When you want to see how the same playbook powers both celebration and crisis response, you start with festivals. And no city knows it better than New Orleans.

Here, what looks like pure celebration is also an operational blueprint. Major festivals are field labs for resilience: hundreds of thousands of people, complex routes, and layers of water, power, communications, and safety systems all working in sync. Look closer, and you see volunteers, vendors, neighbors, and institutions already practicing the coordination that emergency managers rely on when disaster strikes. The same infrastructure that keeps the music playing helps communities survive what comes next.

And this April, it becomes your classroom for a weekend, when Majestic Collaborations—together with the International Federation for Cultural Property Protection, French Quarter Festival, local emergency management, and regional partners—opens festival infrastructure as a training ground for building community resilience through cultural operations.

No previous training or specific experience required. This training creates the shared situational awareness and operational bridges that connect the variety of professionals who make arts and culture happen, using frameworks that strengthen both daily operations and organizational disaster readiness.

One weekend. One extraordinary city as a classroom. Skills that are #ReadyWhen you need them most.

9:00 – 9:30am | Welcome & Orientation
9:30 – 10:15am | Event and Emergency Resilience: An Operational Framework
10:25 – 11:45am | Operational Systems Hands-On
11:55am – 12:20pm | Mapping Your Local Readiness Ecosystem
12:20 – 1:10pm | Lunch
1:10 – 1:30pm | Intro to Afternoon Program
1:30 – 2:30pm | Calm & Clear Communications
2:45 – 3:35pm | Scenario-Based Practice
3:35 – 4:00pm | Wrap-Up & Next Steps

I. Event and Emergency Resilience: An Operational Framework

This session establishes the foundational insight that event operations & emergency response utilize identical infrastructure and skills, deployed under different circumstances. Participants will learn to apply the four pillars of event resilience to their planning and explore the value of mapping existing emergency management frameworks to organizational operations. By the end of the session, participants will be able to assess their organization’s existing event operations using the four pillars framework and begin identifying where their operations already or could function as emergency response infrastructure.

II. Operational Systems Hands-On

This session provides hands-on training in four operational systems useful in both events and emergencies: water/sanitation, power, radio, and amplification. Participants will learn to calculate capacity requirements, operate essential communications equipment, and develop shared vocabulary to coordinate with specialists or communicate considerations across their own teams. By the end of the session, participants will be able to perform basic capacity calculations, operate radio & basic audio equipment using proper protocols, and assess operational decisions through the four pillars framework.

III. Mapping Your Local Readiness Ecosystem

This session reframes organizational relationships from transactional contacts to readiness & resilience infrastructure—the network of partners that strengthens capacity across both normal operations and crisis response. Participants will learn to identify stakeholder categories relevant to both event and emergency contexts, recognize the value of geographic risk assessment for their operations, and explore opportunities for partnership and mutual aid agreements with other agencies and organizations. By the end of the session, participants will be able to conduct stakeholder network mapping using the ACRA framework and create an action plan to strengthen one priority relationship.

IV. Calm and Clear Communications

This session builds competency in communication protocols and strategic message design across operational contexts—from routine staff briefings to crisis communications. Participants will learn to distinguish between internal and external communication needs, design accessible communications for diverse audiences, structure effective briefings adapted to different contexts, and apply ICS communication principles to emergency action plans. By the end of the session, participants will be able to deliver a clear pre-event staff briefing and evaluate emergency communication protocols for accessibility and strategic effectiveness.

V. Scenario-Based Practice

This session integrates the day’s frameworks and skills through a scenario-based tabletop exercise that demonstrates how event operations prepare organizations for emergency response. Participants will practice coordination and decision-making while exploring how tabletop methodology builds organizational capacity. By the end of the session, participants will understand how tabletop exercises function as operational training for both events and emergencies, and recognize the potential for partnerships that position cultural venues as community resilience resources.