Living with climate change? A group coming to New Bedford will envision the future.

As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, so what can groups of university students create to share their vision of the effects of sea level rise?

Undergraduate and graduate level university students and their professors will be gathering in New Bedford and Fairhaven this fall as part of the Envision Resilience Challenge, a student design studio and community engagement program focusing on learning to live with climate change.

Local advisors are also part of the Challenge, now in its third year in coastal communities. Five to seven university teams, including several University of Massachusetts programs, will be selected to participate.

What is the history of the Envision Resilience Challenge?

The first one was held in Nantucket in the spring of 2021 followed by Providence last spring. Project Manager Claire Martin, for ReMain Nantucket, the Nantucket-based organization that runs the program, explains what the students will be doing.

“They engage with community members to understand the unique history, culture and challenges of these communities as they relate to the effects of climate change, and they use resources like speakers, local advisors, mapping and data tools to come up with innovative, adaptive, out-of-the-box solutions for learning to live with the effects of climate change, predominantly sea level rise,” she said.

What other climate issues will be explored in New Bedford?

Related themes will also be explored, including the transition to wind energy relative to the impact on the waterfront and the fishing industry, heat islands in cities, climate gentrification, affordable housing and transportation.

Since September, meetings have been held with more than two dozen stakeholders from New Bedford and Fairhaven who are also focusing on climate change and can serve as advisors to the student teams. Faculty leads will be in the area in June for a two-day workshop with local partners.

What will the students be doing?

The design studio will kick off in August, and a multi-month public exhibition displaying the out-of-the-box designs will open in February 2024 with a complete schedule of community events.

The visuals the students create will also be shared with New Bedford’s arts community.

“It’s the visuals really that tell the story,” Martin said. “The students create these really beautiful adaptive drawings of what Union Street would look like in the future, and what that did was start to change the dialogue and the conversation. They really do get you thinking.”

Standard-Times staff writer Kathryn Gallerani can be reached at kgallerani@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter: @kgallreporter. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Standard-Times today.

This article originally appeared on Standard-Times: University students to envision the future in New Bedford, Fairhaven