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.

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.

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.