Escape

Project ESCAPE: Engaging Science and the Creative Arts to Prepare for Eruptions We propose to advance scientific decision-making by incorporating arts-based methods that have been successful in the field of social change. The threat from volcanoes offers an untried opportunity to test our proposal. The extent of the threat is under-estimated in society because the most severe eruptions occur from volcanoes that have remained silent for centuries. The quiescence is long enough for the experience of previous eruptions to have been forgotten. Molten rock, or magma, cannot be seen below the surface and its presence must be inferred by the effect it has on the rock around it: for example, by moving the ground, triggering small earthquakes and releasing volcanic gases through the surface. Scientists have to use the indirect signals to decide whether an eruption is likely. They create mental models to visualise the processes operating underground. The models are not impartial and rely on imagination to connect the signals that can be measured. The connections are influenced by personal knowledge, experience and emotion, as well as scientific uncertainty, so that mental models often differ among individuals: implicit assumptions remain hidden, decision-making is compromised and disagreement risks turning a crisis into a disaster. Participatory theatre has a demonstrated capacity to influence emotional responses to events. Participants use live action to rehearse real experiences. The approach focuses on the emotional and cognitive factors that drive disagreement, in order to reveal unconscious bias and resolve apparently intransigent views. The method naturally complements conventional science-based procedures for eliciting factual knowledge from experts and has been highly successful in fields as diverse as social justice, legislation and healthcare. We will apply participatory theatre to scientific experts who have the responsibility of interpreting volcanic unrest under time-limited conditions of high stress. For our pilot study we have assembled an interdisciplinary team of theatre practitioners (from RADA), volcanologists (from UCL and the University of Portsmouth), and social scientists (from the University of Cambridge) to trial the procedure with scientists monitoring the Campi Flegrei volcano, which, next to Naples in southern Italy, has been showing signs of unrest for the first time since it last erupted nearly five centuries ago. Theatre, volcanology and social science cover the respective remits of the research councils AHRC, NERC and ESRC. The results will have immediate, real-world application to forecasting eruptions and advising the civil authorities on their plans to protect vulnerable communities; they will deliver a sustainable training strategy that embeds interdisciplinary thinking into how to evaluate incomplete information - to improve the quality of evaluation, raise awareness of unconscious bias, and promote a culture of valuing information beyond a single field of expertise; and they will effect transformation across the arts-science divide by raising mutual recognition of how artistic and scientific creativity can be combined to forge new understandings of the world around us.