Episode #33: Building cultural heritage resilience

Renae Hanvin

In this episode, I’m talking with Johanna Garnett, who’s the manager of Disaster Resilience and Risk Reduction at the South Australian Fire and Emergency Services Commission, also called SAFECOM. And we’re talking about building cultural heritage resilience. So a little bit about Jo as an emergency management professional. Jo has over two decades of experience in the sector, having served in various capacities across three state governments, and a role managing the oldest Disaster Resilience Institute in Australia for over five years. Jo also has an academic background with a Master’s in Emergency Management and Post Grad in Terrorism and Security Studies. She has published several academic papers on libraries and disaster resilience, and is currently undertaking a Doctorate in Public Safety at Charles Sturt University. Her current role is the manager for disaster risk reduction and resilience at SAFECOM.

So I’d like to start with where we met. Jo has been in the emergency management space for quite a few years.

I’d heard her name pop up here and there, but it wasn’t until she was at SAFECOM in South Australia and we started delivering a few projects in that region that we got to know each other better. Jo is without doubt, one of the most passionate people I know when it comes to cultural heritage and resilience. She’s such a great advocate for the role, places like libraries play in building community resilience, a clear crossover with our social infrastructure work with Professor Daniel Aldrich. It’s been great to have Jo involved in conferences like the EMPA Conference in Canberra, where we talked about how pubs and libraries can save the day. Jo, thanks so much for joining me today.

Johanna Garnett

No problems. Nice to be chatting about one of my favorite topics

Renae Hanvin

I know now, Jo, I know one of your favorite pastime, and we’ve done this many times, is to invite people for a coffee, cake and catch up. So let’s pretend this is what’s happening here.

1. So why are you so passionate about cultural heritage when it comes to building disaster resilience?

Johanna Garnett

Well thank you first of all for the invitation to chat today. And obviously I’m joining you from Kaurna country in South Australia, this morning. My passion for cultural heritage, now, where did it come from? I suppose it starts quite a long time ago actually. I’ve had long associations with the cultural heritage sector, so my bachelor’s degree is actually in history. But really it started I think, when I was working in the UK. So I used to work with historic houses for a district council, and part of my role was to work with Althorp House following the death of Princess Diana to develop a tourism strategy, for all the historic houses, in that area. And really through that way, that’s when I found kind of the role, I suppose, of cultural heritage in that broader community sense.

So what I tended to find there is often, obviously tourists coming into the area would, definitely deliver an economic benefit, but it really was kind of that emotional connection and the way these historic homes would be employing local people and using local suppliers and would be really valued and looked after by community. And I suppose that’s really kind of the first time that kind of really came to the forefront, for me about that, that broader role that cultural heritage had within local communities. But when I moved to Australia, and I began to work in the, in the emergency management sector, I kind of noticed it wasn’t really as prevalent. so when you look at particular, policies or procedures, it, it just wasn’t there. particularly obviously because it is now mentioned in the Sendai framework for disaster risk reduction, and so it kind of started me to ask, well, I I don’t quite understand why it’s not as included as what I would probably have expected it to be.

And when I used to work at the Department of Fire and Emergency Services or DFES in Western Australia, we had quite a few incidences where we’d had very prolonged bush fires and they’d had a massive impact on Indigenous cultural sites. And in about 2014, one of the biggest parks, Whiteman Park, in Western Australia actually, was, subject to quite a large bushfire. And following that, they actually developed a risk management plan for the museum that was cited on their site. And then obviously Yarloop, we’ve seen, the fires in 2016 there, the Yarloop Railway workshops are a very well known case of all that heritage that was lost, and obviously the facade of the Town Hall was lost, and subsequently how that community went on to actually fight for its, restoration and its inclusion in their recovery. And so I’ve kind of, seen, seen the impact of the loss of cultural heritage on communities, but also how people have fought and made inroads into trying to protect it.

And then, so obviously, in my current role in South Australia working at SAFECOM, we have a mass amount of heritage within our state. We have, it’s nearly like 2,400 State Heritage Places listed, we’ve got 43 National Heritage Places, and even our State library. I mean, we have 141 libraries in our state and 172 museums, and including of course, like the Art Gallery of South Australia, which houses of nearly 50,000 pieces of work. So we’ve got the second-largest state collection of art in Australia after yourselves in Victoria. And so here we are, we have all of these institutions who are actually responsible and our custodians for our cultural assets, and so to me, I think it’s been a combination of all of those type of things over the years that’s really kind of made me passionate about it in the sense, because I think the cultural heritage kind of really embodies our collective memory and identities of a community and whatever that community is or identifies itself as kind of really reflecting what makes it, very unique and strong.

So it’s not just about preserving buildings and traditions, but to me it’s always really about sustaining the core values that kind of bind that community together. And what I’ve tended to find is the more that I’ve dug into this space, the cultural heritage really serves as a kind of a real source of resilience for those communities, and really offers, it kind of provides that sense of continuity and sense of belonging, which of course is, is really kind of key foundations for recovery as well. So to me, it’s not just about restoring sort of physical structures necessarily, but it’s really about preserving the heart of a community, whatever that community is, or identifies itself as. And what I find is that when heritage is kind of respected and values, it really strengthens people’s connections, you know, to their roots and which obviously intent kind of fosters resilience and that social cohesion piece.

And so really for me, that’s kind of where that value of what cultural heritage brings, not only to communities more broadly, but also to us in emergency management. And I’m sure we’ll talk about some of the examples about the contribution that sector has made and is making to our aims and objectives, within emergency management, it’s a bit of later in this, in this interview, but, for me, those were the things really that kind of sparked me down this path. and obviously ultimately, led to doing a PhD in this area.

Renae Hanvin

Jo, your background and your kind of pathway to get to where your passion is is obviously same, same but different to mine. And I love hearing back to, you know, all the parts of your journey, you know, professionally and personally, and how you find your, you’ve found your little niche in the disaster resilience space that, as you say, it’s such an important area that, you know, it really doesn’t have, I guess, the focus that it, it should have. But we’ll come onto that in a minute.

2. So can you just explain for me what do you mean by cultural heritage?

Johanna Garnett

Yeah, look, I think it’s, it’s a definition which is, it’s actually quite hard to define I think in some regards, because it, it can mean very different things to different people. And even last week I had a conversation with somebody who said, well, cultural heritage just means indigenous heritage. And I was like, no, it’s far, it’s broader than that. So whilst, you know, indigenous heritage is one really important component, and I think it’s probably the component that most people in emergency management have perhaps had some dealings with, particularly over the last sort of, four to five years. actually, you know, cultural heritage is far broader than that. So when you look at the academic literature about what we actually mean about cultural heritage, there isn’t actually really an agreed definition of it. but you can kind of see that there’s common themes that come out of, those discussions.

So you can broadly say cultural heritage refers to the legacy of sort of physical artifacts or intangible attributes that have been passed down through generations that really kind of hold historical, social or cultural significance for a particular group or a community or a society. And normally most people will say like, there’s kind of two areas. So there’s the tangible cultural heritage. So these are kind of like our physical objects or places that have a real cultural importance. So think about things like monuments or buildings, historical sites such as ecological sites, cultural landscapes such as parks, and artifacts, house in museums. So things like, you know, particular artworks or manuscripts, for example. And then we’ve got intangible cultural heritage. So these are often the non-physical elements of a culture that are often passed down either orally or through traditions. So things like traditional practices or rituals such as festivals or ceremonies, languages and oral traditions, music, dance, performing arts, knowledge of traditional crafts.

The other part that I often think about though that sometimes are found not as prevalent, in some of the definitions I’ve read is the need to consider infrastructure. So, infrastructure such as air library or air museum they’re often a real, integral part, of cultural heritage. And sometimes that’s not as obvious in some of the academic definitions, that are found. So of course, we live in Australia and of course we have one of the oldest cultural heritages, on the planet, you know, thanks to the ongoing custodianship of our indigenous colleagues. And sometimes I’ve had discussions with people around what they perceive to be cultural heritage, and a lot of people think it’s kind of like that old, dusty Indiana Johns type vibe. But when we’re talking about all things right, but we not, so, I mean, we’ve got such a melting pot of multicultural heritage from across the world is actually, obviously within Australia.

So we have a lot of, different multicultural communities within Australia with their festivals and the cuisines. So, you know, thinking about like suburbs like Footscray in Melbourne, and you think about sort of those migrant communities and the architecture that they’ve brought and all of that, cultural heritage that they’ve contributed to us. And then of course, you’ve got things like buildings like the Sydney Opera House or Federation Square, which are really part of our kind of contemporary cultural identity and our heritage. So even things like, Hosier Lane in Melbourne, you know, all of that kind of street art is, can be classed as part of our cultural heritage. So, it’s quite a fluid definition, I think, for people. but those are kind of like the main things, you know, is it a, is it a, tangible or intangible? Those seem to be the common themes that are coming out of the academic literature particularly.

Renae Hanvin

Gosh, I love that It’s so easy to kind of, I guess, understand, but also it just makes you think that it’s everywhere. Like it’s everywhere you see, it’s things that you do, it’s, people you connect with. yeah, it really is just, I guess, a big part of an essence of, you know, all of our communities.

Johanna Garnett

And even if you even just, I mean, when you think about, whenever you ask people about, say for example, Adelaide, most people will say, well, we want to go because we want to go and have a photograph taken at the malls balls. Right? That’s what it’s known for. Everybody who comes in here has to have their photograph taken at the malls balls, and that’s what, and that’s the type of thing, it doesn’t have to be old, you know, our cultural heritage can be contemporary. It doesn’t have to be, kind of the all buildings necessarily.

Renae Hanvin

Oh, that’s such a great way to look at it too. It is.

3. Now, you had a really fantastic forum in Adelaide last year that I was able to attend the last part of. Can you share with listeners who was there, what did they say and what were the key findings that came out of it?

Johanna Garnett

So, no surprise to anybody who knows me, that I was very keen to get the cultural heritage sector and the emergency management sector across the table from each other. and this was actually the first time this had ever been done at a state level. I have been told it’s the first time at a national level, these two sectors have actually come together. so what we did is we took, there was some funding available through what used to be the National Partnership Agreement, which is basically used to be a pot of money that the state government and the Commonwealth government would put in together to try and fund a disaster risk reduction initiatives. So within South Australia, we called it the Disaster Risk Reduction Grant program. And we teamed up with, so SAFECOM teamed up with ArtLab and the History Trust of South Australia, and we did some disaster training for community museums.

So these are often, community museums which are quite small, but hold, really key heritage items from a particular community more than likely. So, for example, handoff is a prime example. There’s a community museum up there that was part of that training. and obviously everybody who comes to South Australia to the Hills normally includes a visitor to handoff. and so really that was the first time an initiative in terms of disastrous reduction training had actually taken place for community museums. And often of course, they, involved volunteers from that local community. And so to build upon that, I really wanted to kind of bring the emergency management sector together with the cultural heritage sector to kind of look at some of the issues that I’d been seeing and speaking to people about over kind of the last previous five years. And so it was at the forum was actually quite an emotional moment for me because I’d been advocating for such a long time for this conversation to formally occur that when everybody was in the room, it was, it was actually quite a moment because I realized that if I did nothing else, at least I’d brought these people together to have a conversation and to learn from each other and hopefully for people in emergency management to understand the value that cultural heritage was actually bringing to the work we were trying to achieve.

And to try and think about that in their forward considerations. So we had over 60 people, so obviously we gathered at the historic Adelaide Town Hall, because if it’s good enough for the Beatles, it was good enough for us <laugh>. and so really it was quite a diverse range of stakeholders. so we had people from government, we had people, there from the cultural heritage sector. So we looked at quite a range of topics actually, in terms of, we looked at heritage legislation, we looked at emergency management arrangements, we looked at legislation around, Aboriginal heritage, and we also reviewed a number of case studies such as Loxton Museum’s response to the flooding, we had a colleague from Victoria talk about how cultural heritage plays a role in their recovery piece and obviously because of the Murray River flooding we’d identified, that there had been impacts on that to Aboriginal heritage.

And of course that throws up some questions or, trying to find ways to, to try and mitigate against that in the future to try and ensure that we preserving our, Aboriginal heritage as much as we can in a way that is culturally appropriate. And so some of the key findings, we found from that forum was really for the emergency management to kind of think about incorporating cultural heritage professionals, into our sort of disaster considerations in a, in a better way, to try and increase our engagement between the two sectors and sort of build that collaborative network far more, and to look at kind of improving our frameworks and strategies to integrate cultural heritage into those considerations, to look at enhancing mapping and data sharing, to try and empower our local communities, into that protection piece and mitigation piece.

But also, particularly for me, kind of that communication and education piece around how do we advance awareness and knowledge about the importance of cultural heritage within emergency management more broadly. And so from the for we’ve established a cultural heritage and disasters network, which meets probably once a year. So we, we’ve got a next meet and plan just before Christmas. And we are also in the process of organizing some practical sessions for emergency management staff and volunteers for handling damaged personal goods, so people’s personal heritage. So my photographs, you know, wedding dresses from my grand, things like that, which I’ve seen a lot in, thanks to the, the State Library of Queensland. They were, I was there once and I just happened to call in on a fluke and ended up stalking this old gentleman who I’ve seen walking through the door with this box.

And it had obviously been damaged, in the 2011 floods. And what I subsequently found out is the library were actually running sessions where the community could come in, bring their damaged personal goods, and they could get advice on whether or not it could be restored and, put them in contact with restorers about, what that might look like. And so when I started to talk to them, the library had actually developed a series of advice sheets, if you like, for communities to say, if you are impacted by, flood waters or if you have items which have been damaged by smoke, these are some of the simple steps you can take in the immediate aftermath, and it may just give you a chance of being able to restore your items at a later date. And so for me, being able to train emergency services staff and volunteers to be able to say to communities, look, if we do this, you may have a chance of being able to save your personal heritage. is one of the really key things I I’d like to focus on next, because as we know, what are the biggest mental health impacts following a disaster is people’s loss of their identity and their personal, personal items and mentors. So, for me, that’s kind of my next key step is to try and, and get some of that training and that knowledge sharing from, from ArtLab, particularly here in South Australia into the emergency management sector. So then hopefully we can pass that knowledge on to communities who’ve been impacted.

Renae Hanvin

Jo, can I just take a step back here and go – Wow, and thank you, your passion and your focus and just your, I guess, you know, commitment to this part of the resilience piece of the pie. I mean, you’ve been doing things as you said, state first, potentially, you know, nationally first it’s, it’s conversations that absolutely need to be had. And, you know, yes, we think of the, you know, historic components of cultural heritage, but you know, those recipes from, you know, your grandmother that you might lose. And as you said, the dresses that have been handed down for generations, that personal, heritage is, you know, that’s something that’s so, so important. And I love that you are looking at, you know, current situations and obviously there’s lived experience, there at the moment as well and, and, and driving things to change that, and really embed it into the, the ecosystem now on the focus of that. And I’m sorry on the, the topic of that, and I’m probably probably gonna be able to answer this question for you, but I won’t.

4. So is there enough focus on cultural heritage within the ecosystem of resilience?

Johanna Garnett

No.

Renae Hanvin

I’m not surprised.

Johanna Garnett

Yeah, no, look, it’s, it’s getting better, but I think, I think it’s, well, primarily because I just annoy people with it everywhere I go, I just try to advocate. But I think the work has been, the work has certainly been going on in the cultural heritage sector. but unfortunately, you know, it, it can, it hasn’t translated over into emergency management, and that’s for many reasons, you know? but it’s a really important question to reflect upon, actually. And I was thinking about that last week. So I was in Sydney for a conference, and one night I’d gone for a walk, circular key, and I was looking Shirley’s cultural heritage icons. So I have the opera house on one side, the harbor bridge on the other. I’ve got the ferries going to and from, you know, and when I stood and I watched and I watched people that particular evening, and they’d come for, you know, they were obviously eating and drinking and stuff, but that’s not why they were there.

They were there because the landmarks I was surrounded by aren’t just structures, they’re so kind of deeply woven into our identity and that global perception of the country that people from around the world have. There was literally hundreds of people from, from every part of the globe who come specifically to visit and experience those particular sites on that particular evening. And I just kept thinking, what would happen if we lost one of them? So what if we wake up tomorrow and suddenly the Opera House had gone for whatever reason, and we saw something very similar with the fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in 2019, and we saw kind of the emotional and the cultural devastation that kind of played out across the world from people. , and even now, like the, the cathedral isn’t really due to open until the back end of this year, so it’s been a mammoth task for them to, try and restore it.

And of course, that loss kind of still echoes, you know, most people ignore, where the, where when they heard the news that it was, you know, it was on fire and we all seen of kind of that outpouring of grief. So when you look at it and you think about it in the, in the context of Australia, you know, there are a wide range of effects of losing an, an important piece of your cultural heritage. So there’s the emotional impact, obviously, because people mourn that kind of loss of the symbol. And then socially kind of the connection it has to the history and the community, and obviously that’s all disrupted. And then of course, economically, you know, there are would be an impact on tourism. I mean, if we, if we lost the Opera house, that’s a massive part of the tourism draw, particularly obviously for Sydney.

So these, these landmarks really aren’t just buildings, the kind of reflections of who we are and touch people in ways that resonate across generations. Of course, lose one would create a void that would be very difficult to fill. And I always remember the conversation I had with a lady in Victoria, and she, she was part of a community that lost, it used to be, like one of the old fire spotters towers. And she said, she said, people think people are sad because it’s bent down and you know, it has a, a connection to fire history. She says, but what we know in a community, she says, is that’s where we used to go when we were caught back in the day, <laugh>, she says, I used to go up there with my husband. She said, so for me. And her husband had not long actually passed away, and she said, she said, I feel like I’ve lost another connection to him.

She says, because that’s where we used to go, she said, so every time I looked at it, I used to remember the times there, she said, now it’s not there anymore. So the loss isn’t just about for the big cultural heritage pieces, it’s also for those cultural heritage pieces, you know, which mean a lot, to our communities. So when you look at it in that terms of, its impact on the ecosystem, it’s pretty, it’s, it’s pretty massive. But you look at, it’s mentioned in the Sendai framework under Priority three, but at the moment, Australia still has no mechanism to kind of measure against priority three, although we are having some discussions about how we may be able to facilitate that. But when you look at state emergency management plans, or resilience plans, or, you know, there’s barely any mention of it. And so that was the part for me that kind of really drove my PhD research at Charles Sturt University, which is kind of looking at how can we develop, different strategies and approaches to better integrate those cultural heritage considerations into our practices and policies and risk reduction efforts within Australia.

And I think we also as a sector really need to cultivate a very deeper understanding of the value that cultural heritage holds for the communities and for the risks it currently and will face in the future, particularly in the context of a change in climate. so for example, in South Australia, we recently conducted a project which mapped disastrous reduction and resilient ecosystem, within two geographical areas. And the findings of that study also demonstrated that cultural heritage was not part of that current ecosystem apart from some of the projects we’d funded via our grants program.

Renae Hanvin

5. So talking about funding, so where’s the funding relating to cultural heritage?

Johanna Garnett

Well, there isn’t any, again, the only funding we’ve, been able to do at our state level, was through that national partnership agreement. So through our, disaster risk reduction grant program, obviously we funded the community museum training, which obviously included part of the forum. but we also encouraged applications, from that sector to exactly, to try and do that, to try and address some of these things, to try and really, I suppose, put evidence behind what we’d already found, through some of my, through some of sort of my work and advocacy, to see what we could do. And so we, we obviously did the museum piece, but now we’re working with public libraries as well. So a lot of people aren’t aware that public libraries actually hold quite a large heritage collections. so that project is really aiming to enhance the disaster resilience by equipping library staff with knowledge and skills and practical training to develop, tailored disaster plans for that particular library in order to ensure that their unique local history collections, you know, are protected as much as they can.

The other project we funded, through the same scheme was with the Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation Group at the Attorney-General’s Department. So, that looks at trying to balance the heritage protection of indigenous sites with the confidentiality and the cultural requirements, that are needed. So that’s working with the CFS, so the fire service, to develop a mapping tool that informs emergency personnel of the presence of Aboriginal heritage in the area whilst trying to safeguard its precise location and the details of sites, because there are obviously, legislation requirements that sit around that. So we don’t know what that project will find yet. It may, it may prove to be, difficult. We may find, a good middle road with that, but we all sat at the table and went, well, if we don’t give it a try, we’re never gonna know.

And so all of the partners involved in that, were certainly willing to come to the table and, and we’ll give it a try. but unfortunately, uh, we have tried to apply for further federal government funding, uh, which hasn’t been, successful to date, but we’re of course gonna keep trying, but for now I’m just focusing on trying to maintain those conversations with colleagues, gathering the evidence about why it’s important and why it’s valued and why it should be reflected in our policy and really just advancing, kind of my own research in this area. And of course, you know, cultural heritage plays a large role in social capital and social infrastructure, which I’m sure will inform part of the snapshot project you’ve recently, completed and obviously we’ll feature in your new Disaster Ready Fund over the next 12 months of the your next project.

Renae Hanvin

Yeah, I know a hundred percent Joan. For those who don’t know, we are very excited to have been successful in the Disaster Ready Fund round two, to create a national social capital and social infrastructure measurement framework to benefit all Australians and actually pilot test Professor Daniel Aldrich’s data measurement in three communities in South Australia. So staying tuned for more information on that one. And in fact, if you are interested in the work that we’re doing with Professor Aldrich on social capital and social infrastructure, jump onto our website resilientready.org. And if you go for, take a look at the White Papers tab under Resources, you’ll find the findings report from our snapshot project that we delivered in South Australia recently.

6. So what difference do you think, Professor Aldridge’s global measurement, on social capital and social infrastructure, what do you think that would provide for Australia when it comes to cultural heritage resilience?

Johanna Garnett

I think it’ll demonstrate, I think it’ll demonstrate a lot actually in terms of, firstly, probably how much we have that we are not actually aware of. But secondly, I suppose the importance of some of that cultural heritage infrastructure particularly, and the role it plays in actually connecting communities. You know, it’s the places where people connect. And there’s a great quote that I read recently, from an academic, from Charles Sturt University, ironically called Jane Gardner. And Jane does a lot of research in, into, libraries, and she quoted two of the researchers, I forget their names now, but it was a fantastic quote. And it basically says that over the last sort of five to ten years, libraries have been kind of switching their focus from collections to connections.

And I think that is such a perfect way to encompass particularly the role, that I’ve seen libraries play in that social connectedness piece. because of their social and relational nature, they kind of become community hubs, you know, they’re very safe and inclusive places. so for me, I think there’ll be, Daniel’s work I think will show us the role that those type of, institutions really play in building the connectedness of a community and really, I suppose kind of understanding the strength to bring to a community, and so forth. So yes, I’m, I’m looking forward to seeing what Daniel’s work provides and ensures in that regard.

Renae Hanvin

Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think, as you said before, you know, social capital people, connections, that’s the, I use the short term. And then social infrastructure being places where people connect, and the community organisations, including the libraries and, you know, the halls and, and so many different places in the communities will be, I guess it’s the missing piece of the resilience puzzle when we did the snapshot project that was part of the findings. So it’ll be really fantastic to pilot test and, and have a look at how we can measure, and really put some, I guess, quantifiable value on, you know, these places and spaces that foster connections.

7. Now, when we presented in Canberra a few months ago, you shared some really lovely stories about libraries and their important role in communities. So can you just, can you share them again, just super quickly, just a couple of them?

Johanna Garnett

Yeah, sure. So I’ve often said libraries play a really vital role in the heart of community. So they’re kind of the last place I think where you can go and everybody’s welcome, right? There’s no judgment when you walk through the door. Uh, you can see that whenever you walk in a library, there’s such a, a wide variety of people from all different types of backgrounds. And it’s the last place I think, where you can go, nothing’s expected of you. And so for me, they’ve always played quite a real important part and an important role in, in my life. But as we say, like even recently there’s been, there’s still kind of attacks going on, if you like, so there’s still a at risk. And we’ve seen that even recently at the British Library at the back end of, 2023, they had a massive cyber attack, and they’ll end up spending like 40% of their financial reserves just trying to recover from it.

And that wasn’t an isolated case. The same group targeted other cultural institutions like the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Natural History Museum in Berlin. And of course there’s lots of implications, from that type of attack on the library, and of course, even in Liverpool in the UK during the social unrest recently following, the tragic incident with, with the, the dance group, that, you know, the library was set on fire and targeted, but what we also see is the Spellow library, really the response to its, its targeting was, was just amazing. One group had set up a task to try and raise 500 pounds to help the library to restock. ’cause it was just been, newly opened, but actually they ended up raising over a quarter of a million dollars for it.

And I think that’s a really good example of, of how these, how libraries particularly are really valued by the community. So they’re still under threat. There are numerous examples, obviously for, libraries within Australia, that have been damaged through a variety of different natural hazards. But again, it goes back to the fact that we’re not just preserving spaces. We’re not just kind of safeguarding books. We’re really preserving spaces that foster connection, which are, are learning places which allow for cultural continuity. You know, they’re welcoming, all inclusive, free to access public spaces and really do champion that kind of information for everybody. And so Featherstone, is a research and he had a paper out and they identify kind of eight categories that describe librarians role during and after a particular disaster. And, and in it they talk about them being institutional supporters, they’re collection managers, they’re information disseminators, they’re internal planners, community supporters, government partners, educators and trainers and information community builders.

And so all of that is really vital, I think, to what we are, are trying to do. But we’ve seen a lot, in terms of the role they play, particularly, I mean I’ve talked previously about some of the work, the State Library of Queensland, have been undertaken to help people, particularly since the 2011 floods. but also even during Covid. I mean, I spent 12 months alone in a hotel room in Melbourne during the Covid response, ’cause I was working, for the government at the time. But the one thing I noticed when lockdowns had eased the first places people were going to were the cultural institutions. So the state library and the art gallery. And I remember talking to one lady and she said, I’ve been in lockdown. Unfortunately, she’d lost her husband to Covid quite early on in the piece.

And she was stood in front of a particular picture and she said, she said, I haven’t, I haven’t seen this painting for months, she says, and I always used to come here with my husband. And again, another example of, you know, how she’s connected, she’s got an emotional attachment to it, to this particular painting. ’cause she used to go and, and look it with her husband. And she said, it’s the first place I wanted to come when I knew I could go out and about, and even during the earthquake, the sort of the six pointer we had, people were congregate on the, on the lawn of the state library. And I think because it felt like a safe space for people as well. And there’s multiple example, like Melbourne’s Yarra Plenty Library, they had over 8,000 library members that were over the age of 70.

And the librarians took home the phone numbers of these people and would ring them to make sure they were okay during, those kind of lockdown periods. We’ve certainly seen in the Lismore floods very famous images of the powers of the library books, being, having to being chucked out of the windows there. the Southern Cross University on the Lismore campus became a major evacuation center for flood effect, flood affected, residents. and then of course we see all of our local libraries do a lot of things around bushfire preparedness. So a lot of them will hold bushfire planning sessions to things like story time or rhyme time based upon fire safety and home safety type messaging. they usually help people digitize family photographs, which of course is a, is a great way to kind of make sure you’ve at least got a digital copy of something in South Australia.

Campbelltown recently received, funding again, through the SAFECOM, grant program to open their libraries of cool refuge during heat waves, which we found to be exceptionally popular and people took that all. But you know, I mean even on on a global level, librarians from around the world formed the Librarian Reserve Corps and they were charged with helping the World Health organisation to manage the massive amount of information related to the pandemic. And then you’ve got the National Library of Australia do, oral history projects, which captures people’s experiences and responses to the pandemic. But there are multiple examples of other libraries and museums across Australia capturing local community experiences. and then we’ve even had people like the French National Library who actually helped the community of Marysville following the fires, uh, to, they actually had some things in storage which were related to Marysville.

And so they’re very kindly sent that over when Marysville were trying to restore the, the cultural heritage that they’d actually lost, during the bush fires. So I think as, I think as we kind of move forward, there are multiple examples of how libraries particularly have really been assisting our communities right across the DRR spectrum. but also, you know, as we move into that kind of era of reduced face-to-face assistance, uh, for a variety of particular things, you know, libraries are really becoming the first point of contact for people, with a lot of different needs. And so really would in the DRR sense, really play a kind of vital role in, you know, accessing particular grants, disaster payments, insurance claims, and so on and so forth. So yeah, obviously a big massive fan of libraries and the rollout they play. I could talk about it for weeks on end.

Renae Hanvin

I was gonna say, we might have to do another podcast coming up just focused on, your passion for libraries. So can I ask Jo, my final two questions is always the same.