Timeline: 2023 - 2024

Project partners: RMIT University; Upwey High School.

Funding: Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation

Project summary: Across Victoria, 430 schools are listed on the Department of Education (DoE) Bushfire At-Risk Register (BARR). Inclusion on the BARR requires a school to pre-emptively close on Catastrophic Fire Danger days and take other pre-emptive emergency planning and preparedness activities. The DoE policy guidance for BARR schools states that “when students are actively involved in school emergency planning and preparedness, they will also be better equipped to follow the necessary procedures in the event of a bushfire emergency”. However, research that can inform student involvement in school bushfire planning has been lacking. This participatory action research project, conducted at Upwey High School on Melbourne’s bushfire prone peri-urban fringe, investigated students’ existing knowledge of their school’s bushfire plan and analysed the extent of their involvement in the design and implementation of that plan. It also engaged students in participatory workshops where they identified the benefits and challenges of involving students in school bushfire planning and developed their own recommendations for policy and practice. Students then hosted a school bushfire planning forum where they presented their recommendations to teachers, school leaders and local emergency managers, and engaged them in critical dialogue about student participation in school bushfire planning. The project culminated in the development of an evidence-based framework for student participation school bushfire planning.

Download the final research report here

Timeline: 2020 - 2023

Project partners: Safer Together; Victorian Country Fire Authority; Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action; Harkaway Primary School; Natural Hazards Research Australia.

Funding: Safer Together; Natural Hazards Research Australia.

Project summary: Leadrrr was commissioned to play a lead role in the development and testing of a research-informed participatory bushfire education program for Victorian Upper Primary School students. Working in collaboration with subject matter experts from across the emergency management and education sectors, we contributed to all five elements of the program framework including: 1) the authentic project-based pedagogical model; 2) curriculum-aligned teaching and learning resources; 3) the collaborative implementation strategy; 4) learning opportunities for teachers and community partners; and 5) a monitoring and evaluation framework for continuous improvement. We also drew on our ongoing research partnership with Harkaway Primary School to ensure that students and teachers were engaged as genuine partners in program development. With the support of funding from the National Emergency Management Agency, Schools in Fire Country is now being trialled in high bushfire risk locations around Victoria.

Learn more about the Schools in Fire Country pedagogical model in these videos produced by the excellent team at GOZER.

Learn more about our approach to program development in this Natural Hazards Research Australia webinar, featuring Briony Towers (Leadrrr), Neil Munro (Safer Together), Leigh Johnson (Harkaway Primary School), Scott Purdon (Chewton Primary School) and Caragh Robinson (Victorian Department of Education).

Learn more about the research that underpins Schools in Fire Country here.

Timeline: August 2023

Project partner: Lake Macquarie City Council

Funding: The symposium was funded by the Australian Government under its Black Summer Bushfire Recovery Funding and Lake Macquarie City Council.

Project summary: Leadrrr designed and delivered a workshop at the Lake Macquarie GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) creative industries symposium on Risk and Recovery. The workshop we delivered to a diverse audience of arts administrators, practitioners, curators, council members, and other community group representatives in the Lake Macquarie region focused on an introduction to mapping in disaster contexts for creative communities, including mapping practices of geographic information systems (GIS), counter cartographies, and participatory mapping (e.g., drawing on paper maps together).

Timeline: 2023

Project partners: NSW Office of the Chief Scientist, NSW Rural Fire Service, Barbara Ryan (STEM education specialist).

Project summary: Project Firestorm is an award-winning STEM program specifically designed to increase students' understanding of STEM in relation to bushfire risk management. With funding from the NSW Office of the Chief Scientist, we delivered a NESA accredited professional development course to teachers in seven locations across NSW, including Coffs Harbour, Batemans Bay, Tamworth, Berowra, Wagga Wagga, Orange and Blacktown. The course received excellent feedback from participating teachers, many of whom are now delivering Project Firestorm in their Stage 3 (Grade 5/6) classrooms.

Timeline: 2021 -2022

Project Partner: NSW Rural Fire Service

Funding: NSW Rural Fire Service

Project Summary: Leadrrr was commissioned by the NSW Rural Fire Service to lead the design of a comprehensive teacher professional development course to support the state-wide delivery of Project Firestorm, an integrated STEM unit of work for Stage 3 students. To design the course, we convened a cross-sectoral multidisciplinary advisory group who worked with us to define course objectives, develop course structure and content, and map out an implementation strategy. The 9.5 hour course has been accredited by the NSW Education Standards Authority and is now being delivered to teachers in metropolitan and regional areas across NSW. For more information about the course go to the list of NESA accredited professional development courses or contact Community.Engagement@rfs.nsw.gov.au

Timeline: 2022
Project partner(s): NSW Rural Fire Service, Barbara Ryan (STEM education specialist), Denne Dempsey (communications and media specialist)
Funding: NSW Rural Fire Service
Project summary: To support the implementation of the new Australian Fire Danger Rating System, NSW RFS commissioned Leadrrr to develop teaching and learning resources for Stage 3 students in NSW. Drawing on our extensive research into how children understand and interpret fire danger ratings, we developed a set of curriculum-aligned teaching and learning resources that respect children’s ways of knowing and position them as active participants in bushfire risk management. A highlight of this project was the design and production of a child-friendly fire danger ratings poster that can be displayed in schools and classrooms around Australia. The teaching and learning materials and supplementary resources can be downloaded here.

Timeline: 2020 - 2022

Project partners: NSW Rural Fire Service; 360 Entertainment, Triple Zero Australia Working Group

Funding: NSW Rural Fire Service

Project summary: To help ensure that children in NSW have the opportunity to learn about Triple Zero from a young age, the New South Wales Rural Fire Service (NSW RFS) teamed up with 360 Entertainment and Leadrrr to produce the Triple Zero Classroom Challenge. The Triple Zero Classroom Challenge is a comprehensive educational resource that provides children with the essential knowledge and skills they need to become competent, confident and responsible users of the Triple Zero emergency service number. For this project, Leadrrr provided technical guidance on the objectives, structure and content of the resource; developed training materials for RFS members; and designed teacher-delivered lessons to support and consolidate student learning in the classroom. The program was launched by the Minister for Emergency Services and Resilience, Steph Cooke in August 2022 at Wentworth Primary School.

Learn more about the Triple Zero Classroom Challenge here and here.

Timeline: 2022

Partners: Harkaway Primary School; Safer Together; Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC

Funding: Pro bono service

Project Summary: In early 2020, as part of Dr Briony Towers' research on learner agency at Harkaway Primary School, the grade 5/6 students developed a Bushfire Safety Manifesto. The Manifesto includes four key demands: 1) We need to learn about safety; 2) We want to make decisions about our own learning action; 3) We need access to trustworthy information from experts; 3) We want to teach others.

In 2021, during an extended Covid-19 lockdown, the new cohort of grade 5/6 students decided to make a short film about the manifesto. The students created original artworks and audio recordings that were sent through via text message to be integrated into the final production. The students premiered their film in Briony Towers and Leigh Johnson's presentation on learner agency at the 2021 Australian Disaster Resilience Conference.

The school continues to use the Manifesto to guide its whole-of-school approaches to bushfire education and child-centred disaster risk reduction. The Manifesto has also informed the design of Safer Together's Schools in Fire Country program.

Watch the Bushfire Safety Manifesto film here.

Read more about the research that led to the development of the manifesto here.

Timeline: 2020 - 2021

Project partners: United Nations Major Group for Children and Youth; Natural Hazards Centre, University of Colorado

Funding: Stockholm Environment Institute

Project summary: During the Covid-19 Pandemic, Leadrrr collaborated with the United Nations Major Group for Children and Youth (UNMGCY) on the production of ‘The Pandemic Diaries’. This initiative was part of UNMGCY’s 'Asia Pacific Researchers, Practitioners, Policy-Makers in Dialogue with Children and Youth Project'’, which supported UMGCY Young Researchers and Young Fellows for DRR to conduct policy analysis and participatory action research with children and youth in their local communities, with the goal of capturing their perspectives and experiences of disasters throughout the Asia Pacific. The 17 diaries in this collection have been written by children and young people from countries across the Asia Pacific region, including Nepal, Fiji, Australia, Bhutan, Pakistan, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and the Solomon Islands. With the guidance and support of the UNMGCY Young Fellows, each diary author has documented their personal experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read the Pandemic Diaries here.