Step aboard for a guided tour of the ever-growing world of resources for artists, small arts organizations, and those who support them.
First stop: What defines an emergency, a crisis, or a disaster?
Next: The Anatomy of an Emergency, and how understanding the cycle prepares you to avoid fight/flight/freeze and act with intention and clarity.
The tour continues through the landscape of information hubs, financial assistance, networks, guides, and publications that exist – your guide will share which are most useful at different stages of mitigation, readiness, response, and recovery.
Along the way, your guides will point out both national and local resources, share insider tips on what’s most practical, and help you chart a path through the. sometimes confusing emergency management “word soup.”
By the end of the tour, you’ll know where to go for help, how to access it quickly, and how to help others find their way too.
Fund Development and Program Officer, NCAPER/National Coalition for Arts Preparedness and Emergency Response
Mollie works primarily with two institutions committed to the readiness and recovery of artists and arts organizations in crisis. For NCAPER, the National Coalition for Arts Preparedness and Emergency Response, she serves as the Fund Development and Program Officer. This arm of her... Read More →
Have you ever wondered how many times your county has been included in a major disaster declaration? Have you ever gone online looking for county-level data related to disasters for a grant proposal, program or planning tool, or to help your organization understand the importance of community level disaster-related planning and response?
There are multiple data resources available online to assist in understanding and contextualizing local disasters. While each one uses different methods and draws on different data sources, each resource is intended to identify places with higher or lower levels of vulnerable populations and/or community resilience. Even with these online resources, navigating the websites and understanding the differences in the data they contain can be challenging. And, since learning the ins-and-outs of even just one data source or website can be time consuming, in the end, these challenges can dissuade people from using the online resources.
Intended to fill this void, Julie Zimmerman and Jeff Young produced a new 3-part data series for the Extension program Kentucky: By The Numbers. Together, these provide easy-to-use data related to disasters for every county in the state. The presentation will also include a discussion of changes to the National Risk Index and accessing data through the FEMA Resilience Analysis and Planning Tool (RAPT) website.
Arts and cultural organizations are increasingly recognized as important partners in disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. However, collaboration between arts administrators and emergency managers often reveals a fundamental challenge: the two sectors frequently speak different professional “languages.” Terminology, planning frameworks, organizational structures, and even assumptions about risk and decision-making can vary widely, creating barriers to effective collaboration during emergencies.
This presentation explores how these communication gaps emerge and how they can be addressed. Drawing on examples from arts organizations, emergency management frameworks, and educational settings, the session examines common areas of misunderstanding—such as differences in planning terminology, expectations around command structures, and approaches to community engagement. While emergency management often relies on standardized systems and protocols, arts organizations tend to operate through more flexible, creative, and relationship-based models. These differences can lead to confusion, missed opportunities for coordination, and underutilization of the cultural sector’s capacity in disaster planning.
Participants will gain practical strategies for bridging these divides, including translating key emergency management concepts for arts organizations, building cross-sector partnerships, and developing shared planning tools such as Business Continuity Plans. By recognizing and addressing these communication barriers, arts leaders and emergency managers can work more effectively together to strengthen preparedness, support community recovery, and build more resilient cultural ecosystems.
In the face of pervasive disasters, both natural and socially constructed, people are looking for trauma-informed practices that they can use in their teaching, research, and everyday lives.
This workshop will teach one method that museum curator Rachel Hooper developed in conversation with an interdisciplinary group of humanities researchers at Indiana University’s Institute for Advanced Study. Participants will learn various definitions of trauma, practice identifying vulnerabilities in individuals and communities, and define clear strategies for mitigating some of the effects of disasters. These techniques are based in the arts, humanities, and social sciences but have broad implications for anyone who has been profoundly harmed or works closely with impacted communities. This is a people-centered method of preparedness that can be employed at any stage of a catastrophe.
