Disasters can cause widespread human, material, economic, and/or environmental impacts and losses, which may increasingly overlap, compound or cascade as climate change intensifies (IPCC, 2023; Leppold et al., 2022; Lukasiewicz & O’Donnell, 2022). Given the growing risks associated with climate change and disasters, the World Health Organisation (2020) have called for a ‘whole-of-society’ approach to addressing these potential harms, not only in relation to the built and natural environments and economies, but also in terms of the psychological and social impacts of disasters.
Following disasters, the arts and cultural sector may not appear to have a significant role to play, with public funding best directed to meeting basic needs. Yet in Australia, arts projects are frequently incorporated into recovery initiatives (Kennedy-Borissow, 2023).
While these projects appear to produce social and psychological benefits for disaster-affected communities, they are often under-funded and rarely planned for in government policy (Kennedy-Borissow, 2024). More broadly, there is a jarring dissonance between the status of, and investments in, arts and cultural practice – which is low and falls at the first signs of fiscal tightening; and the impacts of arts and cultural practice – which is high and crosses most areas of social life (Barnett, 2024; SBBR, 2023). This paradox is likewise reflected in disaster contexts. How are we to understand this simultaneous positioning of the arts as both defined by non-necessity and as a valued resource?
In light of the recent and convincing evidence of the importance of arts and culture to social function and wellbeing (Crealey et al., 2023; Fancourt and Finn, 2019), and in the face of increased disasters to come, better understanding the role of arts and culture in preventing, responding to and recovering from crises and disasters is of critical importance. We therefore undertook a review of peer reviewed published studies on this topic, to understand what benefits have been identified from arts and cultural activity across the planning, preparation, response and recovery (PPRR) cycle of disaster management (Lukasiewicz and O’Donnell, 2022); the methodologies used to generate evidence of these benefits; and, most importantly, how the roles of creative and cultural activities in disaster management have been conceptualised.
Methods
Our study involved a systematic search of Ovid, Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed and two university library search engines using a large set of search words that were first piloted with a specialist librarian. Searches were conducted between July and December 2022, and produced 706 titles for screening. These included all studies of arts, cultural or creative activities in disaster contexts published in English in peer-reviewed journals. Exclusion criteria were (1) studies of war and conflict alone (because conflict has unique features); (2) studies of clinical art therapy treatments for individuals (our aim was not an evidence review of art therapy treatments); and (3) studies relating to the COVID-19 pandemic (due to the unique features of this disaster). In all, 68 studies were included in the final review. We extracted data into an Excel spreadsheet and used interpretive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2021) to create a codebook that was applied across the sample. Further iterative interpretive thematic analysis was conducted to explore cross-thematic dimensions.
Results
The 68 published papers included in our study were published between 2003 and 2022, addressed >20 different disaster events across many types, and were located in 21 Global South and 7 Global North national settings. The sample included a wide range of arts and cultural practices, including music, theatre and performance, visual arts, crafts and sculpture, media and digital arts, written and oral storytelling, and street culture.
Manifold benefits of engaging with arts and culture were identified in both disaster recovery and disaster preparedness contexts, with most articles focused on recovery.
We identified ten themes that expressed the dimensions through which arts and cultural or creative activities benefited participants. Nine of these ten themes were focused on three clusters: psychological recovery (promoting improved psychological wellbeing after a disaster), experience catching (giving expression to the phenomenology of disaster experiences), and social connection (enhancing social connections within communities to better prepare for, and recover from, disasters).
Within these clusters, benefits accrued in the form of sense-making, place-making, economic recovery and disaster-readiness education. They were especially directed towards engagement, inclusion and empowerment for particular social groups, especially children and young people (one third – 24 studies – of the literature we sampled directly concerned children and young people). The tenth theme, ‘critical perspectives’, described how the arts help make visible issues of power and inequality that influence both the causes and consequences of disasters. This was treated as a ‘framing’ theme because it had implications for how content in the other themes might be interpreted.
To better demonstrate the richness of this highly heterogeneous sample, in this article we discuss four exemplar articles: one representative of each of the three clusters, and the fourth representative of the ‘framing’ theme. Together they illuminate the concepts, methodologies and challenges that currently define the state of the art for this field. They each also illuminate the relationships between themes: each theme interacts with the others and benefit arises from these interactions. Of each, we pose a question that arises from our analysis of the sample as a whole – these suggest some lines of inquiry for future research.
Psychological recovery
The most quintessential use of the creative arts in disaster settings was to support psychological recovery, with some studies explicitly self-defining as reporting on art therapy and others on arts activities in general. Many of these studies reported on uses of the arts to promote psychological recovery in children and young people specifically, since the arts offer age-appropriate (including non-verbal) means of self-expression, and are an inexpensive and flexible means through which psychological support can be offered in highly unstable, damaged, disaster-afflicted settings (Looman, 2006; Orr, 2007; Wang and You, 2022). Many articles commented that the arts are of key importance because childrens’ trauma, which can affect their lifelong development, often goes unrecognised and untreated (see for example, Ahmed and Siddiqi, 2006; Hirsu et al., 2020; Santiago, 2020; Schwartz, 2018).
Wang and You’s 2022 study ‘Post-disaster trauma and cultural healing in children and adolescents: Evidence from the Wenchuan earthquake’ exemplifies these trends. The authors used sandplay therapy as a means of psychological support for children affected by the 2008 Wenchuan earthquakes, which killed > 70,000 people, including 10,000 children, and displaced and injured hundreds of thousands more. Sandplay therapy was presented as an inexpensive, age-appropriate means to research post-disaster psychological trauma in children and adolescents. The authors did not investigate the healing impacts of sandplay therapy in itself which was regarded as well established.
This longitudinal mixed methods study used coding and symbolic analysis of 96 sandplay works created by children over 24 months to identify which healing and trauma themes were prominent in children’s experiences. They also tracked levels of psychological distress, which peaked at 18 months. The authors used these results to argue post-disaster psychological assistance should be provided over a period of years divided into four stages – accommodation, connection, trust, and freedom – with specific therapeutic activities recommended for each stage. The authors concluded: ‘In the process of support, we also need to actively understand the culture of the parties and make good use of the resources that already exist in their culture to form connections between the soul and culture’ (p. 6).
This study was very thorough in comparison with many in our sample: there was a large ‘n’ (number of participants and works analysed) and analysis was systematic, using both quantitative and qualitative approaches that were attuned to both local Chinese cultural features as well as to ‘Western’ traditions in art- and psycho-therapy. This paper prompted us to ask: Did numerical coding of images and statistical analysis of codes provide a reliable guide to the progress of psychological trauma in disaster affected Chinese children? Do traditional Chinese cultural symbols function as expected in Jungian psychotherapy? Like many in our sample, this study is also an example of epistemic transition, with Global North therapeutic and knowledge practices taken up in a ‘non-Western’ setting, emphasising the central importance of local cultural traditions but also suggesting that research to explore and scrutinise emerging methodologies is needed.
Experience catching
Many articles in our sample indicated that psychological recovery requires expression, and examined how arts and cultural activities helped capture the grave and momentous experiences of those impacted by a disaster (see for example Goulding et al., 2018). However, not everyone is afforded the means for self-expression – a point taken up in Miller and Brockie’s 2015 paper ‘The disaster flood experience: Older people’s poetic voices of resilience’. This Australian paper identifies that ‘[g]erontological literature on older peoples’ lived experience of disasters remains relatively rare’ (Miller and Brockie, 2015). Judging from our sample, it still is.
The researchers used the affordances of poetry to explore the experiences of ten adults aged between 67 and 83 who had been evacuated in both the 2011 and 2013 Queensland floods.
‘Found poetry’ was selected as the methodology, both to adequately capture the phenomenology of experience; and because poetry ‘is able to uniquely convey and evoke emotion that enables people to viscerally experience “a moment of truth”’ (Miller and Brockie, 2015, p. 105). As a powerful analytic tool, poetry ‘lets us see, and feel, the world in new dimensions’ (Miller and Brockie, 2015, p. 105). Lengthy interviews were conducted with participants, followed by a high-fidelity poetic analysis.
The findings revealed contrasting experiences: for example, both the vulnerability of coping alone, and the strength of receiving community support, as in these contrasting excerpts:
| Poem 1: Nobody came to help me RP, 67 | Poem 5: A man in a blue shirt RF, 69 |
| My neighbour, She just loaded her last lot, She took off I thought, OK. I didn’t have anyone I thought I was on my own here, Where do I go? | I remembered A man in a blue shirt He offered me A cup of tea The man in a blue shirt And that’s what he remained For years and years and years I didn’t know Who he was All he was Was this Marvellous Man in a blue shirt |
The poems also captured aesthetically the stoicism and practical orientation of participants and how this cohort narrated a story of resilience, philosophical adjustment and agency – highlighting how they were continuing to choose to live their lives. The authors concluded that ‘the sharing of participant’s stories in poetic form with family and friends may allow for a powerful exchange of participant resilience and gratefulness’ (Miller and Brockie, 2015, p. 110), connecting this theme with that of social connection below.
This study emphasised the importance of creative research methods for capturing, representing, analysing and sharing the experiences and perspectives of particular social groups, perhaps especially those whose voices are granted less space (or are actively excluded) from public discourse, including following disasters.
We ask: Which artforms and creative or cultural activities best suit older people – or other marginalised groups – to be the creators of works that also reach the public? Future research could explore how creative engagement both prior to and following disasters could increase equity and inclusion to reduce disaster risk.
Social connection
The mutually self-reinforcing intersection between creative expression, psychological recovery and community connectedness is visible in a modest study from Tasmania. McManamey and Sparkes’ 2005 paper ‘Arts, Health, Community Resilience and Healing: Responding to natural disaster’ reports on the grassroots Regener8 publication project following the 2006 East Coast bushfires. The article aimed to address the perceived but undocumented benefits of community celebrations and festivals after disasters (McManamey and Sparkes, 2009).
McManamey and Sparkes (2005) reported on a community-led, arts-based project that aimed to use storytelling to promote regeneration and resilience. At the first anniversary of the fires, the Regener8 project team sought local stories (through interviews) and artefacts (images, paintings and textiles) that offered examples of growth and resilience. They aimed to engender further healing, in part by documenting the history of the event with a view to sharing local knowledge. The authors described this as a means of community regeneration and as a basis for what we now term ‘creative preparedness’, where creative projects inform ongoing practice and learning for community-level disaster preparedness.
The project produced an eponymously titled community book Regener8: Stories and Impressions of the Tasmanian East Coast Bushfire 2006 (McManamey, 2007). The study included nine interviews, ‘feedback’ from 18 participants in various roles, and a bespoke survey of 173 community members to find that Regener8 ‘brought the community together,’ which increased information sharing and social capital. The book also engendered a sense of local pride through awards and media attention; honoured experiences of suffering, bravery and resilience; and provided closure.
The authors also discussed how Regener8 had addressed ten social issues after the fires, including improving future disaster preparedness, and how concepts of resilience and regeneration could be more finely understood from a community perspective. The authors concluded that ‘exploring community cohesive action and resilience through creativity… [has] potential to contribute knowledge and learning to the greater global community on issues of community safety, resilience and regional regeneration.’
We ask: Would McManamey and Sparkes’ study prompt local or national governments to provide funding for creative preparedness or recovery activities? Like many papers in our sample, this study sought to retrospectively document benefits that were observed during a grassroots community recovery project. Such studies typically use what limited resources are then available, including methods invented to suit the local context. Less than 20% of our sample used any quantitative methodology to document the benefits of arts engagements; current data is insufficient even for a scoping review of evidence.
As citations used in McManamey and Sparkes (2005) indicate, using the arts for disaster recovery owes much to the legacy of late twentieth century investments in community arts and community cultural development (White, 2009). That this legacy persists even after decades of underfunding and deliberate erosion of the community arts sector is an indicator of the very much understudied long term impacts of community arts. It is also a warning of the likely increases in social inequality that result from under-investment in this sector (Fancourt et al., 2023), a point not lost on the authors of the many papers that contributed ‘critical perspectives’ below.
Critical perspectives
The harms caused by disasters result from the interactions of hazards with human systems and these are inescapably intertwined with issues of social inequality (Aitsi-Selmi et al., 2015). Across the sample, creative responses to disasters were always in some sense forms of inquiry. Very often, intentionally or not, these inquiries gave representation to the ways in which social and environmental injustices sit at the heart of disasters and continue undisturbed through disaster responses. Our sample included many studies, particularly from Central and South America (see for example Cáceres Rivera et al., 2022) that were attuned to the ways disasters are caused by and reflect oppressive and unjust systems.
These studies highlighted manifestations of social power and sought to reconfigure these through creative recovery activities.
This hopeful desire was at the centre of Cameron, Montgomery, Moore, and Stewart’s 2018 study ‘Swimming With Ideas: What happens to creativity in the wake of a disaster and the waves of pro-social recovery behaviour that follow?’ (Cameron et al., 2018). This paper begins with the observation that disasters can ‘expose the illusory nature of everyday life as a kind of resigned and unfulfilling conformity’ (p. 10), threatening those in power. The authors conducted 45 interviews with creative and cultural entrepreneurs active after the 2010-2013 earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand. They found evidence of a particular kind of ‘post-disaster creativity’ driven by an intense need for meaning and by the creative opportunities of disruption. Within the looser, more ‘pro-social’ (community-spirited) post disaster context, non-traditional, even quirky, alternatives to goods or services no longer available (due to disaster), were accepted.
With the authors, we ask: Did the exposure of ‘things as they were before’ shock communities into transformational action, or generate ‘elite panic’ (p. 21) to regain the control of municipal processes and post-disaster narratives? Neither hope nor fear turned out to be the case. Cameron et al. (2018) found that creativity in shock moments attempts to be transformational without threatening the overthrow of law and order. They also found that municipal sympathy for art and artists existed but that the extra layers of bureaucracy and the continued hazards revealed by inquests and formal inquiries ‘tempered the otherwise buoyant atmosphere of new possibilities’ (p. 21). The authors concluded that ‘Perhaps it remains to be seen if the brief flourishing of deeper creativity will leave legacies or become revived. Although six years seems a lengthy time by some standards, significant cultural change can take much longer’ (p. 21). As is the case in the field of arts and health more broadly, longitudinal research is needed to explore the effects of community based creative investment for disaster risk reduction.
Photography Credit: Matt Beaver. Copyright Owner/Supplied By: Vanessa Keenan
Discussion
Our sample of literature, though not exhaustive (we continued to occasionally find additional studies as analysis and writing progressed), clearly demonstrated formally what is known to many in practice: that creative arts and cultural activities provide benefits to communities recovering from and anticipating disasters. These benefits occur across multiple dimensions (Warran et al., 2022); they suggest that arts and culture are not optional additions but rather are central to survival, to resilience and to disaster risk reduction. It is no wonder that advocates are currently calling for the arts and culture to be included in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (ART 2030, n.d.). We consider that they should be integrated across all aspects of disaster management policies and practices. We note that one important finding from our review is that arts and cultural activities afford an inexpensive means to meet multiple goals simultaneously – for example, to use an intervention that improves psychological wellbeing to also conduct research, or to improve disaster response education with also reimagining ways of being that might lead towards a different future.
Nations actively grappling with the conditions of coloniality (Quijano and Ennis, 2000) – New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Central and South America – offer the clearest and sharpest connections between arts and disasters. The Indigenous populations of these nations hold knowledge of persistent survival in the face of utter disaster – genocide, dispossession and cultural destruction – and Indigenous scholars emphasise the critical central importance of connection to culture, and of how culture in turn is central to social and emotional wellbeing (Gee et al., 2014). They also insist on centering ongoing extractive and oppressive economic, governmental and epistemic systems as the cause of disaster, making ‘disaster risk reduction’ a matter of social transformation and reimagining.
By recognising the centrality of the arts, culture and creativity to our collective social and psychological wellbeing, an underexplored (and underfunded) approach to disaster risk reduction and resilience can emerge.
The approaches we have described throughout this paper offer only a snapshot of the range of arts-based interventions that exist in disaster contexts internationally. The flexibility and adaptability of the arts and culture to a wide range of individuals, groups and community settings are one of the greatest strengths of creative recovery and creative preparedness. Yet they also present one of the greatest challenges to advocacy and research in this field, which is synthesising findings to strengthen the case for the inclusion of arts and culture in emergency planning and policy. This paper offers an initial step towards this aim by highlighting conceptual dimensions of the literature that traverse disciplines and national contexts.
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Associate Professor Claire Hooker is Health and Medical Humanities Lead at Sydney Health Ethics and President of the Arts Health Network NSW/ACT. Her research explores values and knowledge creation across many areas in arts and health.
Anna Kennedy-Borissow is a PhD candidate, teaching fellow, arts manager, and theatre maker living and working on Wurundjeri lands in Melbourne VIC. Her research investigates the psychosocial impacts of arts and cultural programs in disaster-affected communities.
Main Image Credit: Musician Rory Phillips performing at Arbour Festival, NSW, 2021. Photography Credit: Matt Beaver. Copyright Owner/Supplied By: Vanessa Keenan