Episode #39: Are schools key to social capital?

Briony Towers is a researcher and practitioner working in the field of child-centred disaster risk management. She completed her PhD on children’s knowledge of vulnerability and resilience to bushfire at the University of Tasmania in 2011 and then spent almost 10 years as an academic at RMIT where she led the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC project on child-centred disaster risk reduction. In 2021, Briony wanted to spend more time on research translation and implementation, so she set up Leadrrr, which stands for Learning Ecologies for Action on DRR and Resilience. Through Leadrrr, Briony has been supporting emergency agencies, local government, NGOs and other organisations to develop research-informed programs that involve children and young people as genuine participants in disaster risk management. She has also recently joined the School of Education at Deakin University where she is exploring children and young people’s roles in mitigating and adapting to socio-ecological challenges in the Anthropocene.

I like to start with where we met. Now Briony is someone that everyone knows in the disaster resilience sector, especially if you’re from Victoria. She’s the guru in school-based education for disaster risk reduction, and really championing youth-led approaches to understanding and managing risk. Funnily enough, when I asked Briony to be on my podcast, we were talking to each other about when we last met in person, because we hear about each other often, so we know what we’re each other’s up to, but we don’t always actually cross paths. We think we met face-to-face last time, back in 2017, so before Covid, which clearly means we need another face-to-face Catch up soon. Briony, thanks so much for chatting with me today.

Briony Towers

Thanks, Renae. Thanks for having me.

Renae Hanvin

Now I’ve just shared in the intro that we realised we hadn’t seen each other in person since I think about 2017. So clearly we have to change that and we have to sort of face-to-face catch up soon.

1. But in the meantime, can you share a bit more about your background and why disasters and why youth?

Briony Towers

So I always wanted to work with youth. Even in my undergrad, I was studying behavioral science, with a view to working with youth in that kind of psychology space. I then took a break from that for a couple of years, and I worked in Japan teaching English to Youth.

Then I came back and I worked in a whole range of jobs in schools. I worked as an integration aid. I’ve always just loved working in education and with children and young people. and it was actually through that, through that job, when I was working as an integration aid that I was working with a lot of the students who were either autistic or had developmental delay or, other yeah, other kind of learning issues, supporting them in the classroom. And I really loved that and I really loved working with the psychologist who would come in and kind of design their programs for them. And it was actually one of the parents, one of the children that I was working with said, you need to go back to uni. You need to do your honors and you need to do your masters and you need to do what the psychologist is doing in the, in the school with these children.

And I thought, yes, that’s, yes, that sounds like a great idea. So I went back to do my honors in psych, and I actually went to UTAS to do it because I thought that would be a good idea away from the distractions kind of everyday life and immerse myself in that honors year. And then at the end of the year, one of my lecturers, Douglas Patton asked me what I was planning to do next. And I said, well, I’m gonna do my clinical masters and I’m gonna work with children and young people. And he said, oh, well, what about you do a PhD in, children and bushfire? And I thought, that’s a bit random. anyway, it sounded really interesting and I’d really enjoyed, kind of yeah, learning from him in that honors year. And yeah, so we applied, I applied for a, yeah, for a PhD scholarship and got it and started working on that project, which was focused on children’s knowledge of vulnerability and resilience to bushfire in southeastern Australia.

And started traveling around Tassie visiting schools, doing focus groups with, children and Yeah, and young people, and was just really interested in the level of engagement in their level of engagement in those discussions. They were really interested in bushfire. They hadn’t had any bush, a lot of them hadn’t had any bushfire education before. Those who had had had it through their family networks, you know, mom or dad is a fire brigade or whatever. But then I had all these data and I didn’t really know what to do with it. And at that time, there was no research on children’s knowledge of bushfire or, bushfire education for children or anything like that. So that’s about 2006. So I was really kind of out there on my own and it was quite lonely. There was really nothing for me to read.

No literature. I really felt like I was kind of just yeah, really kind of moving around in the dark, but I did know that what these children had to say and that the, the ideas that they had and that their understanding that they were developing around bushfire, even just in those discussions that we were having was really important. And I guess kind of a big turning point for me in that work was coming across Catherine Haynes work. So people might know Cat’s work. She’s done a lot of research in human dimensions of bushfire response and flood response. And yeah, she’s a really great researcher, but at that time she was working on a big project with Plan International and the Institute of Development Studies on child-led disaster risk reduction in Indonesia and the Philippines and El Salvador.

And so when I came across that work, I thought, this is where I fit, found

Renae Hanvin:

A friend, I found a friend.

Briony Towers

Yeah. There, there are things happening. There are people working on this. And so I think from that point, because, you know, obviously Plan is a child rights based NGO, and, and Cat’s work in that area was very child rights focused. And so then I guess my work kind of took on more of a child rights focus as well. And then it was around that same time that Laurie Peak were published a special issue of children youth and environments around children and disasters. And so connecting with her as well was really great. So all of a sudden I felt like, oh, there is

This, this research is yeah, this research is legitimate. Yeah, these research questions are important and the data that I’m, you know, that I’m gathering with these with these children really matters. And then like Saturday happened

And so all of a sudden the data that I had and then the recommendations that came out of the Royal Commission, the recommendation six for bushfire education to be included in the formal curriculum that I suppose just created opportunities to start implementing or utilising some of that research from my PhD.

Renae Hanvin

Yeah. Well, it’s the direct relevance, isn’t it? It’s unfortunately.

Briony Towers

Yeah. Yeah. So that’s when the fire agencies got really serious about designing, and implementing bushfire education programs. And so I started working on a project Bushfire Natural Hazard CRC project with Professor Kevin Ronan. He was at CQU, I was at RMIT, and we were really lucky. We had, some really good funding for a few years to work really closely with the emergency management agencies. And yeah, we evaluated different programs. We worked with different schools and school communities and yeah, that was a really, yeah, I only realise now how fortunate we were to have that funding. Yeah. I think I was a very young green researcher, and I think I took it for granted a little bit. but yeah, but we did accomplish a lot through that, and that was, yeah, we had, yeah, there wasn’t a lot going on. Yeah. We had to really search hard to find things, things to, to research. So, yeah.

Renae Hanvin

And that’s quite extraordinary. I mean, I, like, I think your story’s kind of similar to mine. Like, you know, we kind of fell into the emergency management space and the risk reduction space and then found our little kind of nugget of passion and, you know, interest and then I guess, you know, had our own pathway. ’cause same for me with business communities. I mean, you know, I still have a pretty lonely existence in some ways, but, you know, youth and, you know, children, I mean, gosh, they are absolutely fundamental in the before, during, and after stages, you know, the disaster conversation. And it’s been so great to see, you know, you and what you’ve been driving and the change and just the industry and the sector talking about it as well. And, you know, that’s what I think, you know, the likes of you and I and the sector. It’s about bringing new things and then not just doing the research, but absolutely translating it and embedding it into cultures. And that is really key. Now you said, we’ve spoken before, you’ve collaborated with a lot of schools and kids on projects, including ones that have won some awards. I’ve always seen a few of your projects up in the Resilient Australia Awards, et cetera.

2. Can you share a couple that have, sort of stood out to you or really kind of important to you and why?

Briony Towers

Yeah, so I think, one of the projects that was a real turning point for me was working with the Strathewen Bushfire Education Partnership. So with Strathewen Primary School and the Arthur Creek Fire Brigade and listeners have probably come across the really beautiful work that the children produce through that program, the films and the claymations and the storybooks and everything else.

Renae Hanvin

Is amazing. And I was, I was secretly hoping you’d, you’d mention that one.

Briony Towers

So, I mean, and that was really important. Yeah. I suppose for a couple of reasons for, for me, because first of all, I was able to spend a lot of time in the school just participating in the program activities. So they have their community helper days where everybody, where all the community members and brigade members and people from further afield come in and, work for the children for the day to produce, to do all the labour that’s required of [xxx] that goes for six minutes.

And I think just, yeah, being able to spend so much time talking to Jane Hayward, the Principal and DI one of her teaching staff, and of course Lisa O’Brien from the Brigade, and Jamie Mackenzie who would come up from, he comes up from Anglesea to teach the kids about, yeah, the, the fire science kind of thing. And yeah, and I think just being able to learn from them and all of their different perspectives. Jane, from an education perspective, what did, what does this mean for her as a teacher? Lisa as a brigade member, and someone who was heavily involved and, you know, a real leader in the community led recovery after Black Saturday. and, and then Jamie, who is just a real innovator in terms of, you know, developing programs and, and trainings for, for Leadrrrship. So being able to learn from them was a pretty amazing education and I think gave me a really good grounding in what really matters, when we…

Renae Hanvin

And don’t you think, I think too, Briony, it’s a real, I guess example of an outcome of activating shared responsibility. Like, you know, since what, 2011, we all have a role to play, but we’re not gonna define those roles. ’cause then that would probably mean we’d have to actually, you know, be held accountable for them. But I think initiatives that bring, you know, different perspectives and, you know, young, old government, non-government, everyone together to kind of create, you know, solutions or again, cultural changes or norms or behaviors that, you know, build awareness, build capacity. And it enables, again, you know, the young kids to kind of identify where they fit and what their role is and what they can do. And it’s not just learning and listening. Like they can actively take roles in, you know, getting prepared and better understanding and, you know, getting the parents to do stuff at home. I mean, there’s so much power in those sorts of programs.

Briony Towers

Yeah. And I think, yeah, that’s where I really saw the power of like that truly collaborative approach at the grassroots, you know, with Lisa, you know, from the brigade and, and Jane in the school, the way they were working together was Yeah. Very, very just highly collaborative. And, they would, you know, they would identify and solve problems together and design the whole program together, and both take responsibility for, for seeing it through to, you know, to the final outcome. So, yeah. So that was, that was really important. But I think also too, the really great thing about Strathewen primary school and the partnership is their willingness to take risks.

Renae Hanvin

Yeah.

Briony Towers

I mean, the children, kind of raise in that environment of where they’re, you know, they’re, they’re willing to take risks with their learning. But also, you know, for, for Lisa and, and Jane, they were always willing to take, to take risks and I’d kind of take ideas to them sometimes. And one of them was that we should get the children to evaluate the program themselves. ’cause I’d done a kind of formal evaluation and published that and they wanted to keep evaluating the program, but they didn’t have any budget for that. And so I suggested that they do that they do a student led evaluation, let’s let the children evaluate it, which fitted really nicely with their, their philosophies, but, you know, but just, you know, they were, they were into it. I love it. Even though we’d never done it before, I’d never done it before.There were very few examples at that time of, of that kind of, yeah. That kind of work actually being done and that led that led to this…

Renae Hanvin

A great outcome. Yeah. And I guess, you know…

Briony Towers

Present at the ADA conference, their results and. It was just, yeah.

Renae Hanvin

Remember seeing that. It was awesome.

Briony Towers

Yeah. Yeah. So I think that was another thing that I learned in that, in that school environment as well, is that you need to be a bit brave and…

Renae Hanvin

And think differently. Again, take

Briony Towers

…and, you know, and sometimes you succeed and sometimes you fail, but we don’t move forward unless.

Renae Hanvin

A hundred percent. And I think, you know, thinking differently and doing differently. ’cause that’s, you know, we can’t do the same thing as what’s been done before, because then we’re never gonna change. Now, as you know, Briony, I’ve been mentioning to you, and obviously you’ve, I think a little bit excited, but we are doing some work on social capital, with Professor Daniel Aldrich. And I’m really interested, I guess my lens is the role that small businesses and nonprofits complain, building and strengthening community connections. And so over the past five years, been working with Professor Daniel Aldrich and his global data, and we are piloting a project as part of a Disaster Ready Fund, round two project in South Australia at the moment, which is super exciting.

3. Now, he doesn’t typically include schools when measuring social infrastructure, which I was a bit like, what, what do you mean?

Renae Hanvin

But just in communities that he’s been working with across the world, they’ve just not decided, or it’s not been identified to include schools, but we are creating a national framework in social capital and social infrastructure measurement. And absolutely. schools are definitely on the list, which, when he’s over in Australia in next month, actually, he’s here for a couple, or for about eight weeks. because, you know, I’ve got kids in schools and the school is the epicenter of our community and the WhatsApp group chats for, you know, the parents and all that kind of stuff. Like, I don’t think I’d get through half the day if I didn’t have those connections and connections obviously with, you know, into the principals and the teachers and the education staff. But all the connections around the school and the place, like, you know, every weekend were up there, you know, shooting basketball hoops or whatever it might be. So my question to you is, are schools like key to social capital? And like, why, why do you think from your research?

Briony Towers

I think they…

Renae Hanvin

Then I can tell Daniel…

Briony Towers

I think they definitely are, it’s really interesting though that, that Daniel hasn’t incorporated, schools into his social capital research, because I haven’t really incorporated social capital into my research.

Renae Hanvin

Well there we go.

Briony Towers

Don’t worry. However, you know, having reconnected with you recently and oh, I really must, yeah, I really must look at the, the social capital literature. I mean, I guess I’ve kind of followed it at a surface level. but, but not really thought about how it applies to my own work. My own work has been, you know, very much grounded in kind of theories and, and concepts of, you know, agency and child participation and, yeah. And, and that kind of thing. So it was really interesting kind of looking at the literature on social capital and just saying, we’ve been building social capital and we’ve been harnessing the existing social capital that is exactly that, that we work with. And so that’s been really, really interesting. And I think that’s something that we can be incorporating a lot more into…

…into the kind of theoretical frameworks and, and yeah. Kind of explanatory frameworks that, that we’re using for our work. But I think, you know, and, and you’ll have to excuse my pretty rudimentary social capital research, but kind of just looking at those key or, you know, those main areas of bonding, bridging and linking social capital. I think the work that, the work that we’re doing in schools and the work that school staff and students and the whole school community are doing very much, you know, I’ve got some great examples. So for that bonding social capital, every research project we do, or every program we develop, really demonstrates the power of children’s influence on their households and, you know, amongst, amongst their, their peers. So first of all, thinking about, you know, when we actually adopt these approaches that, you know, where, where children are taking ownership

of their learning and action, we do see them really, sharing their knowledge with their families, but most importantly asking questions. I think there’s always been this assumption that children can go home and, and kind of tell their parents, you know, what they need to do to prepare or, or plan for, for an emergency. But I think one of the most powerful things that, that we’ve seen children do is go home and start asking questions. They come home and they, you know, they start asking you questions and they start, you know, they help you to identify the gaps in your knowledge and the gaps in Yeah. What, what you’ve done in terms of, you know, your, your planning or preparedness or, or whatever. So there’s definitely that side of things, but then also what we’ve found is that the students, they really want to teach each other.

Renae Hanvin

Yeah.

Briony Towers

And they really wanna make sure that everybody in their school is aware and informed and prepared. And that’s something that, yeah. I think is really Yeah. Always really impresses me. They have a really strong, ethic of care. Where now that they have this information about warnings or plans. Or whatever it is, they feel this sense of responsibility to share that Yep. With yeah. With everybody else. And yeah, I think one of the projects that, that we did at Hartwell Primary School involved the students developing a bushfire safety manifesto where they Yeah. Where they identified four key, points that they wanted to see implemented, or four key actions that they wanna see implemented in their school for booked by education. And one of them was that they want to teach others. Yeah. and, you know, they see themselves as being really well positioned to educate each other because as they say, we know what other kids know and don’t know. Correct. And we know how to explain things in a way that other kids will understand.

Renae Hanvin

A hundred percent.

Briony Towers

So, yeah. So I think that that kind of children or students as educators piece is, is really crucial.

Renae Hanvin

And particularly in the bridging ties as well, you think school to schools and, you know, like that kind of connection. A hundred percent.

Briony Towers

And again, yeah. The work that we’ve done with [xxx] High School, we did participatory action research with the students at year 7 to 10 students, on student participation in school bushfire planning. And once they’d done that work and they’d identified problems and developed solutions, and we developed a framework for, you know, student participation in school bush planning, and they’re like, we need to get this to other schools. We need other schools to be, to be involved in this as well. You know, because they identified that that most, that you know, that before that participated in the project, they didn’t understand what the fire danger ratings mean. Yeah. They didn’t know, they didn’t really understand the school’s policies around school closure on catastrophic fire danger days. And, you know, as we worked through the project, they identified that as, you know, a really serious risk in the community. And once they had that understanding, they, once again, they could do something, wanted to make sure that other schools were gonna be making sure that, that everybody had that knowledge and awareness and had plans for those for those days.

Renae Hanvin

And that’s, I guess, you know, the whole kind of notion of, sorry, social capital in kind of the disaster resilience. For me, it’s about, you know, those connections then drive conversations, and then it’s the content in those conversations. So that’s why I am so, you know, passionate about bringing in some measurement into the ecosystem of risk reduction and resilience, so that if we can measure how connected those communities are, then we can look at, okay, well, where there’s connections, let’s, you know, let’s heighten those conversations and get them talking more. And then if there are really great conversations happening at a certain school district, let’s connect them into, you know, like-minded, you know, schools in other high risk areas to kind of, you know, learn, you know, teach the teachers and stuff in that kind of, you know, kid to kid environment. Absolutely spot on.

Briony Towers

I think it works the other way too, Renae as well, is that, you know, we, we go into schools and we do this work, and it would be great for us to be able to measure, the social capital that we are building through those.

Renae Hanvin

Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah.

Briony Towers

Because, you know, much to people’s surprise often is that students really love engaging in this work. And, you know, they’re really proactive in, you know, in actually taking advantage of these opportunities to learn and connect and make a change in their, you know, in their school communities and their Yeah. And their neighborhoods. So, and even, you know, and then even at a, at a policy level, and I think that’s where it goes to that, that linking

Social capital is that, you know, once we see the children, they start to, yeah. They start to connect with their family and their peers and, you know, their school community on these, you know, around these issues. And then they start to go a bit, you know, a bit broader. But, you know, like we saw at Upway once the students had finished that project, and I’d identified that this was a huge gap, you know, that that student knowledge and, and participation in school bushfire planning represented a really big gap in the local emergency management planning they took it to council. I love it. And they, yeah. They made a submission to council to, to tell local council that this was an issue that they wanted to see addressed. So Yeah. So the students actually learning, you know, how to access those Yeah. Those halls of power and engage in that, that decision make and influence decision making as well.

Renae Hanvin

Just so, I mean, that’s, that’s the goal. Do you know what I mean? That’s the gold end outcome of, you know, what I guess, you know, a focus of social capital, and social infrastructure could be, ’cause even again, the places of schools, so, you know, the school, I guess the structure of the school is, you know, such a trusted place in the community and an active place in the community. So, you know, enabling, the decision makers, so the state governments or the councils or whatever, to think differently about the schools. That it’s not just a place that kids go, you know, Monday to Friday, but like, what is that when a disaster disruption occurs or, you know, in the preparedness planning and that as well. So I guess identifying the different roles the school and the people in the school can play as an epicenter, in my opinion, particularly in, you know, outer regional kind of communities as well.

I mean, yeah. It’s, it’s, we’ll have to, we’ll sort of catch up with Professor Aldrich when he is here in Melbourne, and we’ll ask him why and we’ll get a bit more information and then perhaps we can challenge with, going for some future funding, Briony and, create some programs and test a bit more here. ’cause I’m, yeah, it’s a space that I’m really interested in. And, I think I have heard that there’s a national discussion group around schools and, them being places of, I guess, communities use outside of school hours. So I know there is some talk in that instance, which again, I’m kind of, sort of following a little bit. But definitely once we, complete the pilot project and then cross fingers, hopefully one day can, scale it up into a national, index, then, you know, we can really then deep dive into some key kind of, places and communities that are really, you know, really critical and, and really important and need to have a different sort of light shined on them I think.

Briony Towers

We like to see children and youth engaged as genuine partners in the development of disaster risk management policies, plans, and standards. We’ve made some progress. We have a long, long way to go. A lot of policies and programs and strategies are still developed without any direct involvement from children and young people. and children and young people aren’t happy about it, let me tell you. And they’re, you know, they’re, they’re very aware that they’re being excluded, especially as, you know, especially at that high school level. Yeah. And this is something that our, that our <inaudible> students, feel really passionately about and are kind of Yeah. Really starting to step up as advocates more. And as one of the students said, we ran a panel discussion, at ADA last year, the students came down and we streamed it online, and it was really an opportunity for them to kind of reflect on their experiences of the project that they’d been involved in with us, but also, you know, be able to speak from, you know, their own experience to, you know, people in, in decision making roles. And one of the students said, you wouldn’t, you know, do you design policies and programs for First Nations people without involving First Nations people? Do you design policies and programs for disabled people without involving disabled people? Why is it okay to design policies and programs for young people without involving us? I

It’s not Okay. So yeah. So I think that’s something that I would really like to work on with children and young people and actually start Yeah. Creating, yeah. Creating some opportunities and for them to advocate, you know a local state and, and federal level for their genuine inclusion in that space. And then the other thing I would say is, we really need long-term dedicated funding to be directed towards children and youth in the disaster risk management space. A lot of most projects are project based.

They’re, you know, they’re conducted or undertaken with, grants. It’s government grants or philanthropic grants, very rarely directly from the budget of government departments or, or agencies. And, you know, we’ve been able to do some really great work and kind of yeah. Develop some really good, programs and projects with, with that kind of funding, but then the funding runs out and…

It’s, you know, and everything and everything falls over. So I’d really like to see some dedicated funding to children and, and youth, you know, from you know, research organisations. And also, yeah, within the departments and agencies that are actually doing disaster risk management.

Renae Hanvin

Yeah. I think, I mean, again, you know, don’t get me wrong, the grant fundings are great and, you know, very, very grateful for them. But I think, you’re so right. You spend, I mean, we worked with Kangaroo Island for a couple of years and then it finishes and then you’re gone. Like it’s gonski and it’s kind of like you can, you know, build some, set up some really great structures and, but the sustainability, you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta keep it going long term. Like it’s not just a 12 month or a 18 month kind of initiative that, you know, then they can take over and, you know, own. It’s, it’s, it’s so much longer. But, yeah. Well, we’ll see where we can see it in, in future, opportunities for social capital about embedding the schools. ’cause I think you’re so right.

I mean, again, you know, it’s about doing things differently. This is where, you know, I think the sector has sort of changed a little bit, but I think there’s a long way to go with, you know, not just doing it how it’s been done or in that command and control kind of approach, like particularly in the resilience and risk reduction space there’s a whole new way of doing stuff that can actually be quite cost effective. Like it’s you know, it’s not big, big, massive million, million square dollar budgets that are required. but it is that long term recognition and, and dedication and input. A hundred percent. A massive thank you Briony, founder of Leadrrr for talking to me today about our school’s key to social capital. And clearly I think we have a big yes to that answer. Yeah, really awesome to chat with you. And we, let’s catch up for a coffee soon. Thanks, Renae.