Facilitiating ‘storied relationships to a place’ : the capacity of the university to lead communities towards resilience through creative arts activities

This article reports on the leadership aspects of the community creative arts based Resurfacing Stronger project, which was mounted in response to the recent flood crisis in Queensland, Australia, and involved the participation of a regional university. The project combines creative writing workshops and the publication of community writing with a study of contemporary community writing in Central Queensland. These various components are focused on gaining an understanding of the social dimensions of flood preparedness and response through creative writing as both action and product, as well as conducting a pilot study of contemporary community writing in the Central Queensland region. This article demonstrates the capacity of the university to lead communities towards resilience through creative arts activities, in this case, through leading community members in writing narratives of their individual relationships to localised places in times of crisis—what nature writer Barry Lopez has referred to as ‘storied relationship[s] to a place’ (1997).