Flood Rats Falling Through Gaps: Seven Childhood Flood Mappings in the Metacrisis of Climate Change

Abstract

In 2022, Australia experienced one of its most devastating climate-induced crises, the unprecedented Northern Rivers floods, which saw many education settings and schools damaged, and deemed either unsalvageable, temporarily closed or significantly disrupted. The floods’ impact on children and young people and their education, from their perspectives, has been under-examined. To improve understanding of these impacts, the Floods + Me research project – an inter-university and transdisciplinary collaboration of child, youth and adult researchers – mapped child and youth experiences of life and schooling after the floods. The research took a child-centred methodology positioning children and youth as agents and knowledge producers. In this paper, we mapped the findings of this study posthumanly through an arts-based and diffractive framework thinking with the concept of the metacrisis. Through this diffractive mapping process, seven concepts emerged namely, loss and isolation, lack of clarity, place, multispecies relationships, support structures failure, silence and healing and affect and emotion. This paper provides insights into the precise ways children and youth want to be involved in climate disasters and have their voices heard and actioned through the complexities of the metacrisis.