Led by the National Centre for Resilience (NCR), in partnership with the University of Glasgow, and Dumfries-based arts organisation For Enjoyment CIC, the project used daily artistic prompts to engage participants of all backgrounds in imaginative reflection on climate adaptation, disaster preparedness, and collective care.
The project reflected the NCR’s commitment to inclusive and innovative approaches to resilience and demonstrated the value of creative practice as a powerful tool for civic engagement, education, and emotional processing in the context of environmental change.
The ‘Building Resilient Communities Through Creative Thinking’ 2025 challenge was designed to:
- Encourage widespread public participation in discussions around community resilience and climate risks.
- Foster creativity and self-expression across diverse communities in Scotland and beyond.
- Build stronger local knowledge and emotional understanding of environmental hazards.
- Showcase how artistic practice can support interdisciplinary approaches to resilience and emergency planning.
Please click to view our exhibition brochure:
Our Process
Running throughout February 2025, ‘Building Resilient Communities Through Creative Thinking’ featured 28 unique daily prompts—each offering inspiration to support reflection on topics such as flooding, climate adaptation, community infrastructure, and social connection in times of crisis. Participants were invited to respond in any medium—visual art, poetry, photography, sculpture, or storytelling—with no prior experience required.
The project was entirely open-access and online, enabling broad participation across Scotland, the wider UK, and internationally. Contributions came from local artists, school pupils, community members and creative hobbyists, offering a truly multi-generational and multicultural tapestry of responses.
A key creative collaborator was the University’s UNESCO Poet in Residence, Tawona Sithole, who contributed a haiku in response to each prompt. These daily reflections provided poetic grounding and helped to inspire the daily artworks and conversations.
So what?
The challenge generated hundreds of creative submissions, encouraged peer-to-peer learning and strengthened community bonds. Participants explored climate change not through technical language, but through deeply personal, place-based expressions. Key themes included:
- Community preparedness and local resourcefulness
- Cultural memory and shared resilience
- Emotional responses to climate disruption
- The role of imagination in future-proofing communities
The project culminated in a curated public exhibition, Building Resilient Communities Through Creative Thinking, held at the University of Glasgow’s Advanced Research Centre from 19th–25th July 2025. The exhibition featured 20 artworks and 20 haikus, each reflecting a different element of the challenge.
The Impact
The most significant impact of ‘Building Resilient Communities Through Creative Thinking’ was the space it created for inclusive, self-led engagement with resilience. It enabled participants to discuss and process climate risk in ways that felt meaningful and accessible, and it demonstrated that creative expression can powerfully complement academic, scientific, and policy-driven resilience efforts.
For the NCR, the project reinforced our strategic goal of embedding inclusive, creative methodologies in community resilience-building. Providing a scalable model that can inform future public engagement, school-based programming, and participatory policy design.
This project highlighted how art can transform abstract risks into relatable experiences, enabling people to reflect, prepare, and act with greater confidence and care. There is enormous potential to build stronger, more connected communities through art-led engagement.
