Arts Disaster and Crisis Preparedness Conference 2026

A strength the arts bring to disaster preparedness and recovery is their ability to incorporate narrative and storytelling. Much of emergency preparedness education, disaster reporting, and support for survivors is fact-based, dry and didactic, hiding the human experiences and costs of these disasters. But how do we build collective narratives that tell a more complete story? What participatory story-building tools do we have as artists? How do we build shared stories in diverse communities with very different lived experiences?


Join a group of artists sharing practices for generating collective stories. Together we will explore our tools for creating narrative together, to inform our preparedness and recovery work in our communities. This is an experiential and experimental lab, where we will explore movement and storytelling methodologies from a variety of pedagogies to develop practices for working with groups new to storytelling. We will try out material creation methods that can
be used to shape performances, and methods of connecting and processing that can be used in any group setting from conferences to classrooms. Join us to experiment with new tools, discuss a variety of modalities for generating creative material, and discover new strategies for building shared stories. Bring your own tools and exercises to add to the mix, and work with our group of artists, first responders, facilitators and emergency preparedness specialists to test out some of ours. Our group has experience facilitating story and performance workshops with artists, first responders and emergency management professionals - and we know that each process is one of experimentation and learning.


Come experiment together with strategies that might fit your audiences and creative teams, and leave with new tools to use in your own community to prepare for, process, and heal from emergencies and disasters.

This workshop gives arts practitioners firsthand experience with story circles, practical facilitation training, and tools to use the methodology responsibly in disaster recovery and community healing contexts.


Some of the most important knowledge a community holds about disaster (i.e., what it felt like, what broke down, what held) never makes it into official reports or planning documents. It lives in people's memories and in the stories they tell each other. Story circles are a structured methodology for gathering and honoring exactly that kind of knowledge.
Rooted in the tradition developed by Junebug Productions and later adapted and popularized by Roadside Theater in Appalachia, story circles bring people together around a shared prompt, offering each participant equal time and equal footing to speak from personal experience. No one is an expert. No one is a subject. Everyone is a witness. In communities that have experienced disaster, that quality of mutual witnessing, of not being alone with hard things, may matter as much as any planning outcome the methodology could produce.


This half day workshop moves through four phases. We introduce the story circle methodology, its origins, and its ground rules. Participants then experience a story circle firsthand. From there, we open a collaborative conversation about where story circles might fit in disaster contexts, whether as a community engagement or planning tool, as part of recovery, or simply as a way of rebuilding the social fabric that disasters fray. We give serious attention to the ethical dimensions of this work. When people are still living with grief or trauma, a methodology designed to open deep sharing carries real risk. For example, stories can go darker than anticipated, people may share more than they later wish they had, and facilitators may find themselves holding more than they are equipped to handle.


These are not hypothetical concerns, and this workshop treats them as central, not as fine print. Participants will receive hands-on facilitation training and take home a set of handouts designed to support them in planning and leading story circles in their own communities and organizations. They will leave with firsthand experience of the methodology, practical facilitation skills and resources, a grounded sense of its possibilities and limits, and a more honest set of questions about if, when, and how to use it responsibly.

Designed for those who help coordinate a local, regional, or state-level arts or cultural response network, the forum creates a dedicated space for peer-to-peer learning and mentoring, with knowledge exchange across disaster response networks at their varied stages of development.

Currently, through the work of the Alliance for Response and the Performing Arts Readiness project, approximately 40-50 response networks for arts and cultural heritage exist across the United States (American Institute for Conservation 2025; LYRASIS 2026). As these networks continue to evolve and serve their communities, there is a need to understand how they operate - and might operate and collaborate more effectively - across different geographic locations, jurisdictions, and populations.

Agenda:

• 9 am - 9:30 am

Welcome, Introductions, and Opening Presentations, led by the Alliance for Response and the National Coalition for Arts Preparedness and Emergency Response (NCAPER), to discuss AfR and NCAPER’s past and current work supporting response networks. 

• 9:30 am - 10:15 am 

Sustainability Panel Discussion moderated by Christie Cain, with a panel of current network leaders, with questions around open versus paid participation, governance categories, cross-disciplinary involvement, and networks’ ability to accept and manage funds. 

• Break

• 10:30 am - 11 am 

Roundtable Peer-to-Peer learning, small-group discussions, divided by response network size and scope, to discuss current strengths and challenges.

• 11 am - 12:30 pm 

Focused Training Activity, led by Annie Rubel, National Heritage Responder

Outcomes include supporting participants in identifying practical strategies, discovering emerging patterns across networks, and providing national leaders with key takeaways to support networks more broadly in the future. 

This pre-conference workshop introduces Move to Connect, a research-informed, arts-based intervention designed to strengthen social connection and support mental well-being in community settings, particularly in the context of disruption and recovery. Grounded in a 2023 pilot study integrating creative movement with Social Network Analysis (SNA), and supported by a newly developed program in collaboration with Cooperative Extension, this initiative demonstrates how embodied, arts-based practices can build trust, reduce isolation, and activate relational networks that serve as critical care infrastructure during times of crisis.


Designed as a train-the-trainer model, this session equips participants with the skills, tools, and confidence to implement and teach movement-based connection practices within their own communities. Developed through interdisciplinary collaboration, the curriculum translates an eight-session intervention into adaptable modules suitable for extension professionals, community leaders, and cultural workers across diverse contexts. The workshop places particular emphasis on one core session, guiding participants through a structured process that integrates journaling, facilitated discussion, collaborative movement-making, and informal performance.


This sequence models how creative practice can support reflection, storytelling, and collective meaning-making key components of trauma-informed and resilience-focused work. Participants will actively engage in these practices, gaining firsthand experience in leading others through similar processes.


In addition to experiential learning, the session highlights best practices in trauma-informed facilitation, inclusive engagement, and ethical community-based work. Attendees will explore a variety of resources, including lesson plans, facilitator guides, evaluation tools, and multimedia training materials designed to support both program delivery and replication.


The workshop concludes with a facilitated discussion and Q&A focused on adaptation, scalability, and integration into
emergency preparedness and recovery efforts. Participants will leave with practical, evidence-based strategies and ready-to-use materials to foster connection, care, and resilience through the arts in their own communities.

The arts are increasingly recognized for their role in disaster readiness, response, and recovery. Beyond economic recovery and tourism, arts and cultural programming can support social and emotional wellbeing by bringing people together and offering ways to express experiences that are difficult to put into words. They can also create space to share stories, honor loss, and reconnect with cultural identity and community strengths. In recent years, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has expanded its disaster work through community-based projects, cross-sector partnerships, and the development of a practical toolkit. Created with Creative Forces: NEA Military Healing Arts Network, the toolkit draws on over a decade of trauma-informed work with military-connected populations and the experience of community leaders across the field.


This hands-on workshop introduces core concepts from the toolkit, including the role of the arts across different phases of disaster, principles for offering arts experiences in ways that support wellbeing, and approaches to building partnerships across sectors. Participants will explore how the purpose and structure of arts engagement can shift over time and how to align activities with the needs and realities of different stages of disaster. They will also explore how to create supportive environments, recognize different responses to stress, and maintain boundaries while continuing to attend to their own needs and capacity.


The workshop will also address how to communicate the value of this work to partners outside the arts sector and how to position arts and cultural efforts within broader community systems. Participants will consider how to work alongside existing services, contribute to shared goals, and build relationships that support coordinated and sustainable efforts.
Through discussion, examples, and applied reflection, participants will explore how to apply the toolkit’s concepts in their own communities. Case examples will show how arts and cultural approaches can be adapted across contexts and integrated into coordinated, community-centered disaster efforts, with attention to both immediate needs and longer-term community wellbeing.

This train-the-trainer workshop introduces participatory arts practices that strengthen social capital, connection and organizational well-being. Participants will learn how to facilitate accessible arts-based experiences that help build caring relationships and community within organizations. Arts-based experiences can help organizations strengthen the relational conditions that support well-being, collaboration, and community connection, especially in environments experiencing stress or rapid change.


This train-the-trainer workshop introduces the Arts for Well-Being (AWiAM) framework, a participatory arts approach originally developed within academic medicine to strengthen social capital, connection, and organizational well-being. Complex workplaces and communities are shaped not only by systems and structures, but also by the quality of the human relationships that exist within them. Everyday interactions—how people listen, respond, offer support, and collaborate—gradually build social capital: the trust, familiarity, and relational strength that allow individuals and teams to work effectively together. Participatory arts practices create accessible opportunities for individuals to pause, reflect, and engage with one another in ways that make relationship-building visible within everyday
environments. These experiences are intentionally designed to support individual wellness while strengthening a community of honor and connection, an essential component of organizational well-being.


During the workshop, participants will experience a series of arts-based practices that use visual exploration, creative reflection, storytelling, movement, and engagement with shared spaces to support dialogue and connection. These activities do not require artistic training or prior facilitation experience. Instead, participatory arts are used as tools to support communication, perspective-taking, and relational awareness. The session will also introduce a set of caring behaviors that help participants reflect on how everyday interactions influence trust, collaboration, and support within organizations and communities. Participants will explore how these behaviors surface through shared creative experiences and how they can be intentionally cultivated through facilitated dialogue.


In addition to participating in these experiences, attendees will learn facilitation strategies, reflection prompts, and practical considerations for implementing arts-based engagement practices within their own organizations or community contexts. By the end of the workshop, participants will leave with a replicable model and practical tools for integrating participatory arts experiences that strengthen relationships, build social capital, support well-being, and help cultivate cultures of care and collaboration.

This forum is designed as an invited, in-person gathering to bring together national leaders in cultural heritage response with leaders of arts and cultural response networks to discuss the formation, management, and sustainability of cultural response mapping tools that help identify and communicate disaster impacts on cultural sites across their service areas.  These maps address a critical need for US federal, state, and local jurisdictions by providing a centralized reporting mechanism to track losses of arts and cultural heritage from disasters, as well as a support infrastructure to advocate for disaster resources for arts, cultural, and creative assets. 

The forum’s agenda includes a full-group discussion on the findings from the cultural response network mapping survey, facilitated discussion with leaders of disaster response networks currently undertaking mapping activities, and roundtables to support knowledge exchange among networks on mapping efforts. The session will end with a culminating discussion of mapping patterns, emerging principles, and best practices. Outcomes of the forum will include a formal white paper and future working groups for networks to continue building on mapping efforts.

Join disaster preparedness professionals, arts organizations, and individuals in a tabletop exercise for hands-on practice identifying and utilizing your resources to help your community in times of disaster.


Artists and arts organizations possess key elements that make them vital resources in times of disaster: they are deeply embedded in their communities, have intimate knowledge of local culture, and have access to concrete skills and resources. However, our emergency preparedness ecosystem often leaves arts organizations out when planning for large-scale emergencies.


Facilitated by emergency preparedness professionals, first responders, and artists, this hands-on tabletop exercise will use disaster preparedness tools to prepare artists to be a resource in emergency response. Come to this session to connect with makers, arts organizations and disaster responders. Together, we will use a nationally- utilized disaster preparedness model to rehearse possible responses to disasters hitting our communities.


We will walk through a disaster scenario using props, maps and interactive discussion, finding opportunities for you and your collaborators to support emergency response and recovery. We will practice discovering community needs, identifying our resources, and putting them to use in concrete ways that support our communities. This “rehearsal for life” will give you experience in problem-solving and co-creating responses to elements such as washed-out roads, disabled cell phone networks, displaced individuals, and overwhelmed hospitals. Join us to brainstorm how you and your community can come together to pool resources, solve problems, and work through conflict. Whether you’re an individual artist, part of an arts organization, or part of another type of community group, your experience from this session will increase your preparedness for disasters.


Try on an emergency scenario with us, test out strategies, stretch your creative-thinking muscles, and leave with ideas to take home to your community.

This workshop explores how collage can help individuals make meaning from tragedy through the use of accessible creative practices that bring order from chaotic experiences and build agency and connection in the wake of disaster.


In the aftermath of disaster, grief often feels fragmented—disrupting memory, identity, and a sense of stability.


This workshop explores how expressive and accessible arts, and especially collage, can support meaning-making by helping individuals and communities transform chaos into coherence. Grounded in the concept of meaning-making articulated by David Kessler's proposed "6th Stage" of the grieving process, this session positions creative expression as a vital tool for navigating loss and rebuilding connection.


The presentation will begin by introducing participants to key concepts in grief and trauma, including how disasters impact emotional and cognitive processing. The presentation will highlight why collage is uniquely suited to this work: the use of fragments mirrors the experience of trauma, while the act of assembling images fosters integration, agency, and reflection. Participants will also be introduced to practical considerations for facilitating this work in their own contexts.


The remaining time will be dedicated to a guided, hands-on collage-making experience. Participants will engage with a variety of materials—magazines, paper, fabric, photographs, and found items—to make their own meaning from pieces of visual “scrap.” Emphasis will be placed on process over product, with a focus on intuitive selection and personal symbolism. No prior artistic experience is required. Participants will leave with both a collage and a deeper understanding of how creative practices can support healing and meaning-making after disaster.


This workshop is ideal for those seeking adaptable tools to support emotional recovery and resilience in the communities they serve.