Majestic Collaborations

???Excited to be joining this panel on disaster preparedness in the arts! I’m bringing a guitar ?? to make a little space for joy + creativity + acknowledge losses & trauma from recent disasters. Yes, I'm the kind of person to write a song about love and tornadoes. https://lnkd.in/dU5mR7Gt. We will explore the intersection of arts, mass gatherings, emergency preparedness, and urban design. Here are some key ideas I’ll be sharing during the discussion: ??Venues as Resilience Hubs and Clusters: Exploring how arts and cultural facilities can serve as community resilience hubs during emergencies. I’ll share case studies of cultural venues commissioned as shelters in recent years, highlighting both successes and challenges ("roses and thorns"). ??The Art of Mass Gatherings: Quick stories from across the U.S. and Puerto Rico where festivals have served as classrooms for disaster preparedness. These events provided hands-on experience with temporary infrastructure like waste, water, and power systems, while fostering insights on accessibility, sustainability, safety, and community engagement. ??Workforce Development: Discussing how training arts and cultural event workers to join emergency response networks can create a resilient ecosystem that supports both communities and creative professionals. ??Multimodal Urban Design: Strategies for cities to design public spaces that are functional for sunny-day events but also adaptable for stormy-day disaster responses. These topics are deeply connected to my work with Majestic Collaborations, Performing Arts Readiness and initiatives like the Art of Mass Gatherings Symposium and Podcast. ?? Later this year, we will expand on these ideas at the?International Foundation for Cultural Property Protection (IFCPP) Conference at Yale University, where we’ll launch a "boot camp" for cultural facilities staff to prepare for large events and practice emergency response collaborations within "Resilience Clusters." ???What would you most like to hear me discuss on this panel??Drop your thoughts below! ?? Let’s keep the conversation open—your insights could shape how we approach these challenges together. Glad to see California folks Julie Baker NeFesha Yisra'el Tracy Hudak, MPPA Megan Van Voorhis Eduardo Robles Nurit Siegel Smith Joining me will be Mollie Quinlan-Hayes Tom Clareson Cameron Baxter Lewis

Our dear friend and collaborator Jessica Wallach is hosting: Second Listening Session on Accessibility & Preparedness Join us for a conversation on?accessibility, safety, and disaster preparedness in performing arts spaces. ???Monday, March 10, 2025?| ??2:00 - 4:00 PM EST ???In person?at The Greater Bethesda Chamber of Commerce or?online ?? Share your experiences ?? Explore real-world solutions ?? Help shape effective emergency planning strategies ????Register now ???Learn more about the event and the network Questions? Need accommodations? Let us know—we’d love to have you there! Contact [email protected] Please share this invitation with others who may be interested. If you have any questions or need accommodations, don’t hesitate to reach out. This event prioritizes accessibility for all participants. We will have ASL interpreters and AI-generated captions available. If you encounter any challenges completing the registration form or require specific accommodations to participate in the session, please contact us at [email protected]. We are happy to assist and ensure your full participation. This project is hosted by?Story Tapestries?and made possible with funding from?@Performing Arts Readiness?and contributions from founding members of the network, including the?The Underground Music Showcase,?Open Circle Theatre, Inc., @The Movement-Movement,?@Bodywise Dance,?World Institute on Disability, and?Americans for the Arts. We look forward to continuing this conversation with you! ????Register now: https://lnkd.in/gNFHq6Z4 ???Learn more about the event and the network https://lnkd.in/eiB8am3V

Our Art of Mass Gatherings Podcast episode with Fire Chief Chris Soliz is timely. Tune in and find out how art and cultural places and professionals can prepare before disasters, and serve after. Other topics covered include accessible design and community asset and vulnerability mapping, and venues as resilience hubs. Our episode with Santa Barbara Emergency Manager Kelly Hubbard, MS, CEM is also an excellent dive into this topic https://lnkd.in/g2ty2XBY Did you know: **** $1 spent on preparedness and mitigation save $13 in response and recovery**** and it saves lives. With that in mind, I'd like to have some discussion about what exactly (and to a lesser - but still useful extent) "counts" as those kinds of prepare/mitigate activities in the world of Festivals, Venues, and Civic Spaces. "An ounce of prevention is a worth a pound of cure" ....$1 saves $13 is pretty close! It leaves quite a good margin for experimentation if we have the guts for it, right? One trend I've been happy to see is organizations like The Rockefeller Foundation blending in Disaster Preparedness into their Sustainable Operations working group. A 2022 UCLA study said “California Wildfire emissions in 2020 essentially negate 18 years of reductions in greenhouse gas emission.” To me, this validates the Majestic Collaborations four pillars of sustainability, accessibility, safety, community engagement as a savvy way to make sure that these perspectives are in the mix, but that we don't prioritize one aspect to the detriment of the bigger picture. We know that actions such as risk assessments and plan writing, pocket response guides (Ellen Korpar), and inventory of sandbags, fire extinguisher trainings etc are the first line. I love doing these plans with organizations, having just returned from leading teams at The Dallas Opera and the New Orleans Film Society and the Admiral Theatre Foundation and California Center for the Arts, Escondido thanks to a grant from @performing arts readiness and Mellon Foundation - I'm finding organizations really light up and want to put more energy towards accomplishing the mitigation and preparedness (and accessibility and sustainability) work if they see that it broadens their personal and organizational capacity to be of use during community disruptions. Connecting this desire to sustainable funding for durable infrastructure improvements and staff development is where the pinball machine goes into "MUTI-BALL!!". It's been coming together more often, and I want to keep the momentum - so if this sparks something in you, please make some noise. Global Cultural Districts Network (GCDN) The Kresge Foundation Nancy Smith The Rockefeller Foundation Lyrasis Tom Clareson Bradley Dean, CFM, CE Footprint Project REVERB Neel Vasavada Richard Cadena Knight Foundation Americans for the Arts Michael Orlove Allyson Esposito California Arts Council Association of Performing Arts Professionals Julie Baker Megan Van Voorhis

Coyle Solar would like to thank North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, thank you Catherine Swain and Amanda R. - and and Matthew Ché Kowal theartofmassgatherings.com Majestic Collaborations, thank you all for the leadership and foresight in bringing together emergency planning and event production expertise together in Nags Head, NC and in Black Mountain, NC at the Lake Eden Arts Festival - those connections helped the Coyle Solar team to engage and deploy 3 power plants for people in the disaster impact zone -the 2016 Coyle Solar CM6 in Beacon Village in Swannanoa, NC -- the CM1 Lighting System at Lake Eden Black Mountain, NC -- and the PG2-4-2 at 1149 Bee Tree Road, Swannanoa, NC Bee Mountain Road. These power plants were delivered and provided free of charge for a four month deployment until April/2025. Thank you to Tissica Schoch, Craig Shearer, Lisandro Sarellano, and Leigh Maher- for your work building and maintaining culture and community, for your leadership in emergency, and for being exemplars of solidarity and friendship.

Funny how life works. Mack Coyle told me that we had met at the Tour de Fat festival I hosted in Raleigh, NC circa 2010, and that he’d been inspired to see the solar powered stages and the fleet we had converted to run on waste-oil bio-fuel. Fast forward to his developing his own line of really savvy designs for robust potable solar solutions at scale. I wanted to celebrate him donating portable solar power plants (some with novel water pumping systems) to his fellow NC folks hurt by Hurricane Helene, with his company Coyle Solar, Incorporated. So glad to help connect you to Catherine Swain and North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, who partnered with Majestic Collaborations to produce a series of The Art of Mass Gathering symposia around the state.

I'm throwing my hat in the ring for VP of Sustainabilty Alterra Mountain Company. Shared moments in music, mountain tops, meals are when hearts and minds are most open to connection and change.??So I took my guitar on a hike to make a musical postcard and introduce myself. The heart of my interest and value to Alterra is a passion to evolve sustainability with resilience and risk management: to make sustainability more fun AND more serious. In both regards I am a nationally recognized leader,?as an Emmy-nominated cultural programmer of fun events for over 1M attendees (cumulatively raising over $5M for bicycle and sustainability organizations, co-designed and implemented state-of-the-art solar, bio-power, water, and waste programs, achieving a remarkable 90% diversion from landfill) and recognized by FEMA and in the serious work of leading venues, cities, emergency managers to be actors in “whole-community” planning and response for climate and other emergencies. I believe that there is incredible potential for year-round activities and initiatives that build capacity to serve customers with less disruptions, enhance accessibility, provide transparent climate risk analysis (and cooperative regional mitigation, response, and recovery strategies) and build long-term sustainability - in all senses of the word. Alterra has made a pledge to put collaboration over competition in their sustainability efforts. In that spirit, I am posting my letter of interest here and I'm glad to hear from folks working in aligned projects https://bit.ly/3YvavyH Thanks Brandon Lopez for the photography and to all the collaborators and mentors along the way https://lnkd.in/gJgV6ecq Deborah Dols Jenny Han Simon Angela R. Feddersen, NCARB, LEED AP Annie Kao Majestic Collaborations Molly North Jenny Filipetti Jessica Wallach Bertrand Evans-Taylor, MA Tom Clareson Janet Newcomb Bradley Dean, CFM, CE Nancy Smith Clara Decerbo, PhD, CEM, NRP Patrick Van Horne Katie Wallace Jamie Caton Stephanie Fortunato Linda Davis Will Heegaard #sustainabilty #resilience #accessibility #infrastructure #wastereduction #events #alterra #resorts #preparedness #climate #skiing #mountainstrong #wholecommunity #artofmassgatherings

In skiing, they tell you to focus on where you want to go, not what you want to avoid. If you look at the trees, chances are, you’ll hit them. I've been thinking about that this week in relation to disaster planning (thanks to a great conversation with Matthew Ché Kowal). Too often, I see organizations fixated on the problems they want to avoid rather than aiming for the outcomes they want to achieve during the incident. When you shift your focus from "What are we trying to avoid?" to "How can we ensure we grow as an organization, even during a disaster?", your approach to planning changes dramatically. This mindset isn't just about avoiding failure—it's about serving the community despite the challenges. To grow through disasters, we must look beyond the obstacles and steer toward our desired outcomes. That's the key to not just surviving, but succeeding in the face of adversity. #emergencymanagement

Join us on September 11th at 10 AM PDT for an essential webinar on Workplace Violence Prevention for the Arts! ?? New measures under California's SB 553 require organizations with 10+ employees to create comprehensive workplace violence prevention plans. Even if you're outside California, this is a must-attend event to enhance safety and resilience in your organization! What to Expect: -Expert insights from CAL/OSHA on conducting risk assessments and creating effective prevention plans. -Collaborative planning techniques tailored for the arts. -Q&A on managing safety for contract workers, performers, and more. Don't miss out—secure your spot now! ?? Register here: https://lnkd.in/eWW7-Sbd #WorkplaceSafety #PerformingArts #ViolencePrevention #MajesticCollaborations

In our latest episode of the Art of Mass Gatherings podcast, we touch on the profound impact of Denver’s Pride Fest, where protest, celebration, and community safety intersect. Discover how their internationally recognized safety plans, developed over decades, have become a model for other events, emphasizing trauma-informed approaches and offering participants a way out with dignity. This episode is a must-listen for event planners, safety professionals, and anyone interested in the intersection of culture and community resilience. Join us as we delve into the future of safer, more inclusive gatherings. ?? Tune in to the full episode to learn how festivals can be powerful platforms for social change and resilience. You can check out Ep. 2 and every other episode here: https://lnkd.in/e248_W5Y #ArtofMassGatherings #CommunityResilience #EventSafety #CulturalImpact #PrideFest #LinkedInCommunity #SocialChange #EventPlanning #Inclusion #Leadership

Podcast Overview: The Art of Mass Gatherings The Art of Mass Gatherings podcast explores the critical role of festivals in community resilience, with each episode delving into a specific aspect of event management: ? Ep. 1: Crowds & Climate Change - This episode examines how climate change is influencing crowd dynamics and safety protocols at large events, highlighting adaptive strategies for organizers. https://lnkd.in/ee3TT7rf ? Ep. 2: Walk & Talk - Join a candid conversation about the origins of the Art of Mass Gatherings, revealing how this initiative was born out of a passion for merging cultural events with community resilience. https://lnkd.in/eri8xbBY ? Ep. 3: Festival Safety - Dive into the essential practices for maintaining safety at festivals, from managing large crowds to preparing for emergencies, with real-world examples and expert insights. https://lnkd.in/d24kPHNA ? Ep. 4: Accessibility - This episode underscores the importance of making events accessible to all, discussing strategies to remove barriers and ensure inclusivity in both planning and execution. https://lnkd.in/e92j2ZCS ? Ep. 5: Fire Safety - Explore the critical aspects of fire safety in the context of mass gatherings, offering practical advice on preventing and responding to fire-related incidents. https://lnkd.in/e92j2ZCS ?? Check out all the episodes to learn how festivals can become powerful tools for community resilience: The Art of Mass Gatherings Podcast #CommunityResilience #EventPlanning #DisasterPreparedness #CulturalEvents #Safety #Accessibility #Sustainability #Podcast #Leadership