New Orleans Foundations Training
Saturday, April 18th, 2026
When the Stadium Became a Shelter
Few venues carry the operational and emotional weight of the Caesars Superdome. This tour examines how a facility built for 70,000 manages ingress, egress, and crowd flow under normal operations — and what happened when it unexpectedly sheltered nearly 10,000 displaced residents during Katrina. Participants will see how the Superdome has been rebuilt and reimagined since, and what those lessons mean for venues of any size.
9:30 - 11:30 am
Caesars Superdome
1500 Sugarbowl Drive
French Quarter Festival Immersive
Visits to short interactive learning sessions in small groups throughout the French Quarter, featuring top professionals across event production, safety planning, emergency preparedness, and urban design. Groups will rotate from station to station for conversations and hands-on demos. There’s nothing too strenuous, but expect to move around and be mostly outdoors for about three hours, with intermittent chances to stop indoors or use restrooms.
1:00 - 5:00 pm
Various locations in the French Quarter
Saturday
4/18
9:30 – 11:30 am
Location
Caesars Superdome
1500 Sugarbowl Drive
When the Stadium Became a Shelter
Few venues carry the operational and emotional weight of the Caesars Superdome. Mike Hoss, the Voice of the Saints, was a journalist reporting from New Orleans when Katrina made landfall in 2005. He’ll share a firsthand account of how the Superdome transformed overnight from a championship venue into a shelter of last resort for over 25,000 residents— and what that experience revealed about what large venues can, and can’t, do in a crisis. Mike will then be joined by Joseph Frank (Chief of Public Safety at Caesars Superdome) and Captain Buddy Micheu (New Orleans Police Department) to broaden the lens to explore what makes New Orleans a singular case study in resilience, collaboration, and community, and how the city’s dense cultural fabric shapes the way institutions work together when it matters most.
From there, we’ll tour the building, exploring the infrastructure and physical reminders of Katrina and the years since, and what they mean for venues across the country preparing for the next disaster.
Saturday
4/18
1:00 – 5:00 pm
Location
Various locations in the French Quarter
French Quarter Festival Immersive
Experience one of the country’s most beloved festivals—and explore how it works from the inside out! We’ll spend the afternoon moving around the French Quarter Festival in groups, rotating through hands-on demos, conversations with professionals, and interactive learning activities—all while experiencing the food, music, and atmosphere of this quintessentially New Orleans celebration.
French Quarter Festival Immersive – Learning station
Alternative Energy for Events & Emergencies
Portable solar power is increasingly present at festivals and events… and increasingly relevant when the grid goes down. This hands-on session covers basic operations and safety for portable solar units, including back-of-the-napkin energy calculations for real-world scenarios from home use to facility-level deployment. We’ll also explore how the disaster preparedness sector can build staff and volunteer capacity using events as low-stakes opportunities to develop skills and stress-test infrastructure before its needed most.
French Quarter Festival Immersive – Learning station
Beat the Heat: Designing for Human Health & Climate
French Quarter Festival Immersive – Learning station
Transportation, Safety, and Access at Mass Gatherings
How do you design streets (both during temporary events and as permanent infrastructure) for movement, access, and safety all at once? Streets are the interface between an event and the rest of the city, where the decisions made inside your planning footprint meet the systems, people, and emergencies outside it. Decisions about routing, access points, and street closures simultaneously determine crowd flow, emergency vehicle access, and accessibility, whether planning an event or an evacuation. We’ll explore how cultural institutions and event organizers can navigate competing priorities across safety, accessibility, and sustainability when it comes to transportation design, plus how to account for vehicles as both logistical infrastructure and potential threats, including in evolving forms like drones.
French Quarter Festival Immersive – Learning station
Festival Producers’ Panel
In this panel, experienced arts and cultural event producers— from festivals to museums to performing arts venues— share stories from the field: practical solutions for managing crowds, communication, and safety; thresholds for spotting problems before they escalate; and on-the-ground decisions that keep events of all kinds running smoothly. A Q&A segment invites practitioners from across sectors to compare notes and brainstorm strategies to build staff and volunteer situational awareness and use events as real-world environments to test, stress, and strengthen operational systems.
French Quarter Festival Immersive – Learning station
Event & Emergency Planning
Participants will explore how their event planning expertise translates directly to emergency management in this interactive session led by Emma Skilbred of the New Orleans Office of Coordination and Emergency Management (NOCEM). Through a realistic scenario exercise, attendees will identify key actions in real time and map them across core functions of Operations, Logistics, Communications, and Coordination. We’ll then connect these decisions to real-world incident response and explore how they align with existing response networks and partners. The session highlights how event professionals’ skills directly support readiness and response efforts, creating opportunities for more strategic alignment and engagement.
One weekend. One extraordinary city as a classroom. Skills that are #ReadyWhen you need them most.
This training aligns with #ReadyWhen, a project of Majestic Collaborations in collaboration with Performing Arts Readiness. It brings the best of what we’ve learned from over a decade in the field directly to arts and cultural spaces to help them strengthen their resilience through community disaster readiness.
The New Orleans program is made possible thanks to the support of the International Foundation for Cultural Property Protection, the National WWII Museum, and local partners.