The TOOLKITS SERIES Festivals and Disaster Recovery
Globally, life-threatening disasters triggered by natural events (severe storms, droughts, floods, wildfires) are increasing (AccuWeather, 2013; UNISDR, 2016) and communities must find ways to recover from the devastating effects. Once recovery is underway, a whole community approach is needed (FEMA, 2011).
This approach is being adopted by communities and governments as it strengthens resilience by actively building on the assets in a community (McKnight and Linnenluecke, 2017). Organizing festivals in response to disaster reflects an example of community engagement and a whole-community approach.
“Disasters happen to entire communities. Members are exposed together and must recover together.” (Norris, 2008, p. 145).
Festivals and community events are flexible mechanisms for delivering recreation opportunities for communities and attractions for visitors (e.g. Négrier, Bonet, & Guérin, 2013). Through the production of arts and culture, festivals can serve many goals simultaneously and have repeatedly been shown to contribute to a sense of place, a sense of community, and economic and community development (Karttunen & Luonila, 2017; Van Winkle & Woosnam, 2014).
Festivals… provide catalytic… emotional work of responding to and recovering from such natural disaster” (Gibson & Connell, 2015, p. 450).
This toolkit will provide insight into the role of festivals in disaster management. Knowledge is drawn from both existing literature and research undertaken by Christine Van Winkle and Jean Slick for the project; Gathering in the Face of Disaster funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research council.
The toolkit provides the reader with a set of issues and relevant examples that can guide future Festivals. The first part compiles relevant information about Climate Change and Environmental sustainability and their respective links and sources for additional information. The second part gathers best practices and examples related to the topic of this toolkit which can serve as inspirational guides for festival-makers worldwide.