Creative Responders

Kerry Jones is the Director of Systems Initiatives for the Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI). We spoke with Kerry in Meanjin / Brisbane, during the Australian Disaster Resilience Conference where she presented a program of work that is enabling communities to lead their own disaster response systems through a model of engagement called “Now-Future-How”.

This work, led by TACSI through the Fire to Flourish initiativ...

When Cyclone Yasi hit the coast of North Queensland in 2011, the Girringun Aboriginal Corporation and its active community of rangers and artists took a position of leadership in the recovery process and galvanised a devastated community.

In this episode, Girringun’s Founder and Executive Officer Phil Rist shares the story of their Traditional-Owner led organisation; we take a tour around the renowned Girringun Arts Centre with...

Bhiamie Williamson is a Euahlayi man from North West NSW and one of Australia’s leading researchers into Indigenous peoples’ experience of disasters. 

Bhiamie’s work in this field has led to his current leadership of the National Indigenous Disaster Resilience Project which sits within Monash University’s Fire to Flourish program. We spoke with Bhiamie following the inaugural National Indigenous Disaster Resilience Summit i...

Annette Carmichael is an award-winning choreographer and dance artist based in Western Australia with community engagement at the core of her work. She joins Scotia to discuss The Stars Descend, an ambitious and inspiring performance work that consists of five chapters, crafted with and for five different communities in the south-west of Western Australia in partnership with renowned eco-restoration project, Gondwana Link.

Driv...

Dr Margaret Moreton is Executive Director of the Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience (AIDR) and leads the work of AIDR to develop and share knowledge and learning to support a disaster resilient Australia. 

Margaret joins Scotia to talk about the work of AIDR and the importance of building a collaborative approach to how we plan for and respond to disasters. She shares the story of her first understanding of the im...

Hard Place / Good Place is a project developed by the Yarra Ranges Regional Museum following a devastating storm that swept through the region in June 2021. It was thoughtfully designed in collaboration with the fEEL lab at the University of New South Wales as a way to work with young people in the region aged 15 to 25 to give voice to their experience as part of the recovery process. 

The work focusses on lived experiences...

Vic McEwan is the Artistic Director and co-founder of The Cad Factory, an artist-led organisation whose work and practice aims to enrich broader conversations about the role the arts can play within our communities.

Vic is a leading practitioner in the field of socially engaged practice and joins us to discuss how this guides his work and The Cad Factory’s professional development and mentorship programs dedicated to explor...

Zena Armstrong joins us to share the story of community recovery following the Black Summer bushfires that devastated the village of Cobargo and the surrounding regions. 

Zena is a former Australian diplomat and director of the Cobargo Folk Festival where she works with a close-knit team of volunteers using music, art and the spoken word to grow community connect...

Dr Naomi Sunderland is a lead researcher on The Remedy Project - an Australian Research Council supported project exploring music as a primary cultural determinant of health for First Nations communities. 

She joins us to discuss the healing power of music and her investigation into its role within First Nations communities as an enduring link to ancestors, Country, language and community.

Naomi is a descendant of the Wi...

Anna Kennedy-Borissow joins us to discuss her PhD research into creative recovery projects in Australia. Anna is an arts manager, academic and theatre maker and currently a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne where she is researching the interplay of arts practice, community wellbeing and emergency management. 

Anna’s work addresses a gap in what is historically a lack of academic research in this field. By examini...

Writer, policy adviser, audio producer and accessibility consultant, Jonathan Craig, joins Scotia for a discussion about how disaster planning can be improved by connecting with people as individuals and bringing the lived experience of community members to the table.

Jonathan is a policy advisor for Vision 2020 and has worked with Arts House Melbourne on several projects including Refuge, and the Warehouse Residency progra...

As cities and communities all over the world look to new models of disaster preparedness and response, how do we successfully activate a whole of community approach where everyone has a role to play and disaster management services are working with not for the community? 

In this episode of Creative Responders, we’ll hear what happened when the City of Melbourne tackled this question and engaged artists in the co-design and...

Nathan Harrison is part of the creative team at Boho Interactive, a collective of Australian artists and game designers who create interactive performances and games exploring concepts from systems science, complexity theory, resilience thinking, game theory and network theory. 

Nathan and Scotia discuss the wide-ranging applications of this work and how the participatory process of engaging in games has the power to ignite...

From the epicentre of the Northern Rivers flood recovery, we are joined by Elly Bird and Katie Cooper-Wares. Both have been instrumental in the founding and development of the Resilient Lismore community recovery organisation, alongside other roles –Elly as a Councillor for Lismore City Council and Chair of Northern Rivers Arts and Katie as a dancer, artist, environmental educator and founder of the Cr...

Melinda Rankin is the Director of Fabrik Arts & Heritage, located in Lobethal, a small regional town nestled in a picturesque valley on Peramangk and Kaurna Country in the Adelaide Hills.

Fabrik is an arts and heritage hub, run by Adelaide Hills Council. Its public program started in early 2019 and at the end of that year, the Cudlee Creek bushfire devastated the area.

As a newly established arts organisation with a remit...