Talking Itchen lets people do something unusual: hold a conversation with a river. Through an AI model connected to environmental sensor data, visitors can ask about the River Itchen, its water quality, its ecology and the pressures it faces, and get answers grounded in real information. The project combines AI, electronics and environmental storytelling to make river conservation feel immediate and personal.
A SustAI-led project brought AI, electronics and river conservation to local children and festival visitors
Between January and March, SustAI researchers Angelina Spilnyk and Andrei Sontea, with MINDS CDT Postgraduate researcher Yaseen Mohammed Osman, ran eight weekly sessions with nineteen children, covering sensors, AI and the behavioural side of conservation. The children worked with Raspberry Pi kits and sensors measuring dissolved oxygen, pH, turbidity, temperature and dissolved solids, testing water mixed with salt, milk or lemon juice to see what changed.
Something shifted along the way. Several children had arrived convinced that AI was harmful, and firm in that view. By the final sessions, some had changed their minds, saying directly that AI was not inherently bad and could be used for good. For researchers whose work is built on that belief, it was a meaningful moment.
By the time the festival arrived, seven Young Guardians were helping to present the project, explaining their own fieldwork to visitors. As Angelina Spilnyk put it: "AI doesn't have to feel distant or abstract, it can be a tool for bringing us closer to the natural world."
The team is now developing an evidence paper on AI for education and exploring a presence at the British Science Festival in Southampton this September.
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