An antidote to disaster despair: Art and community

Read about our work in HAZNET - The Magazine of the Canadian Risk and Hazards Network

By Katia Tynan – Manager of Resilience and Disaster Risk Reduction with the City of Vancouver, on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ / sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Peoples.

The Climate Emergency presents an unprecedented challenge – both globally and locally.

How will climate change affect our lives? Where will its impacts be most deeply felt? Are we doing enough to protect ourselves from the coming chaos? How can we connect more deeply and meaningfully with our community to adapt, survive and thrive in good times and in bad times.

Our planet’s climate is already too hot, with dangerous heatwaves, droughts, storms and flooding becoming more intense and destructive, with emergent crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic now affecting social, psychological and economic systems worldwide. Transformational change is needed across our society and economy to rapidly reduce carbon emissions, change our resource intensive ways of life and adapt to living in an unstable climate. Collaboration and creativity may offer some of the answers. 

Creative Resilience Lab team

The Creative Resilience Lab fosters creative and agile thinking in climate emergency-related disaster preparedness, response and recovery in communities. Through tailored workshops using creative and transdisciplinary collaborative methodologies, co-design and feedback loop experimentation (responsive, reflective and evaluative), CRL works with clients to make relevant, timely and context-specific activities for diverse groups and sizes including council staff, communities, emergency services, First Nations, artist-groups and businesses. Utilising immersive and experiential processes the CRL aims to galvanise, catalyse and connect us with each other acknowledging the diverse skills, knowledge and lived experiences we all have to contribute, no matter how big or small. 

Maree Grenfell and Jen Rae bring a new creative mindset to complex challenges such as the acute shocks and chronic stresses and the impacts of their interconnection. They have expertise in tailoring context specific workshops utilising dynamic processes for diverse audiences, ever mindful of accessibility and inclusion. A feedback loop process - Responsive, reflexive and experimental - fosters critical thinking, empathy and creativity, thus activating pathways for individuals to better understand their role, abilities and opportunities in collaboration with others in the complex and uncertain challenges head...thus empowering creative resilience.

Maree Grenfell is a strategic and creative change strategist, Maree brings a new mindset to old themes. She draws on an eclectic background in urban design, sustainability, social psychology and environmental activism to create and facilitate transformational programs that shift mindsets and practice around inclusive communities and resilient environments. She has been working for 15+ years with local governments and communities to create empowering cultural shifts in response to challenges such as climate change and sustainability issues. 

For the past five years, Maree has been Melbourne’s Deputy Chief Resilience Officer for the 100 Resilient Cities program, developing and now implementing Melbourne’s first resilience strategy. Her work focuses primarily on complex multi-stakeholder initiatives and pioneering projects to build capability and collaborative capacity at a community, city and national level. She loves working with people, identifying and resolving barriers, bringing clarity and purpose to projects while injecting creativity and enthusiasm. She is driven by a vision of a community-centered future in which cities and human wellbeing are interdependent.

Dr Jen Rae is a practice-led researcher with expertise in climate change/emergency disaster preparedness, transdisciplinary collaboration and creative resilience. With over fifteen years of work in art, activism and performance, Jen has initiated, designed/co-designed, delivered and contributed to a wide range of complex projects working in transdisciplinary collaborative teams. This includes facilitating workshops and community engagement strategies and activities around climate change/emergency, research and consultation, public presentations and creative socially-engaged projects. A noteworthy example is her work as a core artist and researcher in Arts House’s REFUGE project (2016-2020) where art and the climate emergency meet - working with communities, local government and emergency services to imagine and rehearse climate-related disaster scenarios (e.g. floods, heatwaves, etc.). Jen is also the Director and Creative Lead of Fair Share Fare, where art, performance and cookery collide to provoke and unite discourses on food futures. 

Together 

In 2019, Jen and Maree co-designed and facilitated a 2-day Creative Resilience Lab with the City of Vancouver with 70 participants including artists, scientists, local government and business professionals, academics, community members and funders. Through various activities, participants gained greater understanding of the local context of the climate emergency and the relationships between existing stresses and acute shocks; creative methods to transition into agile thinking around disaster preparedness, response and recovery; how their capacity, unique skills, knowledges and experiences can contribute to community adaptation and mitigation efforts; and transdisciplinary frameworks for collaborative learning and problem solving.

For more information about Creative Resilience Lab consultation or workshops, please contact Jen at 0406 511 707.