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

Event Preparedness: Active Shooters and Hostile Activity at Your Venues
Date & Time: December 4, 2024 at 2:00 ET
Price: Free
Description: In recent years we have seen an increase in hostile attacks across all sectors, including events. These attacks have come in a variety of methods. Performing Arts and Cultural Heritage organizations must be prepared for all scenarios and need to be able to react to all emergencies. This webinar will cover the types of attacks to prepare for, as well as the training you should consider for your venues and staff. Our instructor, Emma Stuart, also presents the “Safety and Security for Performing Arts,” “Road to Recovery: Performing Arts During COVID,” and the “Pandemic Response for Performing Arts Organizations” webinars for the PAR project.
Instructor: Emma Stuart
Registration Link: https://lyrasis.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_wafzUjAnTSGAP3COaj0z8w
A recording of the May 1, 2024 session of this webinar is available here.

Lessons Learned from the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival Shooting
Date & Time: December 5, 2024 at 2:00 ET
Price: Free
Description: Kelly Hubbard was attending day 3 of the Route 91 Country Music Festival with her daughter and a few friends when someone opened fire on the crowd of 22,000 attendees. 58 attendees died that evening, with hundreds more severely injured, making that night the worst mass shooting to date in our Country’s history. Kelly speaks as a survivor, but also as an emergency manager on the events of that evening to help others in her profession and in the entertainment and hospitality industry to improve large event planning and mass casualty response.
This session will reflect on lessons for all parties involved in large pop-up location event planning and mass casualty response. Learning outcomes will include: considerations for security and safety in pop-up venues, coordination concepts with local government partners, understanding the response and recovery process, considerations for integration of non-traditional response partners and trauma care for survivors and staff. Concepts such as how to integrate those who may not think they have a role (such as the hotels that became triage and shelter centers with no warning) will be covered. Insight will be provided on how survivors of traumatic events get information regarding hospitals, Family Assistance Centers, and recovery resources, especially when watching the news is experiencing the trauma all over again.
Instructor: Kelly Hubbard
Registration Link: https://lyrasis.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_UBWw2uBFRDCRvMHmJlzwJg
A recording of the June 1, 2023 session of this webinar is available here.

Business Continuity for Performing Arts Organizations
Date & Time: December 10, 2024 at 2:00 ET
Description: Does your organization have a Business Continuity Plan? What is missing from your plan? This free webinar will equip your organization to take stock of your Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery plan to make sure that it is complete, usable, and audit-ready. Learn how to streamline the process of developing a plan so that a disaster does not become a complex recovery.
This presentation will:
- Review the fundamental and advanced components of a comprehensive plan
- Help you understand the BC program life cycle and how your plan fits into it
- Review best practices on BC plan maintenance and revision history
- Give you insight on managing enterprise wide BC plans
- Define core reports to help strengthen your BC plan
Instructor: Ellen Korpar
Registration Link: https://lyrasis.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_oSpDD_4sQtGPPw7cLi46nw
A recording of the November 7, 2023 session of this webinar is available here.

The Art of Mass Gatherings: Managing Modifications, Virtualizations, and Expectations
Date & Time: TBD
Price: Free
Description: The performing arts sector is encountering an unprecedented challenge for hosting in-person events safely during this global pandemic, climate crises, and recession. Fortunately, these calamities offer the opportunity for artists and presenters to employ their creativity and ingenuity to develop new types of shared experiences. These free PAR webinar sessions will begin with a framework to help guide decision makers to either modify or virtualize their gatherings using case studies from Denver’s 5 Points Jazz Festival (May 2020) and Alabama’s Women in Jazz Festival (September 2020). Webinars will explore the experiences and hard-won wisdom related to re-opening venues, making audiences feel safe, and exploring new operational protocols for venues and artists.
Instructor: Molly North and Matthew Che Kowal
Registration Link: coming soon
A recording of the September 22, 2020 session of this webinar is available here.

The Art of Modified Gatherings: Optimizing Online Events
Date & Time: TBD
Price: Free
Description: The performing arts sector is encountering an unprecedented challenge for hosting in-person events safely during this global pandemic, countless wildfires, and a struggling economy. Fortunately, this presents an opportunity for artists to employ their creativity and ingenuity to develop new types of shared experiences. This webinar will begin with a framework to help guide decision makers to either modify or virtualize their gatherings using case studies from Denver’s 5 Points Jazz Festival (May 2020) and Alabama’s Women in Jazz Festival (September 2020).
On December 16, we will have two special guests, Owen Trujillo and Enrique Jimenez, share their expertise on digital marketing, choosing and implementing the best technology for your event, and modifying performance protocols. This webinar will be most helpful for performing arts and cultural organizations looking to enhance curation, accessibility, and partnerships.
Instructors: Molly North and Matthew Che Kowal

The Arts Organizations at a Crossroads Toolkit: Managing Transitions and Preserving Assets
Date & Time: TBD
Price: Free
Description: This webinar introduces the new “Arts Organizations at a Crossroads Toolkit” that is available online for free. The Toolkit, published by the National Coalition for Arts’ Preparedness and Emergency Response (NCAPER), is designed for staff and Board leadership as you plan for your organization’s future. Whether you are stable, in flux, planning a transition, or undertaking strategic planning, you will find guidance and resources to help you make the best decisions for your organization. The class will include tools that increase your resilience through staff transitions and encourage you to plan for your organization’s legacy, wherever you are in your lifecycle. This webinar will cover: a Decision Tree to help you determine your structural options; the Guide to Making Legal and Structural Choices, looking at radical restricting, dormancy, mergers, and dissolution; Protection of Your Knowledge Assets, how to capture the ‘deep smarts’ held by staff members and share that knowledge; and the Management and Preservation of Your Legacy, so that whether you’re growing, stable, or facing a hiatus or closure, your unique cultural assets will be protected.
Instructor: Mollie Quinlan-Hayes
Registration Link: coming soon
A recording of the February 24, 2022 session of this webinar is available here.

Community Recovery Through Arts and Culture
Date & Time: TBD
Price: Free
Description: Arts and culture—through the artists and organizations that bring them to life in communities -- have a vital role to play in recovery from disasters. Whether connecting 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, even if only for a moment, and help us rebuild the social infrastructure of our individual and community lives.
In this webinar, we will focus on how artists and arts organizations can engage in this work. We will provide background in basic disaster management principles, share good practices, give guiding principles and brief how-tos, leave you with resources for further study, and answer any questions you may have. Rebuilding social infrastructure strengthens communities’ abilities to move forward after disasters. Learn how to be part of the process and gain a seat at the table in your community’s recovery.
Instructors: Mary Eileen Fouratt, Amy Schwartzman, Mollie Quinlan-Hayes
Registration Link: coming soon
A recording of the June 6, 2024 session of this webinar is available here.

Crisis Communication and Reputation Management for Performing Arts Organizations
Date & Time: TBD
Price: Free
Description: You serve on the staff of a local performing arts organization. A press release was tweeted from a local environmental group stating that your theatre’s plumbing system is leaching untreated waste into the community’s waterway. While the press release is inaccurate, season ticket holders and donors are demanding answers. And, the organization’s Twitter handle is blowing up. You have an interview with the editor of the state newspaper in five minutes. What do you say? What do you do?
As professionals rise through the ranks, they will face issues that thrust them into the spotlight and threaten organizational reputation. A recent study found that 9 in 10 business leaders (94%) admit that the executives in their organizations need more training in core communication disciplines, such as reputation management and strategic communication. Are you prepared? This class 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.
Instructor:  Kathleen Donohue Rennie
Registration Link: coming soon
A recording of the September 19, 2024 session of this webinar is here.

Customizing the New Pocket Response Resource
Date & Time: TBD
Price: Free
Description: The free ArtsReady 2.0/dPlan PRR puts critical emergency information in the pocket (or device) of staff, crew and volunteers, ensuring they have immediate access to information they’ll need in the first minutes and hours of any type of emergency. Learn how to make the most of your customized PRR, including creating your Response Team, and tailoring it for your particular programs and structure.
Instructors: Mollie Quinlan-Hayes
Registration Link: coming soon
A recording of the November 19, 2020 session of this webinar is available here.

Cybersecurity Tips for Performing Arts Organizations
Date & Time: TBD
Price: Free
Description: Performing Arts Organizations are at risk of losing funding, audiences, and information due to cybersecurity vulnerabilities. We all know we should use good passwords, keep software updated, and follow other basic precautions online; however, understanding the reasons behind these rules is critical to help us convince ourselves and others that the extra work is indeed worth it. 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.
This class will answer the questions: Who are the bad guys? What tools are they using? What are they after? Where are they working? How are they doing it? Why are we all targets? How can Performing Arts Organizations protect themselves? (This webinar was formerly titled Understanding Cybersecurity for Performing Arts Organizations.)
Instructor: Blake Carver
Registration Link: coming soon
A recording of the November 9, 2023 session of this webinar is available here.

Disaster Response for Performing Arts Organizations
Date & Time: TBD
Price: Free
Description: 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. There will also be a brief introduction to the Incident Command System so that performing arts centers can work more seamlessly with their local first responders.
Instructor: Donia Conn
Registration Link: coming soon
A recording of the November 13, 2024 session of this webinar is here.

Fire and Emergency Protection Plan Development
Date & Time: TBD
Price: Free
Description: Participants in this webinar will be presented with the components of a Protection Plan and the process to follow for the development of a plan following guidelines provided by the National Fire Protection Association’s Code for Protection of Cultural Resource Properties. Grounded in a vulnerability assessment, the planning process covers fire safety, security, construction considerations, prevention, special events, and recovery strategies. At the completion of this webinar, participants will have the tools needed to begin developing is a significant step towards a resilient organization.
Instructor: Chris Soliz
Registration Link: coming soon
A recording of the October 24, 2024 session of this webinar is here.

Fire Safety and Preparedness for Performing Arts Organizations
Date & Time: TBD
Price: Free
Description: Fire Safety is an essential element in the day to day preparedness of any organization, especially in the unique environment of the performing arts. In addition to sound emergency management principles, the application of National Fire Protection Association Standards (NFPA) will ensure that a comprehensive protection plan is developed in cooperation with appropriate emergency response partners. This free webinar will provide fire safety considerations and introduce best practices from the fire protection industry, which offers a road map to achieve fire safety benchmarks. Participants will learn how the Life Safety Code and the Code for Protection of Cultural Resource Properties can help you protect your patrons, staff, and facility.
Instructor: Chris Soliz
Registration Link: coming soon
A recording of the October 22, 2024 session of this webinar is here.

Getting Started with the dPlan|ArtsReady Tool
Date & Time: TBD
Price: Free
Description: dPlan|ArtsReady is an online emergency preparedness and response tool for arts and cultural organizations of any size, scope, or discipline. Having a plan in place will enable organizations to prevent or mitigate disasters, prepare for the most likely emergencies, respond quickly to minimize damage, and recover effectively while continuing to provide services to your community. This 30-minute presentation gives participants a tour of the tool and shows how one organization, the Emerald City’s Oz Community Theatre, created their account.
Instructor: Steve Eberhardt and Janet Newcomb
Registration Link: coming soon
A recording of the May 9, 2023 session of this webinar is here.

Health and Safety in the Performing Arts
Date & Time: TBD
Price: Free
Description: Safety in the theater extends to crews, casts, and audience members as well as the venue. This includes performance and rehearsal spaces, shops, and other work spaces. It requires awareness, common sense, and perseverance to eliminate hazards and guard against carelessness. The goal of this free webinar is to ensure that a safe, healthy environment is maintained at all times. This includes the control and minimization of all known and potential hazards associated within creative, artistic, and performance development. These risks can be minimized and controlled through proper training, equipment, and use of appropriate precautions, restrictions, and established safe-work practices.
Instructor: Ellen Korpar
Registration Link: coming soon
A recording of the March 30, 2023 session of this webinar is available here.

Introduction to Archival Programs for Performing Arts Institutions
Date & Time: TBD
Price: Free
Description: With many performing arts organizations operating for some time, legacy records have been created that can benefit not only staff but also the public. Join us for an introduction to what archival programs do and how they can help your organization. This class will be organized into two parts. First, participants will learn what practical actions they can take now with minimal resources and then learn about program components for consideration in the future. By the end of the class, participants will be able to:
- Learn what archives do and what archival work entails
- Understand what materials are considered historical
- Acquire skills in basic preservation and safe storage practices, including electronic materials
- Become aware of what is needed to develop archival programs over time
Instructor: Katy Klettlinger
Registration Link: coming soon
A recording of the May 30, 2024 session of this webinar is available here.

Introduction to Emergency Preparedness for Performing Arts Organizations
Date & Time: TBD
Price: Free
Description: 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. These include human caused and natural crises. You will learn the typical process and contents of a plan, and receive information about resources to help with planning.
This webinar is appropriate for attendees representing large and small performing arts organizations as well as those with and without their own performance facilities. Executive and management staff will find this webinar useful, as well as H.R., finance, communications, marketing, technical, and front-of-house staff.
Instructor: Steve Eberhardt
Registration Link: coming soon
A recording of the September 10, 2024 session of this webinar is available here.

Introduction to Festival Safety: The Art of Mass Gatherings Approach
Date & Time: TBD
Price: Free
Description: Embracing a whole community approach to safety and preparedness means helping event producers master the art of mass gatherings. Gatherings like festivals, concerts and other special events are simultaneously powerful and vulnerable. They can be joyful, life-giving experiences, but they can also be a forum for disaster. They can elevate a community's sense of pride and identity, yet they can be a source of enormous waste and missed opportunities.
Topics covered:
- COVID-19 modifications
- Life safety, health and public welfare
- Legal concerns and emergency plans
- Weather emergencies
- Enhancing accessibility
- Mental and physical health first aid
- Crowd management
- Waste, water, and power systems
- Harm reduction, gender safety and trauma-informed practices
- Maximizing community engagement
Instructor: Matthew Che Kowal
Registration Link: coming soon
A recording of the September 28, 2022 session of this webinar is available here.

Networking for Disaster Management in the Performing Arts
Date & Time: TBD
Price: Free
Description: Emergency response and preparedness for performing arts organizations can be a difficult task for individual organizations. This free 2 hour webinar will demonstrate how working with multiple organizations in a network for disaster management can be accomplished. The history of networking for improved emergency preparedness in the cultural heritage, arts, and government sectors will be examined, with an exploration of existing networks. Case studies of the Pennsylvania Cultural Resilience Network and CultureAID in New York City will be presented to help guide you on how to start your own, or join an existing, cooperative disaster network. You will learn how to use the Cultural Placekeeping Guide to direct your networking efforts.
Instructors: Tom Clareson and Amy Schwartzman
Registration Link: coming soon
A recording of the May 14, 2024 session of this webinar is here.

Pandemic Planning for the Performing Arts
Date & Time: TBD
Price: Free
Description: This webinar focuses on both the challenges facing the event and arts industry during this difficult period and provides advice on planning for the future. The session will also provide both guidance and resources that are available to you as venues, individuals and organizations, which includes training and financial grants.
Instructor: Emma Stuart
Registration Link: coming soon
A recording of the April 27, 2020 session of this webinar is available here.

Pandemic Response for Performing Arts Organizations
Date & Time: TBD
Price: Free
Description: With the ongoing Covid-19 crisis still impacting Performing Arts, this webinar discusses how organizations are responding to the crisis and the information and resources that are available to venues and businesses. The webinar looks at how the industry can recover and re-open, and how to better prepare for future pandemics or disasters of this type. The webinar also looks at how other countries’ Performing Arts industries are recovering and what measures are being put in place in order to bring audiences back into venues.
Instructor: Emma Stuart
Registration Link: coming soon
A recording of the August 4, 2020 session of this webinar is available here.

Protecting Your Assets: Managing Legacy Materials for Performing Arts Organizations
Date & Time: TBD
Price: Free
Description: 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 class will examine how to collect and organize both physical and digital arts-related materials so you can access these materials for future use. The class will give practical guidance that can be applied in any setting. By the end of the class, participants will be able to:
- Know the difference between records, collections, and series
- Decide when documents/collections are important, and when they are not
- Determine if and when collections should be treated as archival material
- Identify best practices for providing access to archival collections
- Understand archival language / vocabulary
- Identify model workflows for providing access to archival collections in non-archival settings
Instructor: Tom Clareson
Registration Link: coming soon
A recording of the November 15, 2023 session of this webinar is available here.

Return to Revenue
Date & Time: TBD
Price: Free
Description: With hope (cautiously) on the horizon, now is the time to kick-start your nonprofit’s transactional revenue engine. Emerging from a period of unprecedented disruption, it’s both your responsibility and opportunity to re-imagine your organization’s operating structure. And even before your organization is able to resume full in-person operations, explore your potential to generate ticket sales, admissions, class & activity fees, memberships, and paid reservations for special events.
Instructor: Matt Lehrman
Registration Link: coming soon

Risk Assessment for Performing Arts Organizations
Date & Time: TBD
Price: Free
Description: 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. The session will clarify the need for risk assessment as a part of an organization’s disaster preparedness strategy, provide basic information on risk assessment tools and practices, and address how risk assessment can benefit performing arts organizations. The instructors will also present case studies as a part of the session, so participants can learn from actual disasters in performing arts organizations.
Instructor: Tom Clareson
Registration Link: coming soon
A recording of the October 3, 2024 session of this webinar is available here.

Road to Recovery – Performing Arts During COVID
Date & Time: TBD
Price: Free
Description: The third webinar in a series of classes discussing the impact of Covid-19 on the Performing Arts. This webinar will focus on reopening planning. It discusses the steps required to prepare and new developments for reopening, as well as case studies on venues which have managed their own reopening. The webinar will also discuss the “new normal” in a post-Covid-19 world, and the impact to future events and gatherings.
This updated session is part of a continuing series of webinars on the topic. Attendance of the previous webinars is not necessary to take part in this session.
Instructor: Emma Stuart
Registration Link: coming soon
A recording of the October 26, 2021 session of this webinar is available here.

Safety and Security for Performing Arts
Date & Time: TBD
Price: Free
Description: With the ever-changing nature of events, are you prepared for the unexpected? With audiences and Local Government agencies expecting more from you as an organizer, do you have plans in place to not only try and prevent, but also respond should any incident happen? Safety and Security are more important now than ever and more questions will be asked of you and what plans you have in place. This class will help event organizers and venues establish the key elements for prevention and responding to incidents of any shape or size. It will provide a background of what happens when things don’t go as planned, and show that it doesn’t matter what size or type of event you have, the basic principles are the same. We will look at what you would do in certain scenarios, and how even small adjustments to your venue can keep your event safer.
Instructor: Emma Stuart
Registration Link: coming soon
A recording of the May 29, 2024 session of this webinar is here.

Workplace Violence Prevention for the Arts: Understanding Requirements of California's SB553 and Beyond
Date & Time: TBD
Price: Free
Description: On July 1, 2024, new Workplace Violence Prevention measures went into effect as part of California's SB 553 bill, requiring organizations with 10+ employees to create workplace violence prevention plans. While this law currently applies only to California, it provides a valuable framework for performing arts organizations nationwide to enhance safety and build resilience.
This webinar helps organizations understand and implement effective workplace violence prevention plans and features:
• 45-minute presentation by a CAL/OSHA expert covering:
- Conducting risk assessments
- Creating a Violence Prevention Plan
- Collaborative planning techniques
- Maintaining required records
• Q&A session addressing unique considerations for performing arts organizations, including managing contract workers, performers, volunteers, and audience relations.
Instructors: Carmen Cisneros, Matthew Ché Kowal, Julie Baker, and Julie Lavezzari
Registration Link: coming soon
A recording of the September 11, 2024 session of this webinar is available here.