Arts House Refuge Labs 2019 report

The RUPC has published the evaluation report to Arts House Refuge Labs 2019, which focused on 'displacement' due to climate change.

refuge 2019

The theme of ‘displacement’, the fourth and penultimate theme in the Refuge series, necessitated greater sensitivity in part due to the nature of the subject as an immediately relevant and primarily humanitarian issue, in contrast to earlier Refuge iterations which focused on climatic or scientifically-informed scenarios such as catastrophic heatwave and the outbreak of disease.

After collating evaluators’ and participants’ reflections from Displacement, this Evaluation found a number of areas for critical consideration in advance of the final year of Refuge in 2020; these will be noted in the relevant sections of the Evaluation. Among these considerations is the challenge around communicating, in a clear and consistent manner, the underpinning objectives of the Refuge series across the myriad events associated with this arts program. While the diversity of events and discussions in Refuge 2019 meant that the overarching narrative of the program - as it pertains to climate change and catastrophe - was at times muddied, this is perhaps a necessary byproduct of a progressive shift in the series away from macro investigations into climate change and disaster resilience and towards individual perspectives on historic and future disaster, as well as the lived experiences of ongoing cultural marginalisation. More information...