All singing from the same song sheet: DRR and the visual and performing arts

Growing recognition of a need to encompass the role social and cultural processes play in the development and implementation of community-based disaster risk reduction (DRR) processes (Kulatunga, 2010; UNISDR, 2015) calls for exploring how this goal might be realized. This chapter explores one possibility; the potential for the performing (song) and visual arts, prominent socio-cultural media for communication and engagement in all countries, to complement existing approaches to DRR. The chapter examines whether song and artworks can represent social-environmental contexts which could be used to facilitate the development of DRR beliefs and actions (e.g., understanding warnings, preparedness etc.). Finding evidence of a relationship between arts and DRR outcome would afford opportunities to use arts as a medium to support or complement DRR strategies to foster people’s understanding of their social-environmental-hazard relationships and facilitate their ability to make informed choices about preparing for and/or responding to environmental challenge and change (Blumer, 1969; Paton, McClure & Bürgelt, 2006; Twigg, 2015)