THE TEAM

BAARN’s Project Director is Tom Clareson, Performing Arts Readiness project director. BAARN staff includes NCAPER Executive Director Jan Newcomb, NCAPER  Fund Development and Program Officer Mollie Quinlan-Hayes, and NCAPER Program Associate Kristen Brewer.

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A part-time Local Coordinator will be hired in early 2025; check back in December for a job description and application information.

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BAARN will be guided by a Local Advisory Committee.

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BAARN combines the experience and resources of the nation’s two leading organizations promoting readiness, response and recovery in the arts sector. Since 2006, NCAPER has promoted policies which embed the arts in community readiness and crisis response, delivered educational programs which build bridges between the arts and emergency management sectors, and created publications and techniques to speed the recovery of those in the arts and creative sectors. One of NCAPER’s core functions is organizing Response Facilitation Calls following a widespread disaster, allowing those impacted to connect with one another, and with a ‘brain trust’ of those who have disaster experience and expertise to share. For this project, NCAPER will team up with the Performing Arts Readiness project (PAR). Since 2017, PAR has been adapting and applying the emergency management expertise of the cultural heritage community to the country’s performing arts sector. PAR grants have supported the creation of “Circuit Rider” mentoring programs in rural and urban communities, and individual readiness plans for dozens of performing arts organizations. An expanding roster of professional development offerings ranges from fire safety and cybersecurity to festival security, archiving legacy materials, and community recovery through arts and culture. Particularly relevant to the BAARN project is PAR’s work in developing and funding readiness and response networks in rural and urban communities, and NCAPER’s relationships and experience with the arts funding community. The BAARN project is the most recent, and most ambitious, of their collaborative efforts to pilot and model new practices to strengthen the arts sector.