The Office of Cultural Recovery, led by the University, promotes the creative unlocking of the sector hit by the Dana

## The Office of Cultural Recovery, led by the University, promotes the creative unlocking of the sector hit by the Dana

Estate of the material and the premises of Albena Teatre after the flood. Picture lent by ORC.

Many professionals of the performing arts, audiovisual, cultural management, even journalism were hit by the Dana on 29 October 2024 confront each other, half year later, a permanent creative mental block that doesn’t let them continue with their work. For this reason, the Oficina de Recuperación Cultural (ORC), taken by the Universitat de València, has organised the first workshops of emotional attention led by the ONG Psychologists Without Frontiers.

Requested by the Ministry of Culture, *Gestió Cultural. Associació Valenciana de Professionals de la Cultura* launched the Oficina de Recuperación posdana last December with the purpose of pairing with the cultural sector of the affected zone by the floods in the reparation of material damages, but also the emotional impact suffered by the professionals.

As is explained from the Office, it has been detected that a great part of culture professionals affected have stopped creating and they find even more mental block than what they used to when beginning productions or projects, which doesn’t allow them to incorporate to work with the immediate logic cause: the lost of quality, sensibility and artistic creativity.

The main factor that feds this “creative mental block” is the emotional impact of the catastrophe in artists that, according to **Yessica Díaz**, emergency and crisis psychologist, floods in the South of Valencia provoked “a great negative impact” for the general loss - where there were more than a hundred deaths-, but also “the loss of workshops, studies, implementations and high cost material” that has supposed an evident problem in the recuperation process.

**Yessica Díaz**, coordinator of the Humanitarian Action Programme from the Dana Intervention of Psychologists Without Frontiers, signals that the typology of personal affectation by the lived episode can be classified as severe, mild or medium, harming the cognitive areas of the brain. “The stress for the suffered catastrophe has caused scarcity of concentration, memory loss, reactive anxiety to stimuli and, in severe cases, trauma”, she indicates.

One of the emotional accompaniment sessions by Psychologists Without Frontiers

**Paco**, Sound Engineer of **Paiporta,** for instance, acknowledges that he doesn’t see himself with the capacity to retake the project he was initiating the same day of the Dana because, he says, “when I want to go back to editing I remember that afternoon and I freeze”.

In the case of **Carlos**and **Sebas**, creators of scenic ilumination and audiovisual, demonstrates a direct relation between necessity of recovering normality and safety in his work space to continue with his professional life, stopped at once that 29 October. “We live in **Chiva**, in the mountain. We were saved, but the house suffered important damages that we weren’t able to repair. Watching our space like that doesn’t allow us to go forward”, they confirm.

A similar situation to that of **Fátima,** make-up artist and clothes designer for cinema and life-performances, inhabitant of **Picanya,** where she has her company and her house that is still braced; and she, “without strength to continue”, laments herself.

How much time does it have to pass for these professionals to go back to creating? Is there a solution? The expert **Yessica Díaz** believes that “we have to integrate what has happened in our life and not relocate it, cover it, bury it..., but incorporate it in order to cure it as a group and continue with our life project”.

In short, we must reborn from the mud.

*Gestió Cultural*, integrated by more than 120 associates, received the request from the Spanish Ministry of Culture to give cover-up to the recovery of the affected sector by the floods on 29 October through the ORC, which conforms 45 associations of performing arts, music, art and audiovisual.

**The Universitat de València, in ground zero**  
For their part, the Universitat de València, through the Office of the Vice-Principal for Culture and Society, continues being present in ground zero working for the rescue of the memory and historic heritage of the Valencian people through help and recovery programmes post-dana like the project ‘Salvem les Fotos’ (with the treatment of 1,5 millions of photographs coming from 800 families); in the world of music, with grants for the recovery of instruments and the reconstruction of musical societies; and with art in collaboration with the IVCR+I and the Valencia Provincial Council for the recovery of Contemporary art works.

At the same time, all programmed activities by the **University Culture Service**during the Year 2024/2025 have a solidary character dedicated to those affected by the DANA, giving the earnings from tickets to the **UV Support and recovery programmes post Dana****.**

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