Old family holiday snaps, postcards and treasured memories could play an important role in documenting how Britain’s coastline has changed over the last century as a community-led digital archive opens to public contributions.
The Coasts in Mind mapping platform, created by MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology), is inviting people to upload photographs, documents and local knowledge covering coastal areas between 1925 and the present day. The archive focuses on Poole Harbour in Dorset, the Taw-Torridge Estuary in Devon, the Swale Estuary in Kent and the Sefton Coast in Merseyside.
Since the platform launched in autumn 2025, community groups have been adding material from local collections and archives. The project team is now encouraging members of the public to contribute their own records, regardless of whether they have any expertise in coastal change.
The project team said they are interested in documenting all aspects of coastal change, including fishing, marine biodiversity, 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.”
He added: “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.”
Coasts in Mind is a MOLA project made possible by The National Lottery Heritage Fund and National Lottery players. The current phase of the project runs from 2025 to 2027 and it is hoped the archive will eventually expand to include other coastal communities across the UK.
People wishing to contribute or create an account can visit https://cim.mola.org.uk/sign_up. Exhibitions about the project, co-curated with members of local communities, are also on display at Poole Museum in Dorset and the Fleur de Lis Museum in Faversham, Kent.
