Component 4, Reducing Risk and Building Resilience: Research Process

Reducing risk and building resilience: indigenous communities and their response to global challenges including the COVID-19 pandemic and threats from the climate crisis such as forest fires.

LINK TO OVERALL INVESTIGATION ON RETHINKING MODELS OF INDIGENOUS DEVELOPMENT: in Component Four HERITAGE mobilised a global network formed across the overall research investigation to support indigenous communities in their response to global challenges including the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis such as forest fires.

4.1.1 Infographic

Contextual Material (Physical Item)

A visual representation of the global network of artists and academics developed through HERITAGE’s research investigation, which was harnessed to raise funds, reduce risk and build resilience for indigenous peoples facing an existential crisis as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic and recent forest fires.

The models for cultural exchange that HERITAGE has created and tested during these investigations place non-indigenous artists in an ethical relationship with indigenous communities that re-positions performance practices in relation to social development goals. In the fourth component of the output, HERITAGE has tested how far the relationships between indigenous and non-indigenous artists developed through the residency programme were able to respond to immediate and urgent threats to the Kuikuro community caused by the COVID-19 global pandemic and unprecedented risk from forest fires caused by multiple factors. Different methods have been implemented for raising funds – from performance to the development of context-specific digital tools – but underlying all the specific actions has been a process of discovering to what extent indigenous and non-indigenous arts organisations can re-invent themselves and their methods in order to respond to urgent, existential crises.