive, when there is an urgent need to communicate far and wide on climate issues. But we believe strongly in the power of personal encounter: audience members have told us that ideas and images from our performances have lingered with them for months or years, inspiring them to build resilience in their own contexts."

— Steve Scott-Bottoms, Storyteller-in-Chief, Vesper Hill and Professor of Contemporary Theatre and Performance, University of Manchester

What could the future look like if Vesper Hill’s approach scales on a global stage?

If more people understood how to build resilience in their communities and work, as well as the incentives for action, climate resilience would spread and accelerate from the bottom-up. Alongside increasing critical top-down investments from governments and large organisations, this type of grassroots action is desperately needed to regenerate vulnerable social and ecological systems at the pace needed to mitigate escalating climate breakdown.

Photo: Inundated, one of Vesper Hill’s latest performances, is an immersive storytelling experience that enables participants to see and feel incentives for climate resilience through a story of flooding and community action.

Building resilience to climate change is a “whole society” problem, and so it’s vital that we find new ways to engage more diverse audiences. With Inundated, we’ve tried to address business audiences in a playful way, by telling a story that captures imaginations and asks leading questions about personal and corporate responsibility.

— Steve Scott-Bottoms, Storyteller-in-Chief, Vesper Hill and Professor of Contemporary Theatre and Performance, University of Manchester

Questions to consider

What might you need to act on resilience in your community?

How might theatre and storytelling help people to understand and be incentivised to act for resilience in your work?

Photos courtesy of Vesper Hil.

Meet the Bright Spots

A Forum for the Future initiative, in partnership with The Earthshot Prize, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and Trane Technologies, the Future of Sustainability: Reimagining the Way the World Works is showcasing the social and climate initiatives shaping a better future, today.

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