The NCAPER Field Guide, produced by the National Coalition for Arts’ Preparedness & Emergency Response (NCAPER) with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and a National Endowment for the Arts grant to South Arts, the administrative home of NCAPER, was created to help demystify federal disaster relief for the arts and culture sector; it aims to help artists and organizations see what’s available, understand clearly what isn’t available, and decide if pursuing federal aid is a good use of time.
The NCAPER Field Guide gives a snapshot of federal disaster assistance programs that can go into effect after a presidentially declared disaster and focuses on longstanding programs that are likely to continue. It includes in-depth information about financial assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Small Business Administration (SBA) along with introductory information about other federal resources that provide a mixture of financial and other assistance.
The NCAPER Field Guide is meant to be a starting point – a resource to inform artists and arts organizations of the possible disaster assistance they may want to pursue and where to go to ask for guidance. It is the staff from all the federal agencies mentioned in the Field Guide who will be your ultimate guides and are there to assist you before and during your journey for disaster assistance and recovery.
We hope that the final design format allows readers to take their own pathways to find the information needed to start the decision-making process when they are in a time of crisis or as they prepare readiness plans. - Jan Newcomb, Executive Director of NCAPER
Spanish translation of the Arts Field Guide will be available soon at the NCAPER website. Translated by Sandra Marulanda. La traducción en español de Una Guía en el Campo de las Artes está disponible en el sitio web de NCAPER. Traducida por Sandra Marulanda.
We thank numerous staff from programs within the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Small Business Administration who spent hours fact-checking the material pertinent to their agencies. Also, we thank our readers in the arts sector who reviewed the Guide for clarity and ease of understanding on behalf of individual artists and arts and cultural organizations. A very special thanks goes to Claudia Bach and her team from AdvisArts including Shannon Stewart and Susan Kunimatsu for working with the NCAPER Field Guide Working Group since January 2021, to create such a meaningful resource for the arts sector.
