CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE FORTHCOMING ISSUE OF CREATIVE MATTERS FOCUSED ON
Australia’s Climate Disaster Addressed Through Creative and Performing Arts Approaches: Research, Teaching and Critical Reflection
Climate change is an exponential crisis challenging all Australians. Cataclysmic fires, floods, and storms have been experienced across the continent, and as global temperatures continue to rise, we will face further severe, unpredictable, and more frequent weather events into the future.
Without doubt, creative and performing arts occupy a major role in many peoples’ lives, across cultures and generations. The various contexts of artistic experience are deeply affecting, offering powerful aesthetic experiences that in turn trigger mechanisms which afford benefits in terms of psychosocial and behavioural outcomes. A tradition of cultural practices and more recent specialised applications of arts in a range of challenging circumstances has demonstrated the educational, therapeutic and communicative benefits that are also found to be effective in the context of climate disaster.
In this issue, we review some of the arts approaches that have been critical to offering solace, mourning, and hope in the ‘Response and Recovery’ to events such as the Black Saturday Fires of 2009, the Black Summer of 2019-20 and the Lismore Floods of 2022. The articles in this issue survey the existing research in the field, exploring ‘Creative Recovery’ for individuals and communities, referencing work critically important to the field. In addition to recovery, the need for proactive planning, scenario modelling, and disaster training to ensure readiness for unforeseen events is explored within the framework of ‘Creative Preparedness’.
Timeline
First drafts: Monday 29th July 2024
Final drafts: Monday 26th August 2024
Publication date: Monday 2nd September 2024
Contributions
Articles of up to 1500 words
Other formats also considered. Please see further contributor guidelines
Contributions will be subjected to double editorial review by issue editor, Jane W. Davidson. and by Smiljana Glisovic, the journal editor. Note that this is not a peer-review publication.
Queries to editor@ddca.edu.au