RCA-led research project awarded grant to investigate emergency signals

A team led by Dr Aura Satz in the RCA’s School of Arts & Humanities has secured a £1.1 million three-year research grant to continue their investigation into emergency signals.

Scoring Warnings, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, mobilises artistic practices to interrogate the instructional mode of address in disaster preparedness.

It examines crossovers between emergency communication and contemporary art to explore more inclusive, engaging, and effective ways of communicating risk.

Building on an earlier AHRC-funded project, Preemptive Listening, which produced a feature film re-imagining sirens and alarms, Scoring Warnings responds to the global challenge of alarm fatigue by investigating how warnings can be made more effective, inclusive, and trusted.

The project will combine historical and contemporary research with co-creative workshops to generate new methodologies across art and warning studies, culminating in a documentary film, audio-essays, exhibitions, and publications.

Scoring Warnings is a collaboration between the Royal College of Art, University of the Arts London’s Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice (CRiSAP), University College London’s Warning Research Centre (WRC), the Global Network of Civil Society Organisations for Disaster Reduction (GNDR), Tate Modern, East Gallery, Arnolfini, Hangar Barcelona and more.

It is co-led by Aura Satz, Francesca Laura Cavallo (Royal College of Art), Irene Revell (University of the Arts London), with partners Carina Fearnley and Ilan Kelman (University College London).