Flood Rats: After the Rain Exhibition

Flood Rats: After the Rain

Flood Rats: After the Rain is the exhibition of the Floods + Me research project that involved a collaboration between 16 university researchers, young co-researchers from the Lismore area and some of their parents.

This project sought to understand the impacts of the Northern Rivers floods on children and young people and to map their experiences. The devastating February 2022 floods in the Northern Rivers saw many education settings and schools either deemed unsalvageable, temporarily closed, or significantly disrupted.

While the immediate priority was to ensure ‘education’ continued across the Northern Rivers, the floods’ impact on children and young people and their education was not well understood.

During the project, children and young people collected stories about the floods. They did this in a number of ways that are showcased in the exhibition – through photographs, drawings, interviews, videos and audio clips, graphs, maps and timelines.

Following the collection of these stories, workshops were held with the research team and the young people who created further artworks out of transcripts and visual materials.

What you see in the exhibition is a combination of original media and the subsequent creations. However, all the artworks and all the words from children and young people are powerfully evocative of their stories.

The name Flood Rats is inspired by the words of one young person who explained that they felt like a flood rat after their school was flooded. They were hosted on another school ground where they were treated differently to the host school students. The young people on the project felt this captured many experiences of being moved, feeling out of place or place-less for a time.

Event Details:

Date/Time: Wednesday, 9th October, 11:30am to 12:30pm, NSW Time (10:30am to 11:30am QLD time).

Venue: Southern Cross University Lismore, Learning Centre, Gallery Walk.

Host: SEAE Research Centre, Southern Cross University.

Host or Publisher SEAE Research Centre