Arts Disaster and Crisis Preparedness Conference 2026

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 roundtable discussion will introduce core concepts from the toolkit, including the role of the arts across different phases of disaster, principles for offering arts experiences that support connection and wellbeing, and approaches to building partnerships across sectors. From there, the session will center on shared discussion and exchange. Participants will explore how these tools can be adapted across different contexts and how the purpose and structure of arts engagement may shift over time in response to community needs. The conversation 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 share experiences, challenges, and questions related to working across sectors, supporting communities in non-clinical ways, and aligning arts-based efforts with existing services and resources. Examples from multiple communities, including rural and disaster-affected regions, will be used to ground the discussion and highlight different approaches in practice.


Together, participants will reflect on how arts and cultural work can support connection, cultural continuity, and community wellbeing, and consider how these ideas may apply within their own communities.

In April, a small, thoughtful group of artists, cultural workers, organizers, and cross-sector partners gathered in the beautiful backdrop of Estill County to imagine how artists can be embedded in preparedness, mitigation, and long-term resilience in partnership with local leaders, technical experts, and institutions. The idea was to support a response grounded in real relationships, community, and equitable access to resources. The agenda included sharing current mitigation and recovery efforts happening across the region; exploring how creative practitioners can plug into or strengthen those efforts; identifying gaps, opportunities, and partnership models; and outlining what an ongoing artist-led emergency response network might look like.


That was the plan. But what really happened in those two days, and what should happen next? The CAReNet team, which operates under a decentralized leadership model, will share successes, challenges, and next steps while bringing session participants into its vision of empowering artists in relief and recovery efforts to foster strong, connected communities ready to face what comes next.

The Roundtable Discussion will consist of sharing the new Arts and Post Disaster Recovery Resource that was created by the UF CAM research lab. The resource includes art projects and interventions conducted by artists, community leaders, and art organizations to provide a creative outlet after a disaster has struck a community. During our session, we will be guiding participants in the usage of the website and then collecting insight into its effectiveness through guided discussions.


To start, we will present for 25 minutes the objective and vision behind the project, discussing the need for a platform to share the art events and programs that have been implemented after a disaster has struck. We will then touch base on the various types of disasters that our research focused on and collected articles on, including Acts of Violence, Forces of Nature, Extended Stressors, and System Failures. Our team will then describe the themes that were designed to categorize the articles and to provide a clearer understanding and usage of the website.


For the next 25 minutes, the participants will be invited to share their comments on their experience of the resource as professionals in various fields. Participants will complete a questionnaire to describe their positions in the field of arts and community development, whether as individual artists, art institutions, or other stakeholders. Then they will share their experience in Disaster Response, either as responders or those affected by a disaster. They will discuss in their tables the beliefs about the effects of disaster response. On a shared paper, the tables will list the effects. They will then be invited to interact with the website to find an article that could assist in one or more of the listed disaster effects. Attendees will be involved in a guided activity to express their experience in the usage of the website as leaders in their respective roles.


The last 5-10 minutes will be used to share only a few of the responses of the participants. At the end, we will collect any notes and survey results written by the participants to gather insight into the website’s effectiveness.

Thousands of Local Arts Agencies (LAAs) exist across the United States, supporting artists and cultural organizations while working at the intersection of public systems and community life. Americans for the Arts (AFTA) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) recognize that LAAs are uniquely positioned to contribute to disaster readiness, response, and recovery. These organizations bring trusted relationships and expertise in cultural planning, grant-making, facilities maintenance, and healing arts programming that can be activated during any disaster. Yet this cultural infrastructureremains largely untapped in emergency management systems. There is a clear opportunity to address this gap in cross-sector partnerships by integrating LAAs as core collaborators in building more resilient communities.


This roundtable invites participants into a facilitated conversation with NEA and AFTA. The discussion will be grounded in the understanding that LAAs are critical to sustaining the systems of care, creativity, and belonging that help communities strengthen social connections and maintain identity. Through peer exchange and guided dialogue, participants will examine how LAAs build partnerships with emergency management offices and other sectors. Resources will be shared on how arts and cultural activity contribute to both economic and emotional recovery, with examples of LAAs acting to stabilize creative economies, reinvigorate community spaces, and support collective healing through artist-led programming such as story circles and memorialization. Through guided dialogue, participants will identify persistent barriers to effective cross-sector collaboration and develop solutions as a group.

The discussion will also consider how national leadership can further support this work, and attendees will leave with practical examples and partnership strategies that can be adapted and applied within their own communities. By sharing resources, best practices, and firsthand experiences, the roundtable will deepen understanding of how LAAs can be activated as essential care infrastructure during all stages of the disaster cycle.

Resilience is often discussed in emergency management as the ability to prepare for, withstand, respond to, recover from, and adapt to disruptions. But what does resilience actually look like in practice? How does it change depending on whether we are considering a community, an organization, a business, a profession, our family, or ourselves? This roundtable discussion will explore resilience through the full emergency management lifecycle while expanding the conversation beyond traditional definitions. Participants will be invited to share their perspectives, experiences, challenges, and strategies for building resilience before, during, and after disruption.

In the aftermath of the 2023 Lahaina wildfires, communities across Maui faced profound disruption, including displacement, grief, cultural loss, and increased strain on families and support systems. In response, artists, educators, cultural practitioners, and health leaders mobilized to restore connection; not only as a form of healing, but as a strategy for prevention. This roundtable introduces “Connection as Prevention,” a framework emerging from cross-sector partnerships among AHAS (Archive for Health, Arts & Spirit), the Hawaiʻi State Department of Health, National Coalition for Arts Preparedness and Emergency Response, and the Hawaiʻi Arts & Health Network.


Grounded in active work on Maui, this session positions arts-based practice as disaster response infrastructure and explores how connection, built through creative practice, functions as a protective factor in both disaster recovery and child abuse prevention. Rather than a formal presentation, this session will facilitate a structured, participatory dialogue that invites attendees to engage with:
- Case examples from Lahaina, including school-based and community-based creative interventions
- Strategies for partnering with public health systems, including work with the Hawaiʻi State Department of Health
- Approaches to building regional and national arts response networks, including collaboration with NCAPER
- The role of Indigenous-centered and multi-racial leadership in shaping equitable and culturally grounded response systems


Participants will be guided through small-group discussion and collective sensemaking to explore how these ideas translate to their own communities and contexts. This roundtable is designed to:
- Surface shared challenges and opportunities across regions
- Exchange strategies for integrating arts into disaster response and prevention systems
- Build connections among practitioners working at the intersection of arts, health, and emergency response
- Contribute to the growing field of arts-based disaster preparedness and recovery


By centering dialogue, relationship-building, and shared learning, this session advances the conference call to reimagine readiness, not only as a set of protocols, but as a network of relationships that can be activated in times of crisis.