Scoring Warnings

In a time of intersecting disasters, alarm fatigue is ubiquitous, and we are often unable to hear warnings or effectively respond to their calls. Sirens are increasingly supplemented by textual emergency alerts - via SMS or specific apps - which both notify and provide actionable lifesaving instructions. Scoring Warnings (SW) mobilises artistic practices to interrogate the instructional mode of address in disaster preparedness and crossovers in contemporary art, in order to explore the problem of emergency communication in a way that is engaging, effective and inclusive. The United Nations recently published its strategic agenda for the Secretary-General’s initiative ‘Early warnings for all,’ which aims to ensure local governments, communities and individuals at risk have the knowledge and means to take preemptive early actions. SW responds to this urgent challenge through a collaboration between RCA, Warning Research Centre (WRC), Global Network of Civil Society Organisations for Disaster Reduction (GNDR), UAL Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice (CRiSAP) centre, and others. SW brings artistic methods into work with communities to co-design warnings that counter these major challenges of ineffective warnings - not properly communicated, ignored, mistrusted, or inadequate in relation to the threat. Core to our research are publications by WRC which clarify that inclusive community-based early warning systems empower communities to monitor and better prepare for risks so they can take pre-emptive early action, rather than respond to disasters. We aim to counter top-down disaster and emergency paradigms, supporting ways in which civil society can develop risk knowledge and influence practices. These challenges are addressed through three research objectives: 1.To set up a dialogue between historical and contemporary instructional images, texts and sounds from the fields of risk communication (warnings) and contemporary art (scores), in order to create a critical interdisciplinary framework examining the ways in which these can reciprocally inform, resonate, and provoke one another. 2.Using these materials, and drawing on our interdisciplinary team’s expertise, we will develop a new methodology across Art and Warning research devised through a series of co-creative and collaborative workshops that address questions of risk mapping, emergency communication, and localised, effective, accessible instructions. 3.To evaluate, consolidate and disseminate these findings through practice-led research outputs, including a documentary film, audio-essay, culminating exhibition and co-authored academic publications. By bringing together artists, curators, warning scholars, NGOs and tech developers of life-saving apps, SW is critically placed to develop new hybrid interdisciplinary research methods applied to the field of warnings and disaster preparedness, of benefit to civil society, academia, policy, and wider stakeholders across the arts. Our in-person activities (workshops, exhibition) will engage and benefit disaster and warning scholars, civil society, at-risk communities, artists, app designers, whilst our digital outputs (film, audio-essay, publications) will amplify our findings, providing wider dissemination via online platforms. The makeup of our research team and partners has solid pathways to impact via crucial global networks with businesses, government, non-governmental, and intergovernmental organisations. We urgently require artistic approaches which appeal to the imagination, that rehearse and co-create the conditions for early warning preparedness and resilience.