I developed the Arts & Cultural Resilience Asset Map methodology for Majestic Collaborations as a tool to expand community resilience against disasters. ACRA mapping builds on the framework of community-based asset mapping, focusing specifically on the intersections between emergency preparedness and local arts, culture, and entertainment industries.
The challenge
Emergency response agencies like FEMA value arts and cultural workers as natural partners for equitable community-driven emergency response, however collaboration across these sectors remains widely lacking if not nonexistent. How can we bring diverse stakeholders together to share and capture local knowledge in a robust way?
The ACRAM method documents otherwise siloed or informally held knowledge to aid in the identification of local/regional skills, resources, infrastructure, and communications networks which can contribute to community resilience, especially as communities seek to fortify themselves against the impacts of climate change.
The process
The specific goals of each map are developed collaboratively with community stakeholders, ideally including representatives from at least these three sectors: emergency professionals, government workers in resilience planning and cultural heritage preservation, and the arts, culture, and entertainment community.
Participants also define what tools and processes are most suitable to store the data collected during mapping sessions. Workshop facilitators are knowledgeable about a variety of practices and platforms— both free and paid, analogue and digital— that can be deployed to meet the specific project’s desires and constraints.
