Background: In 2017 Lismore suffered a destructive flood, with over 10,000 evacuations and at least 68% of Lismore CBD businesses damaged. UCRH post-flood surveys found significant and lasting negative mental health impacts. Building on the Empathy Museum’s A Mile in My Shoes project, which suggested an embodied-walking/listening practice supports empathetic engagement with story, Flood Stories was designed as a creative response to the flood’s impact, a chance for the Northern Rivers community to reconnect and engage in story-sharing to aid mental health recovery.
Contribution: Flood Stories explores the power of story-sharing as a therapeutic experience for people impacted by natural disaster. Timed to coincide with the flood’s third anniversary but delayed 12 months by COVID-19, the project was framed around the third phase of trauma recovery: reconnection and integration (Hermann, 1992). No longer defined by the traumatic event, people can share their story without re-experiencing trauma. The storytellers found the experience cathartic; some had not properly grieved their loss. Only after hearing their story in recorded form were they able to cry. Recovery and resilience were key aspects of the project. While each storyteller spoke about the devastation, they also told stories about the clean-up and community support, how they changed and what we still needed to enact in climate disaster preparedness. Four years post-flood, the project activated conversations about the flood, the town’s recovery and future preparedness.
Significance: Flood Stories was competitively selected as a Plein Air residency at The Lismore Quad. It is the only oral history audio collection of a Lismore flood since the levee was built. Lismore City Council has approached the producer about placing the collection on permanent public access. It was used as a model exemplar for an upcoming creative bushfire recovery project in the Clarence region. Over 160 walks were taken across the residency.
This NTRO includes:
- 10 audio walks, ranging in duration from 10 minutes to 33 minutes, available online, and 10 associated 'mud maps' and individual portraits of 10 storytellers.
- Mixed media installation in a 20-foot shipping container featuring two rows of coat hooks from which hung the 10 sets of Flood Stories uniform of gumboot and yellow raincoat.
- Website: including the online repository of the audio walk audio, artist statement and background information and 29 photos in an online gallery, and edited video documentation of the Plein Air residency installation.