The Art of Disaster Risk Reduction: an arts-based approach to strengthening community and institutional capacity in Colombia

Summary
This proposal focuses on unanticipated pathways to impact directly related to the AHRC co-funded interdisciplinary research project, Moving with Risk: forced displacement and vulnerability to hazards in Colombia (1 November 2016-31 October 2018). Moving with Risk piloted innovative arts-based methodologies to examine how people forced from their homes by conflict in Colombia are exposed to heightened risk from environmental hazards such as flooding, landslide and fire in the places where they resettle. The research team used creative arts as a methodological tool for data collection and a channel for empowerment of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in disaster risk reduction (DRR).
The arts-based methodologies piloted in Moving with Risk proved highly effective in engaging and empowering IDPs and the institutions that work with them around DRR discussion, practice and policy. This project will work in new at-risk case study sites in the municipalities of Manizales, Pereira and Soacha, and connect with new communities, in order not only to enhance and develop the benefits and value of Moving with Risk, but also to transfer these to new audiences not accessed in the original research.
Via close collaboration throughout the research process, the team has developed strong relationships of trust with IDPs, their communities and the organisations that work with them in DRR. This has generated new opportunities for impact that could not have been foreseen at the time of the original research proposal. IDPs and the institutions involved in the original project have fed directly into planning the proposed impact activities, which are intended both to develop and deepen existing relationships and also to generate similar relationships of trust with new communities in new neighbourhoods not included in the original research.
The impact project will bring together university academics, researchers from Human Rights organisation Dejusticia, representatives of the Colombian Red Cross and DRR sections of local municipalities, to reach three new audiences. First, it will engage whole communities exposed to environmental risk, in new case study sites. Recent migrants from Venezuela and broader indigenous and Afro-Colombian groups, who all live in the same spaces as the IDPs who were the sole focus of the original research, will be included. Arts-based activities will be used to elicit information from these communities about their knowledge, experiences and understandings of the risks they live with. Community members will receive arts-based training in their legal rights and responsibilities regarding DRR. They will then use arts-based activities to establish DRR networks within their communities. Run by the local neighbourhoods, these networks will continue beyond the duration of the project, empowering communities to take active ownership of DRR practice.
Second, the project will deepen engagement with government and civil organisations that work in DRR. Representatives from these organisations will receive training in the use of arts-based methodologies as a tool for working with at-risk communities and collecting information about these communities' knowledge, experiences and needs. A free learning package will be made available to provide training for further organisations and NGOs who work in DRR.
Third, the project will tackle negative public perceptions of at-risk communities as 'victims' or passive beneficiaries of state support. Artworks will be created, with the communities' input and in their preferred formats and styles, to be displayed in public spaces chosen by the communities. This will create innovative spaces for marginalised communities to control the framework of their own representation, and articulate their own stories about their strengths, resilience, skills and capacities. At a time of peacebuilding, this will allow for a more pluralistic engagement with the legacy of conflict and with DRR.

Impact Summary
The impact activities will benefit:
Communities and individuals resettled in areas of high risk to natural hazards in Colombia
The project, both in terms of its engagement activities and training on disaster risk reduction (DRR) for local neighbourhoods, will directly benefit at-risk communities. First, people resettled in high-risk areas in the municipalities of Soacha, Manizales and Pereira will be invited to share and debate their personal experiences, trajectories of vulnerability and capacity-development in their own voices and styles (e.g. songs, art, dance) during the DRR workshops. In the short term, this will provide alternative spaces for participants to reconstruct identities, build confidence, create new social networks and engage in activities in new geographical spaces. Second, training of local community members on DRR rights and responsibilities (Diploma certified by University of Manizales) will provide communities and individuals with useful tools and knowledge to cope and respond to disaster risk in their territories. In addition to useful legal training provided by Dejusticia, the practical aspects of the course (helping organise and design the DRR workshops using the arts) will allow individuals to engage with their communities (residents and authorities) in innovative ways and build capacity to organise and strengthen processes of local citizen participation. For example, upon completion of the course, members of the community will be well-positioned to provide input into their neighbourhood and municipal Planes de Desarrollo Territorial (Territorial Development Plans). Third, the use of the arts to open up innovative spaces for dialogue between local government institutions and at-risk communities will highlight and strengthen capacities to respond to risk, which will benefit communities in the medium and long term.
Government Institutions and Civil Society Organisations that work in Disaster Risk Reduction
Specifically, this project aims to benefit the Colombian Red Cross and organisations in the municipalities of Soacha, Pereira and Manizales responsible for DRR. First, representatives from these institutions will receive training from the project team and Dejusticia in the use of the expressive arts as tools for community engagement, knowledge exchange and the legal aspects of DRR in informal settlements. A deeper understanding of the rights and responsibilities that local government, residents and institutions have around DRR will help municipalities and others involved in DRR design successful policies that will generate positive impact for local communities. In addition, the arts-based methodologies could provide innovative and alternative approaches to engaging with at-risk populations elsewhere in the municipalities and in Colombia.
By bringing together government agencies (municipalities), NGOs (Red Cross) and research institutions (University of Manizales, Dejusticia), this project will also provide a platform for dialogue, knowledge-exchange and capacity-building. These organisations will strengthen their links via different project activities. They will participate in the DRR workshops at the community level, in the seminars designed for institutions and in the final project presentations and engagement activities with the communities where results will be shared. More concretely, these spaces of dialogue will help all these organisations identify capacities at the local and national level and strengthen their approaches and methodologies aimed at mainstreaming DRR among vulnerable populations. This project thus has the potential to benefit organisations that work in DRR and people who experience similar situations elsewhere in Colombia, beyond the case studies proposed here.