Do look up
Introduction by Joaquin Toro
After 4 years, the Understanding Risk Global Forum is back in person bringing the energy that only in-person interactions can offer. At UR conferences, we seek to provide an inclusive, creative and fun space for meaningful risk knowledge exchange, encouraging collaboration among disaster risk experts and practitioners from all over the world and between global and regional organizations. We aim to spur innovation and spark lasting partnerships.
The UR22 theme, “Riding the waves of risk,” focuses on climate and disaster risks in a multi-hazard world. To better understand risk, prevent disasters from happening, and build resilience, UR22 will explore the space where these multi-hazards collide and how disaster impacts cascade in unpredictable ways. The main hub location in Florianopolis offers an exceptional opportunity for the world to learn from Brazil and vice versa and strengthen the sustainable development agenda, moving from understanding risk to action on disaster resilience.
DO LOOK UP – An Aerial Aacrobatics Performance for Understanding Risk
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to fall from 20 feet just relying on one person to catch you? Or being lifted in the air with no control of external forces? Circus arts and acrobatics bring a deep connection between risk, trust, anticipation, and performance. Like pilots in the civil aviation sector, circus artists are remarkably talented at understanding, foreseeing, and managing what can go wrong: They look up and actually go there, where magic happens. Circus artists straddle fine lines in mitigating without eliminating risk, using the risk itself as a medium for community engagement and inspiration. Can we, as risk practitioners, learn from their talent and creativity?
The Circocan International School of Circus brings a tailor-made, live performance to UR2022 in Florianópolis. Depicting the preparation and development process of an acrobatic creation, this performance conveys how a risky, life-threatening situation can be managed through listening, connecting, trusting and relying on your surrounding community. The goal: inspire thinking and transformative action on how we perceive, communicate, and address risk.
Direction: Nickolle Abreu
Concept: Nickolle Abreu, Alan (Alby) Lee, Pedro Mello e Cruz, and Pablo Suarez
Performers: Circocan International School of Circus
Original soundtrack: Nico Cassinelli, Nickolle Abreu, and Pablo Suarez
Speakers
Joaquin Toro
Lead Disaster Risk Management Specialist / World Bank, GFDRR
Joaquín Toro is the regional coordinator for disaster risk management in Latin America and the Caribbean at the World Bank. He joined the Bank in 2003 in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region and helped setting up the LAC and Europe and Central Asia DRM Teams. He is part of the founders of Understanding Risk Community and Forums. He has more than 20 years of disaster risk management experience and holds a master’s degree in engineering management and systems engineering from George Washington University.
Pablo Suarez
Artist in Residence / National University of Singapore. Lloyd’s Register Foundation Institute for the Public Understanding of Risk
Dr Pablo Suarez is a researcher turned humanitarian worker and innovator. He is artist in residence at the Institute for the Public Understanding of Risk at the National University of Singapore, visiting researcher at Cambridge University, and innovation lead at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre. Pablo has consulted for the World Bank, Oxfam, and about twenty other humanitarian and development organizations, working from rural Zambia to the White House in more than 60 countries. His creative approaches to risk management range from new financial instruments to collaboration with aerial acrobats to inspire thinking and action.
CIRCOCAN
International School of Circus