“Cultural Arts x Disaster Prevention” A new attempt to popularize disaster prevention

Abstract

The presenter has been able to raise awareness of disaster prevention to a certain extent by holding lectures and workshops on a wide variety of topics, such as "local ingredients," "industrial animals and pets," "temporary disaster broadcasting stations," and "outdoors." However, in the course of his activities, he has also felt that a new perspective on disaster prevention is needed. For this reason, he has proposed a new approach, "culture and arts x disaster prevention," and started his activities with the aim of further raising disaster prevention awareness.

By creating an opportunity to become aware of disaster prevention from a new perspective of culture and art, the presenter aims to deepen the disaster prevention awareness of citizens, and also to provide artists involved in culture and art with a new perspective through "regional disaster prevention." Furthermore, with the recent change in awareness of disaster prevention among general companies, it is expected that this will also be a part of the creation of new management improvement projects.

The presenter's activities are carried out in collaboration with not only researchers in fields related to culture and art, but also people who are conducting research related to culture and art in other fields, and artists such as dancers and painters. However, activities often do not proceed smoothly from the perspective of researchers and artists alone, so the presenter also works with various local collaborators.

This year, as an approach from a cultural perspective, we collaborated with crop science researchers to hold a lecture on buckwheat and disaster prevention food. The lecture was about the nutritional content of buckwheat and the food carried by ascetics and ninjas, with the aim of raising awareness of food in times of disaster. In addition, we observed and sampled buckwheat craftsmen making buckwheat, and had the experience of pounding buckwheat, which can be used as food in times of disaster, and then held a crosstalk on "buckwheat culture" and "disaster prevention." As an approach from a public cultural facility, we held a lecture on the challenges that public cultural facilities face when a disaster occurs, set in an art museum that can serve as a disaster evacuation shelter. Here, we had a talk by an organization that has been responding to disaster victims for more than a year since the Noto Peninsula earthquake, and a person involved in a welfare facility that evacuated people with special needs during the 2019 East Japan Typhoon, and we also conducted a report on a survey of public cultural facilities affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake conducted by the Corporation Group. Afterwards, a free discussion was held with the presenters and participants. Almost everyone is aware that disaster prevention is important in everyday life, but it must be said that the actual spread of disaster prevention is still a long way off. In such a situation, it is important to get people interested in disaster prevention and to make them aware of it as something that concerns them personally. Therefore, I think that promoting disaster prevention from a new perspective will become even more important in the future.