Bluewater Endeavours
Strengthening One Health Resilience:
Bluewater Endeavours, focusing on research and design, was first founded as an education, design and advisory initiative in 2023 by local Marlborough resident, Deborah Early, PhD. With over 25 years technical and creative non-fiction writing experience, she is currently a risk and resilience advisor.
She draws from her experience as a former educator, former president of the American Medical Writers Association Delaware Valley Chapter, former travel writer and former Marlborough Representative to the Top of the South Committee New Zealand society of Authors. Deborah seeks to share adaptation, resilience and place attachment insights and evidence-based expertise nationally and internationally.
Deborah proposed, for Marlborough, a living lab approach - real people finding real solutions in the real world as she noticed siloed work. Siloed approaches erode social cohesion by restricting information flow, fostering an "us versus them" mentality and reducing trust between groups. By isolating teams or communities, they limit collaboration, create misaligned goals and hinder collective action to solve shared problems. She is further informed by her 2023 USA social prescribing and Oceania nature-based urban design research linked with 2025 Lincoln University postgraduate research, learnings at AF2025. Drawing on the quintuple helix (Public, Private, Professionals, People, Place) this initiative has expanded to include others in her local community wanting to co-create their resilient future with a living lab approach.
As an example she co-created Bluewater Endeavours Living Lab (BELL) projects which are locally-led, place-based Living Lab projects.
March 2026: Two BELL projects initiated and completed.
Jan. 2026: Marlborough's First "One Health" Resilience Living Lab project proposed incorporating recreation, tech and tourism. A Living Lab is a user-centered, co-created, open innovation ecosystem and tool for resilience.
