Arts Disaster and Crisis Preparedness Conference 2026

This session will outline the nation's first higher-education pedagogical framework in Arts Emergency Management (AEM), designed and implemented by the University of Kentucky's Department of Arts Administration. Examining principles and practices in emergency management comes at a critical moment in arts management education, as the severity and costs of disaster events are increasing in scale and impacting arts communities (IFRC 2021; IPCC 2023; FEMA 2023). It also addresses calls from US arts readiness leaders for a more dedicated emergency management curriculum in arts management higher education programs (Carey and Lakin-Hayes 2012; National Endowment for the Arts 2016).


Since 2018, the Department has worked to address current gaps in US arts and cultural management education standards by offering full-semester courses designed to expand knowledge and skills for addressing emergencies, disasters, and other crises. Building on the success of its first full-semester course, the Department introduced a 12 credit-hour Arts Emergency Management certificate in 2024 that addresses each phase of the emergency management cycle: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. The certificate's objectives include both theory and practice, developing technical managerial approaches to crisis and response decision-making, as well as scientific inquiry into why and how the arts sector can be prepared for extreme events, and what relationships need to be built to do so.


The session provides two key perspectives: one that is scholarly, connecting current and notable literature in emergency management and disaster science as a foundation in the arts emergency management pedagogy; the other is programmatic, outlining how this literature pragmatically fits into curricula across an undergraduate and graduate certificate program, and how it can be structured to benefit the student experience.


In addition to highlighting the framework, the session will reveal findings from interviews with both graduate and undergraduate students who have taken AEM courses, including their motivations for taking the courses and takeaways that have informed their professional careers.