Arts Disaster and Crisis Preparedness Conference 2026

Designed as a half-day networking and training session, this workshop focuses on strengthening arts and cultural response networks by examining shared best practices in network design, governance, and operations.


Open to those who help coordinate a city, regional, or state-level arts or cultural response network, the session creates a dedicated space for peer-to-peer learning and mentoring, with knowledge exchange across 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.


In light of this need, this workshop has been designed for networking, sharing, and training, as follows:

1. Opening Presentations by Christie Cain, Emergency Programs Manager with the Alliance for Response (AfR) and Tom Clareson, former Director of the Performing Arts Readiness Project (PAR), to outline the origins of arts and cultural response networks and recent impacts. Followed by Mollie Quinlan-Hayes to discuss the National Coalition for Arts Preparedness and Emergency Response's (NCAPER) current programs supporting response networks. 2.
2. Roundtable Peer-to-Peer Learning: small-group discussions, divided by response network size and scope, to discuss current strengths and challenges.
3. Sustainability Panel Discussion: moderated by Christie Cain with the Alliance for Response, with a panel of current network members, with questions around open versus paid participation, governance categories, cross-disciplinary involvement, and networks’ ability to accept and manage funds.
4. Focused Network Training Activity, led by National Heritage Responder Annie Rubel.

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.