Creative Responders

Latai Taumoepeau is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice fuses ancient and everyday temporal practice using mediums like performance, dance, installation and social engagement.  Her faivā (body-centred practice) is grounded in the traditions of her homelands, the Island Kingdom of Tonga and her birthplace Sydney, land of the Gadigal people.  Latai joins us to discuss her work over t...

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 throug...

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 reno...

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 Indigen...

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-restorati...

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 h...

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 wo...

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 mento...

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 connectedness and imagine new ways of...

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. Na...

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 re...

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 , a...

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 enga...

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...

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 educa...

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 a...

Melissa Lubke is an artist based on the island of Lutruwita (Tasmania) who utilises manual arts practices and a variety of mixed media materials to create installations exploring themes of light, loss, community, and hope. Melissa’s recent works in her solo exhibition ‘Confronting the Negative’, explore complex emotions after losing her husband in 2016 in a tragic accident whilst pregnant with the...

Doctor Debra Parkinson is the Director of Gender and Disaster Australia, an organisation established to promote an understanding of the role played by gender in survivor responses to natural disaster, and to embed these insights into emergency management practice. Debra’s research following the 2009 Victorian bushfires has been a foundational tool in promoting a deeper understanding of the ‘hidden...

Natalie Egleton joins us to discuss the future of community-led recovery and her work across rural and regional Australia as CEO of the Foundation for Rural & Regional Renewal. This is a timely discussion about how we approach community-centred and community-led recovery: what does it really mean and how do we achieve it by resourcing and embedding fit-for-purpose systems in our response frame...

In this episode of Creative Responders, we’re heading to Woorabinda, an Indigenous community in Central Queensland on the Traditional lands of the Wadja Wadja and Ghungalu Aboriginal peoples. Nickeema Williams, Director of the Woorabinda Arts and Cultural Centre, shows us around the burgeoning arts centre and shares how it is providing opportunities to revitalise cultural practices with direct and...

Sam Savage is the Northern Queensland Emergency Services Regional Coordinator for Australian Red Cross where he manages response, recovery and community resilience programs with a focus on psychosocial support. He is also the Chairperson of the First Nations Recovery Group, a national network within the Australian Red Cross team and a member of the organisation’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islan...

In 2019, Jessica Brown established The Little Pocket nature play space from her home in the peaceful hinterland village of Beechmont to reduce isolation and nurture connections between young families. She had no idea that a few months later, this network of community members would evolve into much more when they collectively they faced a catastrophic bushfire event that marked the beginning of Aus...

Scientist, farmer and storyteller Doctor Anika Molesworth joins us for a conversation about her courageous and optimistic vision for the future of agriculture and the motivation behind writing her new book, “Our Sunburnt Country”. Anika is a founding director of Farmers for Climate Action, a movement that puts farmers at the centre of climate solutions. She is a passionate advocate for sustainable...

Darren Moffitt is a Bidjigal man who joins us to discuss his recent work in North-East Victoria as a Recovery Coordinator for Aboriginal Culture and Healing. Darren’s role is part of the Black Summer recovery initiative activated by Bushfire Recovery Victoria (BRV) and is one of the first examples of a government program recognising Aboriginal Healing as a dedicated line of recovery within the pil...

June Moorhouse, co-CEO of Community Arts Network (CAN) joins us for a deeply insightful discussion about community arts in Australia. From its roots in the social activism of the 1960s and the early international community arts movement through to contemporary practice and its vital role in creating social cohesion, June reflects on the joys and challenges of community-based practice and shares he...