My feeling is that emergency management currently approaches the post-disaster phase too simplistically. Reality is that this is often a complex, iterative process, without a defined (or definable?) end. This post is a companion to a podcast episode I was invited to join recently. This is the fourth episode of the JBA Climate Resilience podcastand focused on the post-incident period. In preparation for the recording, I was thinking about alternative ways to view the recovery process.
In Japan, there’s an artform known as kintsugi. This involves repairing broken pottery with a mixture of lacquer and gold powder. Rather than hiding the damage, kintsugi celebrates it – emphasising both the transformation and repair. Instead of cracks and scars being something which diminishes, the ‘flaws’ are made visible; an obvious, glistening sign of change, growth and memory.
Would it be possible to view the process of recovering from disaster in a similar way? Drawing something beautiful from the damage instead of a rush to return to a pre-disaster condition.
When does recovery end?
The six stages integrated emergency management cycle suggests that a recovery stage exists, and I don’t dispute that there is ‘before disaster’ and there is ‘after disaster’. But, reducing the complexity of this process to ‘recovery’ might hold us back doing it better.
The UK Government’s guidance explains that recovery is the “process of rebuilding, restoring and rehabilitating a community following an emergency”. They note that this phase ‘continues until the needs of those affected have been met’.
That sounds logical, but if you pull at that thread it begins to unravel.
Modern societies are grappling with challenges on a day-to-day basis. Food insecurity, fuel poverty, discrimination, inadequate housing, ageing infrastructure, cost of living crisis. People can find themselves ‘in need’ daily and in many complex ways. But the definition of recovery seems to mean to me that it can’t be completed until all of those systemic and chronic issues are addressed.
In the podcast, my fellow guest Evie Whatling said “measuring the success of recovery is hard because when does it end?”
Looking at recovery differently
The post incident language is biased towards the optimistic.
Phrases like bouncing forward, returning to normality or (*shudder*) ‘new normality’ are jarring. If you’ve lost your home to wildfire, a flood swept away the business that brings you your livelihood, or a friend or family member lost their life, there is no ‘going back’ or ‘normality’. Those phrases minimise our understanding of the harms experienced.
In an emergency, responders are often obvious; marked out by their flashing blue lights or hi-visibility jackets. If we can have responders, then perhaps we need to consider who the ‘recoverers’ are.
Perhaps recoverers might include functions such as:
loss adjustors from insurance companies,
teams involved in cleaning up and mending damage,
healthcare staff who provide ongoing physical and wellbeing services,
the finance staff who have to reallocate budgets from existing plans, and of course
local community groups, organisations, leaders who hold communities together and their constituent members.
These recoverers are far less distinct. There’s no sirens. No protective equipment. Perhaps some can be identified by their sharp suits or clipboards, but often, they’ll look like everyone else.
Most responders (and I’d suggest a lot of recoverers) are not ‘of the place’ an incident happens. As a result, local knowledge about the place, how it’s communities function and what they need is limited, certainly initially. Generalisations and assumptions made might address some of the need for a short period, but are unlikely to meet the wide spectrum of need that inevitably exists.
I mentioned in the podcast, the brilliant work of Lori Peek and Alice Fothergill. Their project ‘Children of Katrina’ explored how children cope after disaster. They found three post-disaster trajectories which could inform the support people might need.
A declining trajectory – where life is marked by ongoing shocks, setbacks, and instability.
A finding-equilibrium trajectory – where access to resources and support (before and post disaster) can halt decline.
And a fluctuating trajectory – where misalignment of interventions results in an unstable progression.
This could be one way of thinking in more detail about the recovery process. Another is found in the work of Hugh Deeming who proposed an additional ‘stabilisation’ phase as a transition between response and recovery. A definition of stabilisation is proposed as ‘the exercise of interim control following an incident in order to increase public safety, and to mitigate the risk of secondary impacts occurring’.
The definition is perhaps less explicitly connected to engaging directly with communities but I think that’s where kintsugi comes in…
Kintsugi and recovery
Like recovery, kintsugi process is slow, mindful, multi-stage process:
The human impulse to fix the broken pot is strong. However, the first stage of the kintsugi practice invites you to notice the brokenness.
Glue (or traditionally tree sap) is applied to reconnect the broken pieces. This evokes the bonds and relationships formed in communities during adversity and healing.
Whilst the glue is wet, the pieces are held in place using tape. It takes time for the glue to set, which is perhaps equivalent to the proposed stabilisation phase, where subsequent activities can’t proceed until some equilibrium has been found.
Next, excess glue might be removed using a file, smoothing away that which is no longer required. In my mind, this is similar to the steps of refining the often quite blunt initial responses, with something which better meets needs.
And finally, gold powder is used to highlight the cracks and repair. Respecting the damage.
Perhaps if there’s one thing to take away from this, it’d be to acknowledge that ‘recovery’ is more nuanced that we sometimes assume. Spending more time considering it’s complexity could help recoverers to provide more effective post incident support.
For approximately 19 of the 20 years I’ve been in the resilience and emergency management profession, I’ve taken part in discussions which revolve around two common questions – what is resilience and what should we be doing to improve it.
This is a story about an activity I ran today on that. Skip to the session outputs if you want, but I have tried to outline my thought process and reflections too.
Why are we here?
After a merger of two teams working on broadly similar areas (but specifically very different activities) some months ago, this subject raised it’s hand again. Sometimes that was in a very obvious way, like a ‘virtual hand’ being raised Microsoft teams, and somebody in the team would explicitly question ‘what’s the purpose of doing this’ or ‘what are we working towards’. Other times it’s been more unspoken, and there has been a question hanging in the air that everyone is itching to ask but nobody has quite made it that far.
In an effort to move forward and work on alignment of the two former teams, the leadership team decided it would be helpful to invite everyone (approx 30 people) together for an afternoon to work through what our vision should be, start to develop our mission statement and consider the range of responsibilities that we have collectively and individually.
Each of the leaders took an element of the afternoon, and I volunteered for the ‘mission’ session.
My overarching objective was to try and bring some creativity and energy to a subject many of us have considered previously. I also identified some sub objectives, that this session needed to be interactive, needed to provide an opportunity for people to work together and needed to be an activity that provided a level playing field and avoided the more senior people dominating the discussion.
On the Future Leaders Scheme, we used Lego to construct ‘the leader we wanted to be’. There were varying qualities of construction, but two aspects which were very interesting were the different approaches that different people had, and the level of thought and interpretation that people had put into their creations.
A (sad) lack of any significant quantity of Lego immediately scuppered this plan, so I considered how else we might be able to create a similar set of conditions and some other options before finally settling on a ‘magnetic poetry’ activity….you know, the kind of thing that you find on a refrigerator, like this:
I don’t know everyone on the team to the same degree, but of the people that I do know there can sometimes be some cynicism about ‘off the wall’ ideas. I knew that if I was going to go down this route I would need something in my back pocket to say ‘this isn’t just some wacky idea, there is some evidence to using poetry in the context’.
A recent blog from Sam Illingworth at London School of Economics was one of the first articles I found. In it, Sam states that “the integration of poetry as a pedagogical tool offers a unique way to enhance learning experiences…poetry can transform approaches, deepening understanding and engagement” which sounded promising.
The post links to a couple of articles, so I had a quick scan of them too to pick up some further evidence that this was a legitimate activity in case challenged.
Sam and colleague Kirsten Jack wrote for the journal Arts & Health in 2023 that, poetry enabled “alternative perspectives” to emerge, “challenging previously held assumptions”, but that the use of this tool also created empathy and facilitates “social bonding, feelings of universality, and mutual understanding between group members as they find common ground in poetic expressions”.
In the blog, Sam also provides 5 tips for adding poetry to the pedagogical toolbox (poetry as a medium, make it accessible, focus on process, create a safe space, be vulnerable).
I then found the excellent work by Clare Morgan in 2010’s book What Poetry Brings To Business, which sets out some factors which I found really helpful for developing this session with the team, and drew on some of them in the feedback, which I’ll get to a bit later.
A poem is multidimensional which develops our ability to detect different modes of meaning and to deal with ambiguity and uncertainty.
A poem doesn’t offer closure – this teaches us to handle non-resolution.
A poem isn’t based in a logical deductive mode and so we learn to make associative connections.
Poems can show the ordinary as extraordinary which encourages us to question givens and makes us more aware of complexity.
A poem is almost infinitely interpretable and can help us to consider the views of others, to recognise that ‘meaning’ is unstable and to examine and revise our current insights and perceptions.
A poem operates at different levels of accessibility which could enable us to detect weak as well as strong signals and to seek less obvious linkages.
A poem is full of coexistent complements and contradictions which could develop our ability to time judgements carefully and be aware that binary thinking is not enough.
By drawing attention to human needs and motivations poetry could help us to make decisions in a more comprehensive context and address ethical issues.
By exploring emotional complexity poems could help us develop the ability to offer wholeness of response.
Preparing for the session
Having convinced myself there was a sound evidence base, I set about planning the session.
I had 30 minutes allotted in the afternoon’s agenda, and knew around 25 people would be attending. So that everyone would get chance to contribute I worked out the best group size would be 3-4 people.
Using an online ‘word cloud’ tool, I drew out the 50 most common words from each of two documents which various team members currently use to guide our way. I then asked ChatGPT to suggest another 50 words and then used a bit of judgement to add some additional words (including some that I thought might generate some additional discussion), bringing the total to 163 words. It looked something like this.
As well as my snazzy tablecloth, you’ll see that 36 words are highlighted in yellow. These were the words that the leadership team had used when talking about this session and I thought that might be useful to track them, so highlighted them.
I then spent about an hour or so carefully cutting each of the words out and creating 8 packets, for each of the groups to have. I debated whether different groups should have different words, but decided that it would be more interesting if everyone had the same options to see how different their products were. After a period of time my kitchen looked like this…
Although each of the groups had the same set of words, I did give them slightly different steers and asked them to hold in their minds the idea of a theme running through their poems. I had drawn these themes from a quick look through the sessions on values and responsibilities which I knew were also being planned. In total we ended up using six of the themes:
Community
Assurance
Partnership
Our Power
Our Approach
Consistency
Creating Poetry
I opened the session with a quick introduction and run through of the rules. I had tried to lightly script this, but at the time it felt like it was too much instruction and people just needed to get on and play – so I adjusted my remarks on the fly to set out the bare minimum. I drew back to Sam Illingworth’s blog and tried to reinforce that there were no right answers and the important thing was to have a go rather than worry about the ‘perfect’ poem.
I then went around to each group to pass on some additional information, outline the rules and check their understanding:
Create as many mission statements as you can in the 20 minutes we have
You must use at least one yellow word in each statement
You can re-use words – so if you have already used a word in your first statement, but want to use it again that’s fine
You have permission to create a funny or silly statement (because I know what you’re like), but you can only do this once!
Assume alterative forms of the provided words are included (e.g. communicating, communicated, communicates)
Connecting words are free, use as many as you like, but remember that poetry isn’t prose
I was delighted that people got stuck straight in.
Seeing the different approaches that groups took to the task was fascinating in itself. Some groups were really structured, turning all the tiles around the same direction, sorting out the yellow ones, categorising them and grouping them. Others embraced the chaos of a mixed up pile, taking a more intuitive approach.
I think some groups took a little while to figure out how they would approach it.
After 20 minutes had elapsed I drew the group back together. I first asked if there were any words they had been provided with which had stood out, in particular words they had chosen to discount. I was surprised that only one word was challenged by an individual as I had definitely tried to include some to provoke that consideration. A useful personal lesson perhaps in assumptions about what and how other people think.
What was produced?
None of this is formal organisational policy at this stage, merely the product of a workshop session, which will need to be refined and calibrated against other things. However, there were a couple of things which stood out to me which I share for interest.
The group which was thinking about the theme of ‘assurance’ created a whirly poem which spirals and changes direction halfway through. Perhaps a sub-conscious comment on the convoluted process of assurance?
The group prompted to consider the theme of consistency were the first to grab some blu-tac and start to put words onto a page, filling in blanks and adjusting the words that had been provided to fit their purpose. Perhaps a genuine suggestion, but I suspect that this suggestion from the group considering ‘our power’ was their wildcard! And the final example, which I think is great, is that the group asked to think about ‘our approach’ came up with an acrostic-style creation.
Final reflections
The setting for the activity (and the whole afternoon) was excellent – a dance studio in a railway arch! I think getting out of the normal work environment was also a big factor in us thinking about things in a different way.
There is more work to be done to make sense and consolidate what we produced today; in part that non-resolution is linked with Clare Morgan’s observation that, in themselves, poems don’t offer closure and are the starting point for thinking more deeply.
However, I think it was a useful session. It got people talking and creating, I think it revealed a lot about how meaning is subjective (both in the sense that you and I might interpret a word or phrase differently, but also the observation that how words work when used in a ‘community’ sense might be very different to using it to talk about ‘consistency’). It was also an excellent way to see which leaders naturally emerge within small groups, different problem solving approaches and to generate discussion on sharing perspectives.
If you’d be interested in my complete list of words then let me know and I’d be happy to send them to you. Best to reach me via @mtthwhgn.
Finally, as I reflect on this session today, I’m also drawn back to previous thoughts I’ve had about zines. In particular, I wonder whether they are/could be a useful mechanism for creating information in new, decentralised and more inclusive ways. It’s not something for now, but if that sounds interesting let me know and I’ll put a bit more time towards thinking about it!
Decoding the Professional Language of Emergency Management
A week ago my team organised an event which walked participants through an extreme heat scenario. It had taken around 6 months of planning and become known to us as Exercise Helios.
At the very start of the process a new colleague with little previous experience of the UK emergency management structures asked a very sensible question…
“why do we give scenario events like this names?”
I had to admit that I wasn’t really sure. I suspect that it has to do with the origins of the profession having military and uniformed service roots, but I can’t say with certainty that there aren’t other reasons.
Despite their initial opposition to a name, over time my colleague started to called it ‘Exercise Helios’. In the final weeks before the event, I started to notice senior staff in the organisation enquiring about ‘Operation Helios’, a term which was reflected in the media coverage. Those two aspects got me thinking about the theme for this post – the terms that we use, how we use them, and how other people might interpret that – the role of professional language. In reflecting on the language of emergency management I also wonder whether language might actually be the purest essence of resilience?
As in other fields, the landscape of emergency management is a thicket of technical terminology. We’re as guilty as the next field in developing our own professional language and applying it inconsistently.
The world of emergency management is full of terminology that serves that purpose. In a UK context for instance, there are various terms which refer to a multi agency meeting; it could be a Strategic Coordinating Group, a Recovery Coordinating Group, a Mass Fatality Coordination Group or many other things. In this case, the use of jargon which might not be explicitly understood outside a fairly narrow profession is helpful. It clearly expresses what is being referred to and avoids the misunderstanding of a more vague description.
In those cases, training is really important because it socialises and reinforces the meaning that those terms have, and ensures a shared approach and understanding. Many years ago I completed a MIMMS course and over the course of 3 days had used and explained ‘METHANE‘ so many times that it was almost unconscious.
Clear and effective communication is the cornerstone of a successful emergency response. In a 2013 review of persistent lessons identified from emergencies, Dr Kevin Pollock found that of 32 events reviewed, ineffective communications was a key contributing factor in the common causes of failure.
Precision is important and the ability to convey critical information clearly and concisely to multiple stakeholders is paramount. Yet the ever increasing labyrinth of jargon, acronyms and terminology can bamboozle, and that’s before considering other types of communication.
A colleague recently shared an article about a recent military exercise, which is liberal in it’s use of abbreviations. I’m not suggesting that everything has to be written for a general public audience, nor that you can’t make some assumptions about what your audience knows. But one sentence in the article reads ‘As SMEs in CQB, K Coy was invited to act as the assaulting force for the serials’ which requires a reasonably high level of domain knowledge to parse.
Ever evolving language of Emergency Management
Where both parties understand each other, professional language serves as a shortcut, but what about where there isn’t an agreed understanding of a term?
Who is a victim? Where is a community? Who are stakeholders? What does it mean to have recovered? These are hotly debated matters with many intersecting interpretations. How we understand language varies based on geography, the cultural norms and our own experiences.
General understanding of the term ‘casualty’ might be a person who has sustained an injury. But in the maritime sector a vessel in distress can also be known as a casualty. Knowing that is really important to avoid searching for a missing person who is actually a boat!
Things become more challenging for new entrants to the field, or where we are trying to work with other sectors who don’t have the same shared language. It can be alienating in both directions to listen to people saying things you don’t understand.
There is a possibility that the use of jargon, unexplained acronyms and convoluted speech is some kind of power play. I don’t think most people intentionally set out to make things hard to understand, but we have to be aware of the possibility of power dynamics.
I wrote recently that ‘emergency planning is dead‘. Perhaps one of the reasons that we need to think differently about emergency management is that how we speak about emergency management has got us to this point. To engage wider we need to adjust the language we use to make it more inclusive, accessible and relatable. It’s partly why I’m not a huge fan of grab bag initiatives, the language of which seems tone deaf to the pressures many people face on a daily basis.
We should also check and confirm understanding. I’ve been on internal courses which espouse the importance of active listening. The trainer will tell you that ‘nodding indicates that you are engaged and attentive’. But to the person doing the communicating, that nod signals agreement or comprehension to the speaker. I remember one occasion in a meeting with an eloquent Government colleague who kept referring to people as ‘recalcitrant’. I nodded along in absolute agreement but googling the definition on my phone under the table! (Recalcitrant: having an obstinately uncooperative attitude towards authority, which incidentally has turned out to be one of my favourite words!).
The best advice that I have been given relating to this this came from a member of a community group. They challenged me after a meeting and said “just be real”. It’s feedback which I took to heart and have tried to reflect on since, making my own communication style more accessible and trying to cut through some of the opacity that language can create.
Language: the purest form of resilience
Language provides access to information, employment, and education. Language builds cohesion and increases access to social and economic resources. Language helps individuals and communities understand and help each other. And language helps us tell stories and share experiences.
Those are all aspects of ‘resilience’ and in the course of writing this I feel like I’ve inadvertently stumbled upon something I hadn’t realised before; that language might be the purest form of resilience.
Your favourite jargon?
I invite you to share your favourite emergency management term? A phrase that in any other context would be hard to understand correctly, or perhaps just one that entertains you.
In itself, the professional language of emergency management isn’t good or bad. It has it’s uses and limitations. We shouldn’t remove jargon, but we should think just as critically about how we communicate as what we communicate.
The image at the top of this post is taken from ‘Words Are All We Have’ by Jean-Michel Basquiat, who’s works often referenced the resilience and defiance of individuals.
Remembering the Unthinkable: Thoughtful Approaches to Disaster Memorialisation
On a holiday to Boston, Massachusetts in 2018 I made a beeline for Puopolo Park. The aim of this excursion was to see the plaque commemorating the Great Molasses Flood of 15 Jan 1919.
On another trip, I walked for about an hour to the Chicago History Museum. This time it was to locate a lump of fused metal. This is all that remains from a hardware store, one of the thousands of buildings destroyed by the Great Fire of Chicago which killed 300 people and left 90,000 homeless in 1871.
To be honest, this is entirely typical behaviour for me. Whether on holiday or closer to home, other people will be searching out the best bars or restaurants nearby, I’ll have a considerably darker Google tab open.
Like scars on a body, memories of disaster all around us. From roadside flowers at the site of a fatal road traffic collision to the geometrical purity of the Cenotaph, from scholarships in somebody’s memory to works of art in galleries. Memorialisation takes multiple forms.
In this long-form post (don’t worry, there are a lot of pictures, but I seriously urge you to get a cuppa before you go further) I wanted to explore some aspects of disaster memorialisation. My specific interest in this comes from my advisory position supporting the Grenfell Tower Memorial Commission.
This is an emotive, complex and wide-ranging activity. The objectives of stakeholders can be divergent and they change over time. It’s not possible to do justice here to the vast amounts of excellent research relating to the memorialisation of traumatic events (I’ve tried to link to as much as I can!). Little of that learning has permeated into the emergency management domain.
In my experience, the ‘command and control’ management structures familiar in the response phase are ineffective for the inclusive, messy and creative approaches in memorialisation. It’s important that Emergency Managers give this appropriate consideration as a part of recovery planning. I hope this post helps to broaden the conversation and build a deeper appreciation for the role of collective memory.
Importance of Disaster Memorials
Memorials (by which I mean physical or digital things), commemorations (by which I mean ceremonies and practices), and anniversaries (by which I mean events which coincide with significant dates) are terms which relate to how societies remember and honour victims, survivors and other people impacted by disasters or catastrophic events. These definitions are mine. I have no doubt they could be debated and developed, but for simplicity here I’ll collectively refer to memorialisation.
Disaster memorialisation is important because it serves as a reminder of past tragedies. It allows society to reflect on the cost of disaster, pay respects to those affected, and support future generations to remember the lessons learned (DeNoon, 2011). If done well, memorialisation may also have a therapeutic role in the healing of communities impacted by disasters by offering spaces for grief, remembrance, and collective support. Studies have demonstrated the capacity of memorials to support community recovery by reestablishing feelings of control, social solidarity and empowerment (Eyre, 2007 and Eyre, 1999).
Spontaneous shrines are becoming an expected public response. Flowers and candles (increasingly LED candles) are common, but any small items could possibly be left as tributes. Responding agencies should never judge the ‘worth’ of these items. Generally, shrines will emerge near an empty vertical surface and there will be accompanying messages of remembrance (and other emotions including fear, anger and blame).
The shrine space can often be viewed as sacred. For many people, placing a memento or writing a message at a shrine may be equivalent to lighting a candle in church. People will remember exactly where they laid their item, and what else was around it at the time.
The content of a shrine or the tone of messages can’t be ‘policed’ as it’s not the right or role of the responding organisations to dictate how people should feel. However, there may be a need for sensitive pragmatism, perhaps to remove expletive language if the location has high footfall from young people.
Members of the community who leave items will likely have concerns about the security of items left at a shrine. Responders should facilitate (but not necessarily lead) the care of the spontaneous memorial area. Communicating about any necessary changes is also critical, as unannounced changes could be distressing. Admittedly larger than most items placed at a shrine, one artist sued a New York church when their 9/11 artwork was moved without warning.
Paper and cut flowers are common but they are inherently temporary. Some people will attempt to protect against the elements by laminating paper, using permanent markers or using more durable materials. These materials will become soggy, windblown, and tattered. It is therefore worth considering what sensitive approaches there could be to protecting and preserving ephemeral materials.
These shrines often feature as powerful backdrops for TV reports as well as in print, digital and social media (Grider, 2015). There will, of course, be a wider public interest in the incident, but there should be a balance struck between conveying the scale of the tragedy and not intruding on the privacy and dignity of those most deeply impacted.
Plan for the unexpected!
After the death of Her Majesty The Queen in 2022 mourners were asked by the Royal Parks to stop bringing marmalade sandwiches. This didn’t feature in any of the planning and was a spontaneous reaction, fuelled by social media, referencing one of her most recent TV appearances. There is a need to understand the mood and culture to predict and prepare for how people may respond.
Documenting and Removing the ephemeral
Shrines may persist for some time and will change during that period, but are ultimately temporary. It’s my recommendation that emergency managers and those involved in supporting ongoing recovery plan for periodic high-resolution photography. This is a minimally complicated method of documenting the items and messages which have been left. It may be necessary to store some items for safekeeping, which could have potential storage costs and will require an inventory setting out the details of what is stored where, as it could be some time before decisions are made and staffing changes could impact organisational memory.
This inclusive approach is much more empathetic than the situations where decisions have about spontaneous shrines without a similar level of engagement. However, each incident will be different and it may not be possible to be so clear at the outset.
The ship Sewol sank off the coast of southwestern Korea in 2014, claiming 304 lives, mostly high school students. For some time after the disaster ten “Memory Classrooms” inside Danwon High School were preserved as they were before the disaster, with clocks stopped at 4:16 in reference to the time the ship sank. In response to a controversial plan to clear out these classrooms parents and family members occupied the school grounds in protest.
For the fifth anniversary, the government announced a temporary wooden structure would be built as a memorial altar and a place to learn about the disaster ahead of a permanent memorial in the form of a National Maritime Safety Centre. Bereaved family members expressed their disappointment with the unilateral decision-making and limited consideration for other suggestions.
As of 2022, the centre dedicated to the disaster remains unfinished. The site remains cordoned off, and construction of the envisioned memorial has slowed due to conflict over funding between the central and local governments. As time passes, public attitudes are also shifting; some local residents have expressed that they don’t want the place to be associated with sadness anymore. At present, the official memorial is a small space in a council building where families have been able to hang photographs of their relatives.
Ruins and Retained Materials
On the evening of 14 November 1940, 500 Luftwaffe bombers targeted the industrial city of Coventry, England. Over the course of twelve hours, 568 people were killed. As well as destroying over 4,000 Coventry Cathedral, dating from the 14th century, was left a shell with only its tower and spire standing.
The decision to rebuild was taken quickly the following morning. It wasn’t until 1951 that a design for a new cathedral was commissioned. Of the 219 entries received the chosen design of Basil Spence & Partners aimed to preserve the ruined shell as an integral part of the overall design. Work began in 1956 and the structure was completed in 1962.
Like other memorials, the journey from design, construction and opening was long and bumpy. The UK Government agreed only to fund the rebuilding of a ‘plain replacement’ and substantial donations from Canada, Sweden and Germany were required and the design also had to be modified to find savings. The final cost was double the initial estimate and there were disagreements between local stakeholders and the Government. Purcell (2020) provides an in-depth account of these challenges.
Prior to the War the medieval stained glass had been removed and stored for safety, and it was possible to reuse some of that conserved material in the glazing of the new cathedral.
Much like Coventry, the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church or Gedächtniskirche is another example of incorporating the ruins of a damaged building into a new construction. This church, as with those in Hiroshima, Dresden and Volgograd features a ‘Coventry cross of nails‘ from the burnt roof timbers from Coventry Cathedral as a symbol of reconciliation.
To mark the fifth anniversary of the tsunami, the government of Ishinomaki, Japan, decided to preserve the ruins of Okawa Elementary School, 4 kilometres inland from the coast. This faced some opposition, however, some survivors have acknowledged the duality of emotions that the presence of the building brings. The memorial, which opened on its tenth anniversary in the spring of 2021, also serves as a disaster management training facility for teachers.
Gardens of Remembrance
Aberfan is a small mining village in south Wales, where heavy rain in 1966 caused a coal slag heap to collapse. The resulting landslide engulfed a primary school, killing 144 people, most of them children.
I was honoured to visit both of the small memorials to the Aberfan disaster in 2021; a memorial garden and a separate area of the local cemetery. Most signs of the former mining activity have disappeared and at first, the design of the garden may appear to be abstract, but paths and flower beds have been laid to follow the floor plan of the destroyed school, with parts of the original wall retained. This is a helpful example that ‘retention’ doesn’t just have to be physical, it can include the dimensions and positions of previous features.
In a secluded enclave near Ladbroke Grove station is a memorial garden opened in 1990 at the London Lighthouse HIV/AIDS Centre. With the growth of effective HIV treatment, the centre closed in 2015 and the site was re-occupied by the Museum of Brands. At the back of the museum remains the memorial garden, where many people who died at the centre had their ashes scattered.
Whether memorials incorporate ruins or not, a majority tend to be located at or close to the site of the incident, or in some location which is symbolically connected.
At 8.10 am on 14 October 1913, an underground explosion at a colliery in Senghenydd, Wales, killed 439 men and boys and another man subsequently died during the response. It is the worst mining disaster in British history and the third-worst in world history. To commemorate the centenary of the disaster the Welsh National Mining Memorial was unveiled in 2013 on the old colliery site, remembering the victims of that incident and more than 150 other mining disasters in Wales.
The memorial takes the form of a statue of a rescue worker helping an injured miner at the centre of a walled garden. Tiles lining the approaching ‘paths of memory’ were made at a series of community and school workshops and are inscribed with details of each mining disaster in Wales. Part of the unveiling included the sounding of the original Universal Colliery alarm, exactly as happened 100 years earlier, to alert villagers. Official floral tributes were laid by the First Minister of Wales and other politicians and dignitaries. The National Union of Mineworkers were in attendance but played no formal role.
Perhaps one of the most peaceful memorials that I have visited is the Hillsborough Park Memorial Garden which provides a place for contemplation for those remembering those affected by the incident at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough Stadium on 15 April 1989. The garden features a specially commissioned bright red rose called “Liverpool Remembers”.
The memorial for the Omagh bombing, where 31 people were killed by the explosion of a car bomb in 1998 connects two different locations. Sunlight falling on 31 elevated mirrors is reflected and used to illuminate a glass obelisk at the constrained site where the car exploded.
Place Naming
Determining street names is an administrative yet deeply political act. For an in-depth exploration of the process and politics behind what might otherwise be considered mundane, I recommend reading Dierdre Mask’s The Address Book.
For a time there was a proposal to rename Latimer Road Underground Station in recognition of the Grenfell tragedy, this had political backing but attracted opposition because of concerns about “encouraging ‘ghoulish’ tourists to the area”.
In Santiago, Chile, displaced people from a landslide in 1993 were relocated to a newly constructed neighbourhood developed by the housing authorities. This development provided housing for seven hundred families and was called ‘3 de Mayo’ (3 May) referencing the date of the incident. Residents criticised the lack of participation resulting in a feeling that “they didn’t need help from the state to remember the disaster by pointing to them when it happened”.
Commemorative Events, Digital Archives and Online Remembrance
National Days
Like commemorative monuments, the observance of national days has a role in the transfer of collective memory about a disaster. Two examples include:
1 Sept – Disaster Prevention Day, observed in Japan to coincide with the date of the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923.
14 Dec – Chornobyl Liquidators Day, observed in Ukraine to remember the military and civil personnel who responded to the nuclear disaster in 1986.
National days often contain formal elements and official protocol including wreath-laying, political speeches and commemorative rituals, but over time can incorporate elements of entertainment too.
Marschall (2013) suggests, in the context of post-apartheid South Africa, that the observance of national days has “largely failed as containers and transmitters of memory”. The recommendation is made that these days only work in conjunction with other forms of memorialisation, notably “monuments and emotionally loaded spaces”.
Moments of Silence
Commemorative silence has its roots in the early 20th century when a silence was held to mark the death of King Edward VII in 1910, and in 1912 to mark the sinking of the Titanic.
Sir Percy Fitzpatrick suggested that commemorating the loss of life in the First World War needed to respect the national mood, which as well as grief for those lives lost saw many people in hardship and with industry crippled. On November 7, 1919, King George V proclaimed:
That at the hour when the Armistice came into force, the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, there may be, for the brief space of two minutes, a complete suspension of all our normal activities. All locomotion should cease so that in perfect stillness, the thoughts of everyone may be concentrated on reverent remembrance of the glorious dead.
The 2-minute silence on Remembrance Sunday has continued ever since. Moments of silence for disaster may also coincide with candlelight vigils.
In 1996 a 2-minute national silence was held for the 16 children and 1 teacher who were killed at Dunblane, Scotland. Following the terrorist bombing of trains in Madrid, Spain, in March 2004, was Europe’s first 3-minute silence. There have been a small number of other longer-duration silences since, which have drawn criticism from military veterans about a perception of diminishing war deaths.
There are increasing occasions where applause is used as an alternative to silence (Foster and Woodthorpe, 2012and Winterman, 2007), typically associated with the death of an individual and stemming from an impromptu crowd reaction rather than something premeditated.
Technology-enabled memorials: Virtual and Augmented Reality
Memorialisation can, perhaps surprisingly, be a place for innovation too.
Launched in 2005, the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank sets out to collect, preserve, and present the stories and digital records of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The collection, which continues to grow, currently contains more than 23,000 items ranging from oral histories, photographs, stories and community art. In browsing the archive for this post I was struck by Francesco DeSantis’s hundreds of portraits and the handwritten annotations of each subject which record “autobiographical slivers intersecting upon a major transformative event”.
On June 12, 2016, 49 people were killed in a terrorist attack and hate crime at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Planning and community consultation by the onePULSE Foundation for a National Pulse Memorial & Museum and pedestrian pathway known as the ‘Survivors Walk’ continue but have hit a hurdle in terms of land ownership. In the meantime, a virtual memorial has been made available using 3d imaging technology to provide anybody with access to the ‘ribbon wall’ of tributes and to sign a digital book of condolence.
Disasters can be memorialised in written, recorded and performed works. There are far too many examples to note fully here but a handful of examples include:
In a similar way, The Bridge is a verbatim play written in 1990 but recently developed into a podcast series. This memorialises Australia’s worst modern industrial accident, when in October 1970 a 2000-ton span of the West Gate Bridge fell killing thirty-five bridge workers. Other ways that this disaster has been memorialised are summarised by the West Gate Bridge Memorial Committee.
Anniversaries
Disaster anniversaries are often characterised by impacted people coming together, public officials making declarative statements and the media reconstructing the disaster experience in the context of current understanding (Forrest, 1993). Anniversaries are also one of the periods (along with birthdays, holidays, resolution of court cases and publications of reports about the disaster) when the memory of the disaster and associated loss may trigger an emotional response requiring professional support. Practical support is likely to be available in the short term but requires ongoing consideration many years later.
Anniversary events are likely to involve a mix of remembrance and outrage that questions relating to the deaths remain unanswered (Eyre, 1998) or that progress is too slow. Anniversaries are therefore a time of heightened complex emotions and require empathy and compassion.
The video below provides an overview of the range of activities marking the tenth anniversary of the Lac Magantic derailment in Quebec, Canada.
I have first-hand experience with the anxiety that some communities can experience about what it is appropriate to call a significant milestone, such as the passing of a year since a tragedy. Whether it’s a commemoration, anniversary, remembrance, memorialisation or something different altogether, the most important advice is to listen to the impacted communities on what they feel comfortable with and to try to meet as many wishes as possible.
(As a slight aside, the formal word for a commemorative event taking place on a monthly basis is ‘mensiversary’ but despite my attempts, I haven’t been able to get anybody to refer to events with that term!).
Personal Stories, Letters and Tributes
I had the privilege of meeting Charlene Lam from Curating Grief at the London Design Festival in 2022. Whilst not talking explicitly about disaster, we discussed the ability that everyday objects have to become memorials once somebody had died, and she told me the sentimentality behind why she chose to keep airline tableware following a family bereavement.
Much of what we know about the Great Fire of London we owe to the diaries of Samuel Pepys. Likewise, on March 28, 1944, the Dutch government-in-exile appealed to citizens to hold on to diaries and letters to chronicle life under German occupation. From this, Anne Frank created one of the most powerful memorials of the Holocaust.
As well as appearing in lots of street art, it is estimated that within 6 weeks of the attack around 10,000 people had been tattooed with bees (Perraudin, 2017) in commemoration and creating feelings of membership and togetherness. Perhaps less known is that Manchester City Council submitted trademark applications for six different bee designs in the two weeks following the bombing and were criticised for ‘memejacking’ (Merrill and Lindgren, 2021).
Stakeholders and their Perspectives
Involvement of Survivors and Affected Communities
Orthodox approaches concentrate power in the hands of ‘experts’ and can sideline the people most impacted. Contemporary memorials generally make attempts to involve communities from the outset. This can take various forms including formal Commission structures or less formal working groups that include direct representation from bereaved families, survivors and local people.
I had the privilege to visit the Manchester Together archive which conserves, preserves and documents the extraordinary outpouring of public grief and solidarity following the terrorist attack at the Manchester Arena in 2017. They have taken a rather unorthodox approach that if members of bereaved or survivor families visit the archive and want to take something of the 10,000 objects away, they are welcome to do that. This moves the collection away from being managed and regulated like a museum to more facilitated and participatory archive.
A memorial which is currently in construction and due to be unveiled on 11 October 2023 remembers the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 which killed 146 garment workers. The participatory approach used here invited members of the community to share their personal stories in connection with the fire, which impacted recent Jewish and Italian immigrant communities, and to collectively create a 300-foot-long ribbon, formed from individual donated pieces of fabric. The patterns and textures produced from this will be etched into the steel of the permanent memorial into which the names of the deceased will be cut and the stories archived at the Kheel Center at Cornell University, a specialist historical collection of United Stated workplace and labour relations.
Government and Local Authorities: Balancing Commemoration and Practical Considerations
The UK National Covid Memorial Wall is comprised of hundreds of thousands of hand-drawn red hearts, each representing a life lost during the pandemic. In some ways, the use of red hearts echoes the use of poppies for commemorating war dead. It stands opposite the Houses of Parliament to continually remind those in power of politicians’ accountability.
Politics also has a role in determining the form and location of a memorial.
The designs and proposals for the UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre continue to face an uphill struggle between architects, the government, and planning authorities. In 2022 planning approval was quashed by the High Court on the basis of contravening the London County Council (Improvements) Act of 1900 which requires the chosen location at Victoria Tower Gardens to be maintained as a public garden. The current solution appears to require the enactment of new legislation, the Holocaust Memorial Bill, specifically for this memorial.
Memorialisation is not a neutral activity, it selects certain aspects and excludes others, and exists in the context of historical processes of injustice and marginalisation of certain social groups (Fuentealba, 2021).
Architects and Artists: The Role of Creativity in Memorial Design
Memorials can, of course, take multiple and different forms but I’ve found it a helpful classification.
The work of architects in rebuilding after a disaster was considered at the 2016 RIBA exhibition Creation from Catastrophe and as with Adaje the emphasis was on humility and true collaboration with affected communities.
The Clearing is the name of the memorial to the 20 children and 6 teachers killed in a school shooting at Sandy Hook, Connecticut, in October 2022. In their research, chosen designers Dan Affleck and Ben Waldo found “traditional monuments – stone objects in a civic space – are really not doing justice to the complexity of trauma, of memory, of emotion…after experiencing an event like this. Their design of a London plane tree on a small island within a lightly swirling water focuses more on the landscape and is intentionally designed to look different on each visit as “a conceit for the individual experience of grief itself”.
A circular halo of white stone, referencing the eternal, floats above an ever-changing abundance of native plants. Inlaid into the stone are bronze hearts beneath which are memory capsules which contain meaningful mementoes left by families of the bereaved.
Artists as well as architects and landscape designers can bring a significant contribution to the development of memorialisation.
Nathan Wyburn created the sculpture “21.10.1966 144 9.13 am” using concrete and steel the work features 144 clocks each stopped at 9:13 in reference to the date and time of the Aberfan disaster, and the number of people who were killed when a colliery tip collapsed on the village. This piece is on permanent display at the Welsh Coal Mining Experience, a tourist attraction around 11 miles from the site of the tragedy.
Another example of the powerful contribution of artists could include the ‘Fallen Leaves’ installation by Menashe Kadishman at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. The floor of the gallery space is covered with 10,000 flat iron disks, pressed and cut into crude face shapes with contorted eye, nose and mouth features as though they might be screaming. The only way to pass through the space is to walk over the faces. I visited some years ago and still remember the reverberating sound of the metal-on-metal sound which perhaps recalls forced labour or trains arriving at a concentration camp.
Artist Lorrie Veassy started making and hanging ceramic tributes on a rusty chain-link fence opposite a hospital that many people were taken to. Other local potters and artists joined in and before long the Tiles for America Memorial was established; to date, more than 2,500 tiles have been produced.
Speaking about the seeming impossibility of meeting the range of different stakeholder requirements in Omagh, O’Toole (2007) provides a reminder that ‘the impossible is what art does best” and that we may “need public art to do what politics struggles to achieve”.
Public Perception, Controversies and Timelines
The memorial to the Sampoong Department Store collapse of June 1995, in which 502 people died and 937 were injured, was moved from its original location to a park at Yangjae Citizen’s Forest, due to “backlash” from residents of apartments near the incident site.
Based on the advice of Hiroshi Harada, an atomic bomb survivor and the former director of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum that “memories will eventually fade away generation by generation,” the Miyagi prefectural government has committed to wait until at least 2031 before letting future generations determine whether the shell of a government building, formerly its disaster management centre, should be retained permanently.
Ethical and Social Considerations
Cultural Sensitivity: Ensuring Diversity of Victims’ Backgrounds Are Heard
I acknowledge that this post is overwhelmingly Western. It is the product of seeing memorialisation through my own lens. Whilst I’ve tried to pick a range of different memorials to illustrate the different nature they can take, that selection process means things have been excluded.
Grieving behaviour in the UK remains largely informed by the Victorian ideal of solemnity (Howarth, 2007), but this is not true of other cultures. It’s vitally important to consider how other cultures acknowledge loss and make collective memory.
The ways in which different cultures interpret and experience memorials can also be different and should be considered during their development. The memorial to the 202 people killed in the Bali nightclub bombings of 2002 has been the subject of a specific study looking at the ways in which people use the memorial space differs depending on their own culture.
Closer to home, the UK memorial to the Bali bombings occupies a prominent space outside the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and features 202 dives engraved into a granite sphere. There is little information available about the process of selecting this location but the involvement of the UK Bali Bombing Victims Group seems to have been a major consideration.
Some people may feel (and indeed, be) marginalised or excluded from the memorialisation process on grounds such as religion, geographical distance, inability to attend due to disaster-related injury or simply due to practicalities of logistics (Eyre, 1999). Additionally, dynamics within and between representative groups may reinforce a sense of a hierarchy of grief.
Efforts should be made to engage with all communities to ensure all voices are heard. This requires involving communities in decision-making, which can be challenging for organisations and structures which have limited experience in that way of working.
Avoiding Exploitation and Commercialisation of Tragedies
The September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York City has attracted considerable controversy for having a gift shop. The shop sells merchandise like t-shirts, umbrellas and phone cases emblazoned with images of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre. Proceeds from the shop and museum admission fee go towards the maintenance of the memorial, which did not initially receive any government funding for ongoing maintenance.
After a USA-shaped cheese platter attracted additional negative reaction a decision was made that relatives of victims who sit on the memorial board would conduct a ‘smell test’ to approve future items for sale, which continues despite a federal funding grant for the memorial now being available.
Charging for entry to a disaster memorial isn’t a uniquely American idea. The Monument commemorates the Great Fire of London which destroyed most of the city in September 1666. For the price of £6 visitors can climb the 311 spiral steps inside the column and take in the view from the observation deck at the top and on their way back down are rewarded with a certificate. So maybe there is something about the passage of time, and that commercialisation feels less distasteful the longer ago the incident was.
This absence of symbolism however may be linked to the phenomenon where a proportion of the 10,000 daily visitors take selfies or jump between the slabs and have been shamed for inappropriate conduct. This phenomenon inspired a project YOLOCAUST by German-Isreili artist Shahak Shapira.
Balancing Grief and Hope: Conveying the Message of Resilience
Perhaps the disaster memorial which has had the most profound impact on me was my visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. In particular, I was moved to tears by the confronting and visceral remains of ruined buildings.
On 6 August 1945, at 8:15 a.m the nuclear weapon “Little Boy” was dropped from an American plane, directly killing at least 70,000 people (rising to 90,000–140,000 by the end of 1945 as a result of injuries and radiation exposure) and destroying or damaging 75% of the city’s buildings. The bomb exploded almost directly overhead the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, the heat consuming the entire building. The ruins of the building including its walls and the wire framework of the dome survived and have been preserved as a symbol of the need for abolition of nuclear weapons. The A-bomb Dome, as it has become known, was registered in 1996 on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
How memorialisation is evolving: learning from the past, informing the future
In themselves, memorials are unlikely to reduce the impact of future disasters, but they can help facilitate conversations or new ways of thinking about prevention, preparedness, and response.
The processes connected to memorialisation are also in continual flux. The huge volume of flowers placed in commemoration of Princess Diana’s death and the children who play in the fountain dedicated to her mark different ways of commemoration and memorialisation. We could be seeing some signs of a trend towards rejecting Victorian solemnity and customs that point toward public restraint in death.
These more ‘vernacular memorials’, that is, memorials which are in the language of the impacted community rather than the state, seem to be increasingly common.
COVID Memorialisation
A few memorials exist to plagues of past centuries, including the Pestsäule or ‘Plague Columns” in Vienna (pictured), Baden and Klagenfurt, Austria, the Immaculata in Košice, Slovakia, and if you know where to look, the 1854 cholera outbreak in London.
Official memorials may take years to materialise and can entail contentious wrangling among stakeholders. But once erected, they assume the role of a defining locus of mourning.
Memorials that have emerged so far have typically been very human in scale. In a similar grassroots approach as the painted hearts in London (above), Argentines have been piling up small stones with names of those who died in Buenos Aries, and Italians in Bergamo have been planting trees.
There are a range of online activities, which include
In the UK: the RememberMe2020 project which provides an online COVID-19 book of condolence coordinated by St Paul’s Cathedral.
Memorialisation is a crowded space, there was criticism for co-opting the red ribbon after the BBC aired an insensitive segment on World AIDS Day encouraging people to remember COVID victims by tying a red ribbon around a tree.
A larger scale but still very personal memorial includes the 200,000 white flags planted on the National Mall in Washington DC. This directly echoes the inaugural display of the AIDS quilt on the same lawn in 1987.
There have been some more ambitious ideas about COVID memorialisation, including architectural firm Gómez Platero’s design for a sleek metallic disk off the coast of Uraguay as the Global Memorial to the Pandemic.
Ensuring Long-Term Preservation and Care
The Paddington Rail Disaster occurred on 5 October 1999. Two years after the incident a 10ft tall memorial sculpted by Richard Healy (who also designed the memorial for the 1988 Clapham rail crash) was unveiled overlooking the scene of the crash. Less than six months after being unveiled the BBC reported that the site was “being used as a rubbish dump by fly-tippers” and protective railing were added. As can be seen in the image below, the memorial was in need of some care ahead of its 20th anniversary in 2019.
Memorials require upkeep, maintenance and repair. Somebody has to cut the grass, there will be bins to be emptied and lights to be switched on. There is a compromise required between artistic intent and practical considerations.
These aspects can, if not properly considered, result in significant ongoing operational costs. For example, the Diana Memorial Fountain has required new sealant and water jet fittings for the fountain, intensive cleaning, replacement of footpaths, as well as stewards and gardening.
Conclusion
Emphasising the Importance of Memorialisation
Memorialisation is incredibly sensitive but also inherently political, perhaps even being a form of government communication (Nicholls, 2006). There are questions to be asked about what we choose to memorialise, and what doesn’t get that recognition. Following media coverage about a proposed tapestry to be developed as part of the UK COVID Inquiry, there are signs of a “troubling trend where artistic memorialisation efforts are presented and pitted as emotional rather than political” (Purnell, 2023).
You probably don’t know about the fire at Denmark Place. It took 32 years for a small plaque to be unveiled “because the 37 people killed didn’t matter”. There is no reference on the developer’s website for ‘Princess Park Manor’ to its previous history as the Colney Hatch Asylum, let alone the 52 lives lost there in a fire in 1903; the worst peacetime fire in London until the Grenfell fire in 2017. An ongoing campaign from relatives of those impacted by the Battersea Funfair Disaster seeks to ensure a permanent marker to the 1972 incident where 5 children died. These are just a handful of incidents in London alone which weren’t deemed significant enough to warrant a memorial. Families and relatives of those impacted are now coming forwards to ensure there is a physical reminder, but as emergency managers, we should ask ourselves questions about who has access and power in the decisions about which incidents are memorialised, how and when. this supports the idea that recovery from disaster has a very long tail.
Memorials often quite literally “concretize” a dominant interpretation of a disaster and could constrain other interpretations. Therefore those charged with supporting memorialisation should allow for a variety and change in narratives to be present. However, this can be a source of contestation between different stakeholders so needs delicate and empathetic approaches.
Research into memorials after the Great East Japan Earthquake has recommended that it is better the pursue several ways of memorialising “rather than a single stone” (Boret and Shibayama, 2018). Whilst it can be administratively convenient to have a single memorial, a strategy which embraces multiplicity is likely to be key in meeting the diverse needs of affected people. Memorials that resist processes of transformation risk losing their significance in the future. Young (2010) notes that they “should not enshrine any particular interpretation of the past but prompt visitors to engage”.
As the Remember Me project found, memorials to disasters and other traumatic events are an escalating phenomenon and combine personal, public, spontaneous, planned, formal and informal elements. This is something that emergency managers should be aware of and consider the best approaches to engage with multiple projects simultaneously.
Shaping Collective Memory and Resilience
Public memory cannot be supplied by the elite and comes from genuine public demand. The practice of remembering is one of the ways communities decide what is important.
Maybe the role of memorialisation is also partly about helping us to forget. Visit any park or square in any town or city in any country around the world and you’ll likely find statues, plaques, dedicated benches and commemorative fountains. But do we really engage with the purpose of each: to keep their subject from falling into memory?
How long should a memorial last? In my experience the most common answer is ‘forever’, but eventually everything returns to the ground. So perhaps the purpose of a memorial or monument is partly to help ease that transition too. As Bishai (2000) stated, “We must remember in order to know who we are, and forget in order to become what we may be.”
Emergency managers won’t usually be involved in the detailed discussions of what for, a specific memorial might take. They will likely have already moved on to be considering the next calamity. I think there is, however, a role for emergency managers who are responsible for mapping out what recovery from any disaster might look like to engage with the process and challenges of memorialisation. The approach required for this sensitive activity is not the same as the ones which invariably get written into plans.
Note: I’ve found it hard writing this post, which tries to capture the range of ways that people memorialise, without seeming to trivialise the pain associated with each of the examples selected. In making those selections, I’m aware I have excluded many other incidents and their memorials. I hope that through considering memorialisation, experienced emergency managers can support future disaster-impacted communities to memorialise better than they often have been.
I recently described emergency management as a ‘proto-profession’; it entertains ambitions of professionalisation and expends (a lot) of energy in the development of professional standards and there are bodies which govern entry to the club. However, a significant proportion of the debate feel that without an agreed corpus of knowledge it can’t truly be a profession and that there should be greater role for the bodies in determining entry (whilst not wanting to risk being excluded themselves).
The argument typically follows that medicine and law have self-regulated education, training, and standards, underpinned by collective knowledge and ethical principles. My perspective is that there whilst there needs to be agreement on some core knowledge, both medicine and law which are held as shining beacons are professions which seek to change and learn. Their knowledge isn’t fixed and has evolved considerably over time (I’m looking at you trepanning the skull!).
In my view it’s better to do something and make some progress than it is to debate over the finer detail at the detriment to the field and it’s people. We are entering a new dawn for emergency management and should be approaching it head-on.
So what is the body of knowledge for emergency management?
Several years ago (in a rage-fuelled post) I attempted to set out my thoughts on what I would include.
The original list of 81 things and emergency manager should know was all mine. I knew then that it was incomplete. The beauty of emergency management is that everybody brings something to the table (as I said similarly in this recent post for National Careers Week).
Therefore I’ve revisited and supplemented the original list with the wonderful and brilliant suggestions of friends and colleagues, some of whom I know well, and others I’ve yet to met but who felt compelled enough to add their thoughts to the list as it has been shared online.
The key languages spoken in your relevant communities (and ideally a greeting and thank you in each).
How to use Resilience Direct/other platforms to share documents and maps.
How to provide and take information in a clear structure way (eg. METHANE or IMARCH).
How to say no politely (at first) to things that aren’t your remit.
A sense of humour.
The best snacks to keep you going at 2am.
How to ‘lower your hand’ on teams/zoom etc (see also: how to use mute/unmute).
The key roles and ranks indicated in emergency service and military uniforms (tabards, rank markings, what that gold string means etc).
Key acronyms, when to use them and when to avoid them.
That senior management likely won’t be interested until the wheels are starting to fall off.
How to think outside the box and capture the rationale for doing so.
Who you can call when you don’t know who else to call. And what number to call them on.
Know your local significant infrastructure and the risks presented by its failure.
Limits of any delegated decision authority.
Understand the direction of the wind (both literally and figuratively).
Water (and blame) flows downhill.
The sticky bun that nobody else has eaten will come back to haunt you 2 hours later.
You are not an island.
Requirements of the COMAH and Pipeline Safety Regulations.
Turner’s Disaster Incubation Theory.
Who the FEMA Administrator is.
How to make use of ‘screenshot’ to share information without having to wait for it to be circulated by the originator (and when not to do this too).
How to turn a document in to a PDF, and how to reverse it if needed.
‘You can’t fix stupid’.
Something (anything!) about bioterrorism.
The importance of infant feeding in emergencies.
The difference between personal safety and process safety.
The most dangerous place is between the fire service and the catering van.
A brief history of civil protection and the formative events in it’s evolution.
How to recognise signs of trauma (and vicarious trauma) in yourself and others.
At least 4 different routes to your place of work, using different means of transport.
That COBR doesn’t have an A.
Key response operation names and what they mean.
1917-1920 flu epidemic.
Basics of crowd psychology.
A rough idea of what different 999 service specialists/vehicles do.
A rough idea of what happens behind the scenes when you call 999.
Where to find the keys.
Read old Inquiry/Inquest/prevention of future death reports like they’re your favourite genre.
How to spot and counter a microaggression.
Respect the news images, they have different access to information to you.
The importance of searching out lived experiences.
Vital importance of effective communication.
Something about structural stability and the technical terms for standard building components.
Something about asbestos.
Know what you don’t know.
Know that there is no accounting for politicians.
Remember that saying it once is usually not enough, repeating it frequently helps.
Know the history of your profession in your country (and elsewhere).
Find ways to cope (or thrive) in the messiness of trans-disciplinary working.
Take time to reflect, and understand your own ethics and the ethics of the organisation(s) you work with.
How to be open to challenge and constructive criticism.
How to defend yourself against criticism which is just mean.
Decision makers won’t always follow your advice – figure out how you deal with that.
There is always something you won’t know so you should always be looking to learn.
What spolia is.
A bit about the insurance industry.
How to forward your phone.
How to block your number from coming up if you have a suspicion somebody is screening your calls.
A little about the ‘chain of custody’ and steps to preserve evidence if required.
How to communicate when normal methods fail.
Grounding techniques that work for you.
Tips to keep your typing speed at a minimum of 60 words per minute.
An understanding of the difference between prudent business continuity and panic buying.
The maturity of language to talk about crowd incidents whilst being aware of the myth of panic.
What the Sphere standards are.
Signs of organisational trauma.
Lencioni’s 5 disfunctions of a team.
The difference between important and urgent.
A little about disaster capitalism.
There isn’t always a single right answer, but there can be many wrong answers.
Why it’s important to read the detail of the forecast, not just reach to the ‘colour’ of the warning.
The difference between a lesson identified and a lesson learnt.
How to describe what your job is succinctly at social engagements.
What happened in the Carrington Event and why it’d be different now.
How El Nino and La Nina have global effects.
The pros and cons of lean processes and efficiency.
Know when a situation needs simplicity and when it needs detail.
Enough about your stakeholders to be able to manage the politics of seating plans
How to connect the projector/printer/label making machine to your computer.
Parkinson’s Law of public administration.
I expect this list could continue to grow, and will be refined as people make a case for what is in/out of the corpus. I wholeheartedly encourage that – help us define what an emergency manager needs to know.
I thought I’d share a couple of thoughts for anyone who might be interested in a career in emergency management, during National Careers Week, taking place between 6-10 March.
How did I find emergency management?
When I was little I wanted to design rollercoasters.
There wasn’t much call for that in the UK, so my school work experience aged 14 was in a car factory! I realised there would be a huge requirement for engineering knowledge and recognised that my mathematics skills probably weren’t up to scratch, so it was back to the drawing board.
With wall-to-wall media coverage of the Millennium Bug, I spent a lot of time hearing about the apocalyptic events that would happen on 1 January 2000. I became interested in how to prepare and respond to those kinds of major disasters. I didn’t know it was a career option but knew it was an area of work that I wanted to be involved in. The terrorist attacks in America in 2001 were a significant and formative event for many in my generation of emergency management.
I suspect that there is a whole swathe of people, who, having lived through COVID are also considering how they might get involved to reduce the impact that these events can have on our lives.
Emergency management has become more popular but remains a niche profession which doesn’t have much airtime. I hope this post gives a bit of a flavour of what emergency management is like as a job, as well as my tips on breaking into the field.
What do you enjoy about your job?
We generally like order and control. Disasters and emergencies are messy. Disasters are terrible events that affect many people in unimaginable ways. However, I have seen so many examples of the best in people and communities when they are going through the worst times.
I view my role through a lens of supporting and facilitating that natural human response to look after each other. A large part of being an emergency manager is about bringing some coordination to a chaotic situation. There is a lot of satisfaction which comes from being involved in making sense and supporting the management of a chaotic situation.
What is an emergency manager?
The good people at Prospects have a page on emergency management, which sets out that “you’ll play a role in protecting and maintaining public safety” by anticipating and planning for major incidents “in local or central government, or in a public body”.
But it is so much more than that!
During the pandemic, I wrote a list of 81 things an Emergency Manager needs to know. The breadth of things included on that list gives a flavour of the many different directions that emergency management can take you in, and in which you can come into emergency management.
Emergency management is risk management. It is health and safety. It is security. It is communication. It is about data. It is logistics. It is policy development. It is training. Depending on which sector you work in the balance between those things will be different, but fundamentally, emergency management is about people.
For a long time emergency management was the domain of retired military and firefighters. That experience still has incredible value, but there are more diverse pathways into the field than there used to be, which is brilliant, because with new people come new ideas and a more effective and inclusive response.
What does a typical day look like?
Gosh, that’s a tough one. The thing about emergencies is that they are inherently unpredictable (although some are more predictable than others). There tends to be a fair amount of variability day to day depending on what might be happening or risks that are the current concern.
A typical day also looks different depending on what organisation you work for. However, generally speaking, a typical day will involve lots of teamwork and communicating with different people both within your organisation and beyond. In my experience, there are a lot of meetings, but also frequent external site visits and equipment checks too. Obviously, there are incident response days too. Whatever plan you might have had for the day goes totally out of the window and it’s all about doing your bit to support the people impacted, and then the ongoing recovery and learning processes.
Where to seek out more advice?
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking there is just one route to your chosen career. Or that there is a factory which spits out carbon copies of emergency managers.
The beauty of emergency management is that it touches the edges of so many other functions. This is also it’s Achilles heel – it is hard to define and codify. Where possible, try to use that to your advantage. Everyone has something valuable they can bring to emergency management, what are you bringing?
If you’re interested in working in emergency management then here are my top 5 tips on steps I would take with hindsight:
Talk to people working in the field. Be prepared that many people simply won’t respond to your emails or prospective emails. But somebody will somewhere. Find emergency managers on social media (there’s a small community of us on Twitter, but probably hold off on sending lots of LinkedIn requests until you’ve met people in person). Volunteer to attend scenario training events to meet potential new colleagues. Join a professional body, like the Emergency Planning Society, as an associate or student member and attend their events (which is a bit easier now with more online events).
Take advantage of work experience placements and any training. Don’t worry too much about it being in a directly relevant field. You’re not going to become an emergency manager in your two-week placement, but you can start to learn about yourself, about workplaces and about what you are looking for. Whilst there may be restrictions based on age or location, try to take advantage of the free training by bodies such as Skills for Life. Simple things like having a first aid qualification, awareness of information handling principles or data analysis skills can set you apart from others.
Research what potential future employers are looking for. Think about how you can demonstrate that you are a good candidate. Entry-level emergency management roles will generally be looking for people with great organisational skills, the capability to prioritise work, project management skills and effective communication. What examples can you use to so you can do that? What things could you do to build even more skills in those areas?
Talk to a careers advisor. Whether you’re still at school or college, progressing through university, unemployed or looking for a change in career direction at a later stage, careers advisors can offer support and signpost to opportunities. They probably won’t know the ins-and-outs of emergency management, but can help you make high-quality applications and help you to identify skills you may be less aware of.
Learn and reflect. Employers will want to see that you have some understanding of the field, but you don’t need to memorise Wikipedia articles, you won’t be tested on that. You might choose to read about things, or watch documentaries on Netflix, or listen to podcasts. Keep an eye out for the lessons from notable disasters and what the current risks might be and why. This can be referred to as ‘seeing the bigger picture’ and it’s a skill given how broad emergency management can be.
My time on the Civil Service Future Leader Scheme formally came to an end recently, culminating in a conference at Birmingham’s International Conference Centre. My leadership journey continues beyond the course but here’s my hot take on the conference.
It was great to be alongside many colleagues from my cohort but also enjoyable to be in a room with another 300 or so people on the same journey. The opportunities to network beyond your cohort have been surprisingly limited (or maybe I just didn’t take the opportunities that were available). So it was nice, if a little strange, to meet people for the first time at the end of the scheme.
One of the most exciting aspects was to meet up with colleagues who’ve also been documenting their progression through the scheme online.
Hello everyone 🙂
This week, I’ll be:
* joining fellow civil servants at the Future Leaders Scheme Conference in Birmingham to hear from speakers and panellists on wide variety of topics*
Great to be at the @UKCivilService Future Leaders Scheme final conference in Birmingham. Hundreds of the Civil Service’s aspiring top civil servants in one place! Are you here too? Drop me a DM! #FLSpic.twitter.com/9VAni8WHgU
There is so little written about the FLS that you would be forgiven for thinking it had the same first rule as Fight Club. I’ve searched for blogs and social media, but only a handful of people have shared their views. Making those connections in real life was great, and I’m looking forward to continuing to follow their adventures.
At first look, the agenda for the conference was fairly light. I was interested to hear from a couple of speakers (Lynda Rawsthorne, a Director at DfT and Emran Mian, Director General at DLUHC) but there was a lot of time for networking. Weirdly there was very little to facilitate or stimulate that, and I wonder on reflection is a more ‘unconference’ approach might have been useful.
Who do you think you are?
Lynda’s session on her leadership journey was undeniably fabulous (and I’m a fan of the subtle Spice Girls reference in the title of her presentation)! Attendees were eating out of the palm of her hand by the end of her short masterclass in authentic, story-telling approach to presenting.
She touched on many of the concepts that the course had covered, but the key standout messages for me were:
Get a coach/peer group to continue to support you.
If your employer is willing to pay for training/development then take it – even if immediate benefits don’t seem obvious.
Embrace being an incomplete leader – nobody is great at everything, know your limitations and strengths.
Push yourself to do things that feel uncomfortable.
Don’t procrastinate! Life changes and there will never be the perfect time for anything.
Keep your integrity. Do things you can live with.
A new role offers the opportunity for a reset.
Maintain boundaries. Don’t lose yourself.
Making the transition vs Integrity
Sadly, Emran was unable to attend and a panel session on making the transition to senior civil service roles took it’s place.
An objective for many people on the LFLS seems to be achieving more senior roles. Consequently, this was essentially a ‘how to play the game’ session to ace the selection process. I’m not sure that was my motivation and therefore this fell a little flat for me.
I also thought it was a strange juxtaposition with the next session on social mobility, valuing people over competence rather than background and behaviour. The two things didn’t align – in one session being told to ‘consider your personal brand’ and then to be encouraged to ‘be your whole self’.
As you progress within an organisation consider how you can put people at ease – relationship dynamics change and people who were once comfortable with you may not be as your position changes.
Consider implementing a ‘no meetings between 12:00 – 14:00 in winter’ rule with your team to encourage the opportunity to go out in daylight.
Challenge things that are accepted as normal. Ask stupid questions.
Get to know the gatekeepers and use your networks – they help you to hear things more quickly, to stay ahead of the curve.
Reflections from a Local Government Leader
The final session of the year-long programme was a session billed as reflections about working with the Civil Service from outside. This had the potential to be really interesting and enlightening – brining a different perspective to the issues that have arisen during the course.
However, what transpired was an awkward session which fell short of what had been promised.
I LOVE a pass-agg question at a conference! OMG! Dead!
Can you talk us through, as a leader, how you determined your key speaking points and how you wanted to convey them.
This was one of the absolute zingers, but more generally, I think a passive-aggressive question at a conference often reveals that the speaker has hit a nerve. That deserves iexamination. Our first instinct is to leap to the defensive (or the aggressive), which perhaps it’s an ideal leadership quality.
It was also a lesson about how to prepare of these sorts of events.
The speaker didn’t seem to be well briefed on what they should be talking about and who was in the room
The facilitator didn’t have ‘extraction skills’ to navigate away from choppy waters
The audience didn’t have rules of engagement
Many colleagues I spoke to afterwards found it uncomfortable. However, perhaps the provocation served a purpose. More than any other session during the day it got people talking, passionately, and sharing their views. There was a level of ‘trauma-bonding’ perhaps, but one of the functions of a leader is to generate discussion; so, mission accomplished, I guess.
Some final thoughts…
The final speaker definitely left an impression. As did FLS overall.
Like most things, you get out of it what you put in, but it’s challenging and has made me question things more than I expected. One of the very clear strands which come through in all modules, and the optional assignments, has been about personal reflection. FLS fo me has been part leadership development, part career coaching and a large dose of therapy.
I changed job role part way through the course and at my ‘leaving’ drinks one colleague said “it’s nice to be somewhere so noisy; it means I can’t hear my own thoughts”. In some ways, I think that about reflection. There is a time and a place, and it needs to be handled carefully and with copious self-compassion because it can quickly turn into negativity.
This isn’t the right time to reflect on the scheme as a whole, which has had bumps in the road, but I think had broadly been interesting. I’ll come back with some more considered thoughts later!
Well, this is a bit unexpected! Here I am again with some reflections on my leadership journey. These aren’t formally part of the FLS course, but recent training in my new role and as before I wanted to document my (semi) immediate reflections.
Who is Frank Bailey?
Frank Arthur Bailey (1925 – 2015) is known for being one of the first black firefighters in the United Kingdom.
There is a lot more to his story than I can do justice to in a short introduction and his obituary is well worth a read. Frank was born in British Guiana and had a varied career; working as an engineering apprentice on a German trade ship, moving to New York to work in healthcare and then becoming a firefighter in London. In 1965 he left the fire brigade and became a social worker and a legal advisor.
London Fire Brigade’s leadership development programme is named in his honour. Like my FLS posts, this blog captures my reflections from the first two of four modules as a way of documenting my learning and holding myself accountable.
Module One – Leading One’s Self
As with the FLS course this module spent a considerable time discussing the differences between management and leadership. As before, I align more with the qualities of a leader however have noticed a couple of occasions, particularly with looming deadlines and things just need to get done, where I take a more management approach.
This reminded me of a recent conversation with a researcher who was exploring how emergency managers use different leadership and communication styles at different phases of the integrated emergency management cycle.
For me, the most useful part of the session was an exercise which invited us to consider burnout. The below picture was presented and we were asked to discuss which of the jelly babies we identify most with, and why. I found this a powerful way of broaching what could feel like difficult emotions.
The thing which surprised me most was how people put radically different interpretations into what each jelly baby might be experiencing – is that somebody hanging on for dear life, or are they just hanging out because they have built the muscles to do so? This is unlikely to capture the entire human experience, but is a useful starting point to check in with yourself, and with others.
Module Two – Leading Teams
This module was conducted virtually. You’ll remember that my experience with the virtual LFS module was far from positive (so much so that there was no specific blog about it), but this was a very different story, and a well-structured, interesting and open session.
FLS hasn’t gone into great detail on Tuckman’s model of team performance (perhaps because it’s a well-trodden path and want to introduce newer concepts), but the LFB course provided a deeper examination of this model.
Tuckman generally aligns with my experience, but like all models, it can only ever be an approximation. The aspect which I have some doubt over is the ability to determine precise stages – how do you know when you are forming, storming, morning or performing? The reality, I find, is that all of those things are happening all of the time, just to a greater or lesser degree.
I wondered whether, perhaps, it might make more sense to see the model something like this…where all of those things are happening at once but overlapping. The different ‘stages of development’ take precedence at different time periods, but are always all occurring and fluctuating. Apologies for the yellow line on white paper – I was short on Sharpie options!
Having posted it, I can already see some issues with my suggestion – the performing line should be more exponential perhaps, starting beneath the norming stage. Whilst these models all have limitations, I find that by thinking about how we might tweak them helps build understanding, even if you revert to the original after testing something new.
We had a lot of discussion about the primary factors which could prevent moving out of the ‘storming valley’ and some dramatically different views, suggesting that so much of this is contextual. A study (sadly not referenced because I’d like to learn more) was referenced which noted that interpersonal skills accounts for just 0.8% of the ability to break out of the storming phase. That’s a real contrast to my own view that by having good relationships you can solve most problems. There is a emergency management mantra of “make friends before you need them” which seems to hold true here, I can’t always define clear goals, roles or processes, but knowing who to call and who you can trust is a huge advantage.
Factor
Matt
Team A
Team B
Team C
Study
Interpersonal Skills
50
40
15
60
0.8
Clear Goals
25
20
35
10
80
Clear Roles and Responsibilities
10
30
20
15
16
Clear Processes
5
10
20
10
3.2
Lockard Exchange Principle / Forensic Leadership
One of the best modules from my geography degree was Forensic Geochemistry. My sense of bereavement for the Forensic Science Service is for another time, but during this module I was introduced to Locard’s Exchange Principle that “every contact leaves a trace”. It’s the backbone of forensic science, but to hear it related to leadership was interesting. We did an activity to consider what ‘red flags’ previous leaders have left us – I shared one about inappropriate conduct during a meeting in my first week of a job which influenced my view of that organisation for many years.
Somehow, this idea seemed linked to the idea of a ‘leadership shadow’ which we covered in FLA Module 1, but for me the Locard principle felt more intuitive – every contact you have with somebody as a leader also leaves a trace, and those traces can be good or bad.
We wrapped up the session by considering Lencioni’s 5 dysfunctions of a team, which I was introduced to on FLS so it’s helpful to have another reminder of a useful tool. I see this almost as the opposite of Maslow’s hierarchy – if that’s what people do need, this is what people don’t need.
I’m fortunate to have built and worked in a very competent Team until very recently. My new team aren’t incompetent by any stretch, but I’m on a journey of determining their individual strengths, areas of expertise and working styles. That means getting to know a different set of people and helping them to overcome challenges to be more effective.
I don’t feel an absence of trust within my new team, however clearly trust takes time to be earned. However, one of Lencioni’s dysfunctions feels more prominent and that’s a sense that there are some reservations about coming forwards with ideas and suggestions. I need to create an environment where team members feel safe to raise questions, offer alternative views and encourage constructive conflict. I’m open to all suggestions and ideas, but perhaps need to go back to the whole brain thinking model to understand who my team are, and how best to understand their particular motivations and preferences.
How am I getting on with my earlier FLS commitments?
Another run-through of whether I’ve kept my promises to myself…I committed to:
Be more intentional about reflection.Update: 9/10. I’d say that I’ve seen a small increase in this since the last check-in. I’ve re-established my weekly Team emails to provide some structure and force myself to reflect (and I’m also using it as one means of recognition of the team’s work too).
Ask my team and colleagues for more feedback on how I work.Update: 6/10. I have asked my direct reports to be honest with me as I settle in to my new role, inviting their feedback. However, there is more that I could do to seek wider views and reflections.
Review my personal objectives to make them more values-based. Update: 2/10. I’m beginning to regret making this commitment! I’m giving myself a free-pass on this for the time being whilst I adjust to the new role, but must come back to it at some point!
Push myself to be more forthcoming at an earlier stage.Update: 6/10. If anything this has fallen a small amount. I want to be forthcoming, however I don’t want to dominate the conversation. I did, however, push myself to take lead a discussion for my FLS cohort and have volunteered to take on additional areas of responsibility.
I want to take advantage of co-coaching.Update: 1/10. this has dropped considerably. I need to identify my ‘tribe’ of peers, which is difficult in a new role where many more people seem to be working remotely. I feel far more lonely in this role that previously and have suggested building a peer group network but haven’t actually done anything about that myself.
Practice using other conflict approaches to build muscle memory.Update: 4/10. Recently there was a difficult conversation which needed to be had. I tried to conduct this in an inclusive, non judgemental way to ensure that even if there was no positive outcome that relationships weren’t soured. I also backed away from having one conflict conversation altogether it didn’t feel like the right time to have it.
Be a bit more vulnerable.Update: 6/10. Not my forte, but I am trying to do more of the ‘show your working’ to explain my approach rather than pressing ahead. This does mean things are slower, but hopefully that is part of the storming/forming and colleagues become aware of how I work the pace will pick up.
The next modules are in about 6 weeks, so I’ll probably have the next update around then!
UK Government Resilience Framework – thoughts on launch
Remember in Neighbours when one day Cheryl Stark was played by Caroline Gillmer and then without any mention in 1993, Collette Mann took over? Or in Eastenders, where (so far) the character of Ben Mitchell has been recast a staggering six times?
Each time there is a recasting, audiences are expected to just get on with it and not draw attention to the obvious changes.
And so it is with the publication of the UK Government Resilience Framework earlier this week. Previously this was lauded as a “national resilience strategy” which set out a “proposed vision” to “make the UK the most resilient nation”. But the process of recasting now sees the strategy as a “government framework…to strengthen…systems and capabilities that support our collective resilience”.
Over recent years we’ve lurched from one crisis to the next, punctuated with emergencies and disasters along the way. Without action, pledges and strategies for reform are meaningless. Maybe a framework provides a clearer articulation of the steps required. But the narrowing of the field of vision, taking this from a ‘national strategy’ to a ‘government framework’ is something to watch out for.
In July this year, the Cabinet Office ‘call for evidence’ sought views on a draft strategy to gauge the UK’s appetite for “an ambitious new vision for our national resilience” to help prepare for current and future challenges.
Strong support for the vision and principles of the strategy (which were, frankly, hard to disagree with).
Majority agreement that more can be done to assess (82%) and communicate (80%) risk at national and local levels.
76% of responses thought everyone should have a part to play in improving the UK’s resilience – taking learning from the individual, community and voluntary sector responses to COVID.
Less than half (47%) agreed that the current division of roles and responsibilities between Central Government and local responders is correct.
93% believed the resilience of critical national infrastructure can be improved.
And a whopping 98% believe regulation has some role to play in testing and assuring resilience.
Slightly more than half of respondents (57.7% – why have they started using decimals at this point in the analysis?) agreed that information-sharing arrangements are insufficient.
78.1% of respondents believe the Government should have duties for information sharing (which they currently don’t under this Act).
And a majority (percentage not given) recognised funding limitations as a key factor in the ability to deliver emergency preparedness.
33 of the 38 Local Resilience Forums in England responded to questions on the Civil Contingencies Act. It’s a shame that more detail on responses isn’t provided; it would be interesting to know why 5 LRFs didn’t submit a response.
The cover image for the Resilience Framework tells you a lot. Let us take a look.
It’s a blue-sky day. The Thames Barrier is one of the key flood defences which will have a role to play in a changing climate. There are no people present. The perspective calls to mind Zallinger’s March of Progress.
Maybe I’m overanalysing. Let us move on to the meat of the document.
The call for evidence was structured around 6 thematic areas. These have been distilled into 3 fundamental principles which will guide the Government’s approach to resilience to 2030:
a shared understanding of risks ;
focus on prevention and preparation and
a whole-of-society approach.
When the Government launch a ‘new thing’ if often comes with a list of actions which have already been taken. This framework is no different, setting out that the disbandment of the Civil Contingencies Secretariat and formation of a new Resilience Directorate in the Cabinet Office is something more substantial than another ‘recasting’.
Whilst the framework frequently comes back to the 3 fundamental principles above, for me, so much of it is about being more accountable. That’s a brilliant thing.
Emergency management in the UK is separated out across many organisations and layers of governance, which adds diversity of thought but also significant complexity. The byproduct of the Government being more accountable to itself through initiatives such as an annual statement on preparedness and enhancing the use of standards will provide much-needed clarity at the local level. Are those things enough? I expect not, but they are a starting point and perhaps a path towards greater year-round scrutiny.
There are interesting thoughts on leadership and accountability for resilience at the local level. The main suggestion is to explore “evolving the nature of the LRF Chair role” to a “full-time Chief Resilience Officer” and for enhanced integration with local place-making. In theory, I can see this working well in some areas and less well in other areas. It will be interesting to see how positions such as this are appointed, trained and what powers they are provided with. On the surface, it seems similar to the Police and Crime Commissioner model. There is less detail on the Head of Resilience role, and what relationship this will have with Chief Resilience Officers and practitioners. Does it feel a bit like the Chief Coroner role perhaps?
Some more recasting occurs later in the form of the Emergency Planning College being rebadged as the UK Resilience Academy. The good news though, is that it sounds like there will be some coming together or a federation of existing provision and improvements to the accessibility of training.
There are some aspects such as a “greater role for Defence reserves” and aspects relating to working with insurers and regulators which could have been elaborated on. Unsurprisingly, the framework is light on detail in terms of funding and how wider organisations and communities will be involved. Those aspects are critical to ensuring the right resources are in place and that the circumstances of everyone in our communities are considered in planning and response. Whilst the call for evidence noted the limitations of funding, the framework does little to set out what will actually change.
But I have to say that I’m excited by this new era (and maybe I wasn’t overthinking it before with the evolution comparison); I look forward to seeing this recasting coming to fruition and playing my part in enhancing future resilience.
Future Leader Scheme: Module Four – knitting things together
Not long ago I was looking back on a couple of days spent in York for module three of the Civil Service Future Leader Scheme. Previous modules each considered leadership through the respective lenses of self, team and environment. Between the last module and this, I’ve changed job roles. This has meant a bit of a transitional time and being more intentional about the leader that I want and how best to support my team, instead of feeling limited to minor adjustments whilst the vehicle is already in motion.
The objective of this final session was designed to knit together those separate strands into a more complete awareness and understanding. On arrival in Coventry, I was greeted by this poster, which guided me through the following few days.
As with the other modules, I found bits of Day 1 challenging. I felt myself react emotionally to some of the discussions; it’s helpful to be able to reflect more objectively now some time has passed. Like other modules, I pushed through and found things did click together on Day 2.
Things that I learned:
Coaching
I’ve shared how valuable I found co-coaching before so I was pleased to see it form part of this module too.
Again, I was struck by how insightful their comments were even after such a short period of time, in particular, their observations about me weighing up different things and ensuring that everyone has an opportunity to contribute, which is something I feel myself doing so it’s good to know it’s recognised!
It’s such a great way to get in-depth and honest feedback coming from a place of total impartiality. FLS is a scheme of motivated and ambitious individuals yet because it’s mixed groups and not connected with the day-to-day work, it doesn’t feel at all competitive.
Recap of course so far
We had a quick review of the range of tools, techniques and theories that we have touched on over the previous modules. When seen as a collective there is a lot of new information that has been shared…
We discussed the Plan/Do/Reflect/Think loop, and the different communication styles required at different stages. I have to confess to being a little confused (and bored) by the ‘four-category models’, so many management and leadership theories seem to boil down to that, and I worry about oversimplification. I would also like to better understand whether/how this particular cycle is different to others such as Plan/Do/Check/Act and Observe/Orient/Decide/Act.
There can be a disconnect between what we know of ourselves and what others know, and sometimes others can know us better or differently than we might assume. Most people were familiar with the Johari window, but this discussion took that further and introduced the ’56 adjectives’ exercise.
Inspired by Anna Shipman’s experiment, I’ve also asked co-workers for their views via a google form. Partly I hope to be able to use this evidence in the submission of the end-of-course assignment, but it’s also opened my eyes to another way of seeking quick feedback.
One of the tutors talked a bit about ‘making the unconscious conscious, and we’ve all heard ‘ignorance is bliss‘ but are those two things sort of in competition? Or at least you have to accept that not being ignorant is hard both practically and emotionally.
Serious Play
An early task in this module was to play with Lego! (my kind of activity!) We were asked to create something which portrayed ‘the leader you want to be’ as individuals and then as a group build something to show ‘the support required in our leadership journey’.
I found the different approaches that people took to the challenge interesting. Did they get stuck in straight away and build from the heart, or did they take time to consider and build from the head? My own approach, based on a lego piece that spoke to me (a ladder), was to build based on a broad idea about leadership as a series of connections and relationships.
In the group build (picture below), I was nominated to take the lead, which I was initially a little uncomfortable with – it felt like a lot of pressure to try to create something which spoke to what others had imagined. The approach to this was different, more planned and collaborative – asking people what they felt and whether I was getting things right or if anything needed to change. DONK! It’s only just dawned on me that it in itself was a leadership lesson about inclusivity and asking for feedback!
Playing with Lego won’t be for everyone, it’s a case of having to pick and choose the moments for serious play. It could become a gimmick which loses its value, but I think it could be useful in the right circumstances.
Organisational Trauma
This session generated intense debate and reflection. It’s also an area that could have been difficult to discuss, so I commend the tutors for handling it sensitively.
I was surprised that for such a human-centred concept as trauma, the definition we were asked to consider had zero reference to people and was all about serving the bottom line.
I definitely can see that organisations themselves can be vulnerable to and impacted by both shocks and chronic stresses, and this can compound and be compounded by the stresses of individuals within the organisation. This is an area that I want to learn more about as I think it’s highly relevant to emergency management, and found this guide which looks very helpful.
We were asked to think about potential ways of addressing this trauma, and one of the discussions was to be more creative and get outside of our existing comfort zones, perhaps by holding discussions in new environments.
I’m unclear from the course what agency any one person has to do anything about organisational trauma, which did leave a bit of a feeling of despair.
Using Your Voice
Excitingly, and following on from our own advice in the previous discussion, we were in a different environment for this part of the module – Coventry University’s TV studio.
If you’ve ever been accused of having a telephone voice, then somebody has noticed you varying your communication style, and that’s what this section was exploring, based on feedback from a survey which we had completed earlier.
With so many examples of good and bad communicators, it’s a slight shame that there were;t more opportunities to dissect examples and look at what made them good/bad.
We were asked to form small groups and provide a 5-minute briefing on the topic of “returning to the workplace post-COVID”. No further instructions were given, and our group decided to experiment with a ‘directing’ style of communication.
Being filmed added another layer, and I found myself being far more conscious of my body language than I would have been in just a presentation and being concerned that I was fidgeting. I really enjoyed the opportunity to practice in a safe space, and to have feedback from peers. Interestingly, they also commented on my body language, however with the opposite observation; I was too still! Having access to the recordings means that we’re also able to go back and review these presentations, and I expect to see other things watching it more dispassionately.
How am I getting on with my earlier FLS commitments?
Another run-through of whether I’ve kept my promises to myself…I committed to:
Be more intentional about reflection.Update: 8/10. A slight decline by one point. The protected time for reflection in my diary remains, however a change in job role means that my weekly Team emails have slipped in the last couple of weeks. I wonder if there is a way that I can continue to document my reflection – I’ve found those emails helpful in the sense of having a ‘deadline’ and having built a level of expectation, and I think I need that structure so that I commit to reflecting.
Ask my team and colleagues for more feedback on how I work.Update: 9/10. I’ve made great strides in this area over the last few months. Partly that has been as a result of changing roles and inviting feedback as part of my handovers and exit interviews. I also took a more intentional approach to asking for feedback after challenging meetings. Perhaps this exposes a bias towards the negative and I should seek feedback irrespective of how I feel an interaction went.
Review my personal objectives to make them more values-based. Update: 2/10. I am still struggling quite a lot with this. I have convinced myself that traditional objectives don’t sit well with me, and it’s been helpful to hear similar perspectives from others in my FLS cohort. However, I haven’t yet determined or documented values-based objectives, which should probably happen before the end of the course.
Push myself to be more forthcoming at an earlier stage.Update: 7/10. This is still an area that I know I need to work on. Going into Module 4 I decided to specifically explore this and made a conscious effort to be more forthcoming. I contributed more in lecture sessions (about both content and my feelings), took leadership roles in group activities, nominated myself to provide plenary feedback and put myself forwards for the on-camera activity. It was therefore interesting that my co-coach still observed that “you can do this rapid evaluation and always have something of value to add but sometimes I feel that you want to speak up but don’t”.
I want to take advantage of co-coaching.Update: 4/10. I had good intentions but then with moving jobs between modules I have to start again with finding my ‘tribe’ of peers that I work with and connect with. I’ve already started doing that, but it has slowed progress on this particular objective.
Practice using other conflict approaches to build muscle memory.Update: 2/10. I try to avoid conflict where possible, so haven’t really been able to practice this. I’ll continue trying to find ways of approaching this.
Be a bit more vulnerable.Update: 8/10. I’ve really tried quite hard to do this. What I’ve realised is that vulnerability doesn’t always have to mean bearing your soul, but can also be seen as weighing up options, explaining decision-making processes and offering more information than is required. Like most things, the more you try the less daunting things become, so this is still a work in progress in terms of effectiveness, but I’m scoring myself highly on the basis of effort!
This isn’t the last of my FLS blog posts; I’ve still got some ‘homework to do’ and want to give myself a window of time to explore concepts from this recent module, but if you’ve been following the journey then thank you, and look out for the next post in the New Year.
The group prompted to consider the theme of consistency were the first to grab some blu-tac and start to put words onto a page, filling in blanks and adjusting the words that had been provided to fit their purpose. 
Perhaps a genuine suggestion, but I suspect that this suggestion from the group considering ‘our power’ was their wildcard! 
And the final example, which I think is great, is that the group asked to think about ‘our approach’ came up with an acrostic-style creation. 
Place Naming
Much of what we know about the Great Fire of London we owe to the diaries of Samuel Pepys. Likewise, on March 28, 1944, the Dutch government-in-exile appealed to citizens to 
Emergency management has become more popular but remains a niche profession which doesn’t have much airtime. I hope this post gives a bit of a flavour of what emergency management is like as a job, as well as my tips on breaking into the field.
