Fire has always been a part of Australia’s environment. Over thousands of years, flora and fauna have adapted through various means, and Eucalypts for example, even depend on fire to regenerate. Australia's landscape is resilient to bushfires and continues to regrow and thrive. And we want to help Australia's communities to do the same.
Well, we wish it were that simple. And believe us, that would be a much easier story to tell. It turns out our flora and fauna doesn’t always thrive after a bushfire, and that’s because Australia has been getting warmer for the last 70 years, since 1950. This heating leads to more frequent and more intense bushfires, which also puts strains on our bushfire-prone communities in Australia. We want to help Australians adapt to these worsening bushfire conditions by creating tools that help them navigate these situations when they do happen.
We are a social enterprise that develops interactive experiences and tools that help communities adapt to worsening bushfire conditions. With a unique combination of human-centred design, storytelling and interactive technology skills, we have an evolving toolkit – from bushfire-themed escape rooms to a daily smoky web-app that recommends safe behaviours – that can be tailored to target different demographics, age groups and settings. Everything we develop is:
Who better to advise about what a community needs, than the community themselves. They’re the experts in knowing what their problems are, and we’re there to help co-create a solution.
We’re firm believers in bringing the latest research out of journal papers, and applying it to real life scenarios. Strong relationships with bushfire practitioners and researchers also helps us to stay up to date.
Driven by our own research and past experience, we develop communication campaigns that creatively incentivise and reward positive behaviour to build resilient and thriving bushfire-prone communities.
What is good for one community may not suit the next. That’s why we have an ever-growing toolkit that can be tailored for different demographics, age groups and settings. Our goal is to build up the toolkit over time. We are currently seeking funding to develop new tools based on our initial community consultation and research.
Is it Smoky?
Evacuation archetype quiz
Escape Room: Leave Early
Choose-your-own-adventure game
Rachael Vorwerk is a science communicator and has been published in Cosmos, Decision Point and CSIRO’s Double Helix magazine. In 2017 Rachael conducted research into the success of ABC’s War on Waste television series, and has more recently broadened into social change communication as a consultant.
Dan is passionate about empowering teams and individuals to solve tough problems. He utilises human-centred design and design thinking processes in conjunction with storytelling and technology to make impactful outcomes for his users.
Danielle's passion lies in student-centred education that leverages human emotion, story and play to deliver meaningful and memorable experiences. Danielle is currently undertaking a Master of Digital Learning with a research focus on escape room simulations for bushfire prone communities.
A simple conversation can be the first step in building your community’s resilience. FireThrive would love to be part of that conversation to co-develop tools that help community adapt to worsening bushfire conditions.
