Creative Responders

In this episode we are speaking with Jen Rae, an artist-researcher, facilitator and educator whose work focusses on environmental communication with a particular emphasis on cultural responses to climate change. Jen’s work around the climate emergency has focussed on discourses around food futures, disaster preparedness and speculative futures predominantly explored through multi-platform creative...

Kellie Sutherland is a Creative Recovery Coordinator, working with Regional Arts Victoria to support bushfire affected shires in Victoria’s North East. In this episode, we discuss what the role of a Creative Recovery Coordinator entails and the capacity for this work to provide continuity between recovery, preparedness and response that is foundational for building community resilience. Kellie is...

This episode of Creative Responders features artists, Rosie McKeand and Leigh Tesch, who share their experience working with three to six-year-olds on ‘Afloat’, a creative recovery project created in response to the May 2018 flood event in Hobart, Tasmania. Many early learning centres were seriously impacted by the flood and the community’s experience of the Hobart Rivulet was forever changed, pro...

Alex Wisser is an artist and creative producer based in the township of Kandos in mid-western New South Wales. In 2013 he co-founded the Cementa Contemporary Arts Festival in Kandos and took up permanent residence there with his family. Along with Cementa, Alex is a co-founder of the Kandos School of Cultural Adaptation where his practice continues to focus on the challenges and opportunities of m...

Louise Scheidl is an Occupational Therapist and Mental Health Promotion Officer for Albury Wodonga Health. Louise joins us to discuss My Place My Home, a community-based arts project focussed on young people affected by the 2019/2020 bushfires in Victoria's Corryong area. In this conversation, Louise and Scotia discuss: The layered impacts of the 2019/2020 bushfires followed closely by Covid-19 an...

Doctor Caroline Alcorso is currently directing the Natural Disaster Mental Health and Wellbeing Framework for the National Mental Health Commission. She has an extensive background in social policy, programs and research in both community sector organisations and government. Along with her substantial academic background, Caroline is a leader and innovator in a range of social policy areas, includ...

Arts workers in remote or trauma-impacted communities are often sent in to complex environments with little preparation or adequate peer support for the situations they will encounter. In this episode, we head to one of the most remote areas of Australia - Warburton community, Western Australia on Ngaanyatjarra Lands, where Silvano Giordano shares his experience as co-Director of Wilurarra Creativ...

The climate crisis is one of the greatest disasters we may ever witness. In the face of such enormous challenges, what is the place for creativity and storytelling? In this episode, guest producer Nicole Hutton takes us to the Great Barrier Reef to hear how reef coast Traditional Owners are using tourism, art and storytelling as a proactive tool to open conversations around climate change. Nicole...

The Blacksmiths’ Tree is a stunning nine-metre steel and copper gum tree which stands in the small town of Strathewen, Victoria, as a memorial to the people and communities impacted by Black Saturday and the 2009 Victorian bushfires. The project began with designer and metal artist, Amanda Grant, who coordinated a local and international team of blacksmiths and volunteers to create what has become...

Just down the road from the charred silence of the iconic Sugar Pines Plantation in the Snowy Valleys, is the Pilot Hill Arboretum, in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales. On 28 December 2020, exactly one year after the Dunns Road Fire wrought havoc for 50 days, the Arbour Festival will begin its own 50 day journey, transforming the Arboretum with artworks, installations and ev...

What happens when your community goes through a devastating experience and you feel compelled to reach out to those most in need? Like many who witnessed the impact of the Australian bushfires last Summer, Vivien Davidson wanted to find a way to express her solidarity and connect with people in her community who were hardest hit by the Currowan fire on the South Coast of New South Wales. In this v...

As National Resilience Adviser for Red Cross Australia, John Richardson is someone who spends a lot of time thinking about disasters - how we make sense of them, how we can better prepare for them, and how they transform the individuals and communities who go through them. We spoke to John during Red Cross Australia’s annual Emergency Preparedness Week to hear his perspective on the unchartered wa...

Alex Kelly is an art maker, organiser, activist and filmmaker whose work is anchored by a deep commitment to social and climate justice. She joins Scotia to discuss her most recent project, Assembly for the Future, a series of digital gatherings in which participants collectively imagine better worlds and new pathways, preparing for a resilient and community visioned future. We also hear about Ale...

Kate Sulan is a performance maker, director, dramaturge and facilitator. Along with her role as founding Artistic Director of Melbourne’s Rawcus theatre company, Kate is also one of the artists working on the five year Refuge project at Arts House which brings together emergency management, artists, the community and local, regional and international partners. Kate’s cubby house installation devel...

What would it look like like if different phases of emergency management were approached as an interconnected whole? What is missing from Australia’s royal commission into the response to the recent bushfire season? How do we recognise and celebrate the contribution of women in emergencies and ensure more diversity in representation when it comes to decision-making? Amanda is a specialist in stake...

This month, we speak to Jeremy Smith as he exits his tenure with the Australia Council where he has worked as Director – Community, Emerging and Experimental Arts for the past four years. Scotia caught up with Jeremy just ahead of his return to his hometown of Perth and a new role with the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts. They discuss Community Arts and Cultural Development practice, the impo...

Welcome to the first episode of our new monthly conversation series featuring in-depth, one-on-one discussions with the people working on the front lines of the arts and emergency management sector. John Lane is Artistic Coordinator for the Festival for Healthy Living. He speaks with Creative Recovery’s Scotia Monkivitch at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne and shares insights from his ca...

When artist’s are called upon to work in remote or trauma affected communities, the impacts can be intense, usually without access to the psychological services available to other support agencies. So how do artist’s find the balance between dealing with a community’s trauma and their own self-care? In this episode of Creative Responders, Scotia Monkivitch takes listeners into the beautiful Jarrah...

Farming communities across Australia are dealing with the slow-building emergency of the worst drought the country has ever experienced. When the challenges of isolation, financial hardship and psychological distress arise, how can these communities make sense of the unimaginable and work together to build resilience? In this episode, we visit the small township of Sherlock in South Australia, whe...

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, we explore how this particular First Nations community see their role in emergency response and look at some of the issues globally around best...

How does a tight-knit community in rural Victoria approach disaster preparedness when its youngest residents have lost their sense of safety? Ten years on from the Black Saturday bushfires, we visit Strathewen Primary School to hear from Principal Jane Hayward and a group of Year 6 students about their award-winning bushfire education program and how creativity can be a tool for building resilienc...

How can a sculptural forest trail in Western Australia reunite a community after bushfire? How does a tight-knit community in rural Victoria approach recovery when its youngest residents have lost their sense of safety? How is storytelling creating opportunities for connection among farmers in drought-stricken communities in South Australia? And how did an Indigenous-led ranger network and arts ce...