Readiness

The Southern Arts Federation, in partnership with its nine member state arts agencies, is currently developing preparedness and business continuity planning tools and resources to assist organizations of all sizes in developing a plan for communications, physical safety and recovery of facilities and artwork/assets, and keeping the business operational. This site will host these tools beginning in Winter 2008.

The Mississippi Arts Commission shares their agency Plan as well as other vital resources. Reviewing their plan is an excellent starting point for considering your own agency’s key actions to be prepared to react, whether to a natural disaster, localized fire or criminal action, or unexpected loss of a staff member.

The Louisiana Presenters Network (LPN) shares their state-wide emergency preparedness plan. The LPN consists of large and small organizations whose primary purpose is presenting performing arts, as well as large and small organizations for whom performing arts presentations are an adjunct activity furthering their missions.

The South Carolina Arts Commission offers links to tools and resources to help artists and organizations prepare for potentially damaging winds, flooding and long-term power outages.

The Craft Emergency Relief Fund (CERF) offers Emergency Readiness information for craft and studio artists. CERF offers an Emergency Preparedness Tip in each of their Monthly e-newsletters. With thanks to CERF, we share their August Tip on protecting images:

Store duplicates of your film images and backup media containing copies of digital images (CD, USB flash drive, or USB hard drive) at a secure offsite location. This should be someplace at least 50-100 miles away, that is unlikely to be affected by the same disaster (Katrina washed away whole banks, so a safety deposit box in your town may not be good enough). For example, put copies of all of your images in a fire and water-resistant file box and leave it at a family member's house in another town. You could also exchange boxes with another artist and both of you would be protected.

While you're at it, copy documents that you cannot afford to lose like insurance papers, legal documents, and your glaze formulas or other process notes and stick those in there, too.

You may also consider storing digital photos of your work online through Web-based photo-sharing programs such as Google's Picasa. By storing your photos online, you can access them from any computer with an internet connection. Picasa also allows you to set your images to 'private' unlike some other photo-sharing sites out there, so that only the people who you want to see your images can see them.