Resources for Emergency Preparedness

Planning for emergencies is vital for the survival of performing arts organizations. These sample plans are made available for organizations to use as models for their own plans. While the content and structure of these samples may not exactly match your organization’s needs, you may find it valuable to use elements from several to help develop your plan.

These plans are made available by Performing Arts Readiness under the Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). 

DenverREADY approach allows residents, neighborhoods, local officials, businesses, non-profits, faith-based organizations, and emergency management officials to collectively understand and assess the needs of their respective communities, determine the best ways to organize their resources, and prepare for emergency events.   Denver has embraced the “Whole Community Preparedness Programs” concept and invites our community partners to help build a stronger, more resilient community.

The Performing Arts Readiness (PAR) project supports a variety of programs to increase knowledge and the ability of performing arts organizations to create and execute emergency recovery plans. 

The Performing Arts Readiness project offers free webinars, on-site training, and presentations at professional conferences on various topics related to emergency preparedness.

The national Performing Arts Readiness (PAR) project team works to raise awareness, increase resources, and provide training that addresses the unique needs of the performing arts industry, development of basic tools to assist with planning and advocacy, and provision of grant opportunities to support network development and institutional preparedness.

Colorado Division of Homeland Security & Emergency Management offers resources for before, during or after an incident.

National Coalition for Arts’ Preparedness and Emergency Response published the Cultural Placekeeping Guide in June 2017 as a way to introduce a network-building approach, called “cultural placekeeping,” for both safeguarding and strengthening local arts and culture communities. Organizing a self-help emergency action network to supplement and coordinate with the existing disaster management system is a way to foster community cohesion and connectedness—important generally and invaluable when a crisis strikes.

Americans for the Arts presents how to create a network for local emergency action.

The Performing Arts Readiness project offers free webinars, on-site training, and presentations at professional conferences on various topics related to emergency preparedness.

Localized emergencies, regional disasters, and catastrophic events can have a devastating impact on performing arts organizations where even a brief loss of business can threaten sustainability. This free 90 minute webinar will provide an introduction to why emergency preparedness is critical to protect your organization from external risks and internal vulnerabilities. 

Arts and culture have a vital role to play in recovery from disasters. Whether joining people through music, dance, theater or other experiences; providing moments of respite, joy and humor; allowing people to tell their personal stories of the disaster through visual, verbal or other means; or even just providing a place to congregate, gather information or grab a cup of coffee, arts and culture and the organizations that produce them enable us to move from victimhood to personhood.

This webinar reviews elements of strategic communication that are essential before, during and after crisis events. It examines how your organization can best prepare to respond to crisis and restore organizational reputation.

Emergency response can be a daunting prospect for performing arts organizations. This webinar will lay out the basic tenets of responding to an emergency including support organizations, working with vendors, and helpful resources for organization and planning. 

Natural disasters, local emergencies, and other disruptive events can have devastating effects on all sizes of performing arts organizations. This webinar will focus on mitigating risks at institutions, to prevent disasters from happening and to reduce the impact of unavoidable disasters.

A quick and shareable resource about preparedness for your organization that helps provide guidance for what people who exert control over physical space can do to contribute to creating a safe environment for all.

This preparedness plan focuses on three main steps–assess, prepare, implement—that you and your team can take to prepare in times of civil unrest. 

Is your organization’s history in a basement, under water pipes, or next to the furnace and unorganized? Performing Arts Organizations often keep a variety of legacy materials, including business records, programs from performances, posters, props, and other artifacts. Using a series of case studies, this webinar will examine how to collect and organize both physical and digital arts-related materials so you can access these materials for future. 

Performing Arts Organizations are at risk of losing funding, audiences, and information due to cybersecurity vulnerabilities. This session will cover securing your data, network, website, and computers. It will address security myths, passwords, tracking, malware, and will cover a range of tools and techniques, making this session ideal for small to mid-sized organizations.

Emergency response and preparedness for performing arts organizations can be a difficult task for individual organizations. This free 90-minute webinar will demonstrate how working with multiple organizations in a network for disaster management can be accomplished. 

A DFD instructor will teach up to 50 participants in this combo indoor/outdoor extinguisher class with a side of fire safety thrown in. Great for any group or business that may need to use an extinguisher safely. $200 per class, invoiced after the class.

Brett Egan provides his guidance around fundraising, marketing, programming, and leadership during crisis.

NIVA's mission is to preserve and nurture the ecosystem of independent live music venues and promoters throughout the United States.

Imbuing artistic spaces with safety, Rocky Mountain Artists' Safety Alliance is a collaboration of area theatres.