Putting the pieces together: How the City of Melbourne is strengthening disaster preparedness through creativity

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 facilitation of a preparedness exercise, working with the North Melbourne community to imagine better models of response and recovery. 

The 2022 disaster preparedness simulation, Exercise Torrent, was a collaboration between City of Melbourne’s Emergency Management Department and Arts House that utilised an arts-based approach to develop a scenario for emergency management professionals, service providers and community organisations to interact with. 

City of Melbourne’s Emergency Management Coordinator, Christine Drummond, takes us inside the process of developing the exercise, how it played out on the day, and how bringing the arts into the process provided a different lens for people to participate more readily.

We hear from artist facilitators Jonathan Craig and Dr Jen Rae and Arts House Creative Producer, Sarah Rowbottam, about how creative methodologies provide a layer of depth to the relational aspects of exercises like this, offering a window of opportunity into areas of preparedness sometimes overlooked by traditional processes, like accessibility.

The project provides a model for how creativity and the arts can support community engagement strategies and provide entry points for practicing the skills of collaboration that will help us to better respond when a disaster occurs.

Links / Further Reading:

Arts House

https://www.artshouse.com.au 

The Refuge Project 

https://www.artshouse.com.au/artist-opportunities/refuge/ 

Together by Richard Sennett

https://www.penguin.com.au/books/together-9780141022109 

Community Engagement for Disaster Resilience Handbook

https://knowledge.aidr.org.au/resources/handbook-community-engagement/ 

Creative Responders in Conversation with Jen Rae

https://creativerecovery.net.au/creative-responders-podcast/in-conversation-series/s2-episode-10/ 

Creative Responders in Conversation with Kate Sulan 

https://creativerecovery.net.au/creative-responders-podcast/in-conversation-series/s1-episode-8/ 

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