Groundwork Grants: California Cultural Heritage Disaster Preparedness Project

Every day, California faces an escalating threat from natural disasters, endangering cultural heritage collections and underserved communities. Wildfires, earthquakes, and floods not only jeopardize collections but also worsen socioeconomic disparities. Without proper equipment, funding, or partnerships, many small Californian cultural heritage collections are at risk. The urgency is compounded by climate change’s worsening natural disasters, which can strike quickly and escalate over time.

The recent California Cultural Collection Protection Survey revealed critical gaps in disaster preparedness among cultural institutions. Responses indicated a lack of disaster planning, inadequate strategies for long-term collections preservation, insufficient funding, and limited digitization efforts, heightening the vulnerability of these collections to natural disasters.

Since 2023, Myriad has collaborated with the California State Library to develop and administer the Cultural Heritage Disaster Preparedness Project. With funding from the state of California, and in partnership with the Northeast Document Conservation Center, a major initiative, Ready or Not , was developed to assist cultural heritage organizations in evaluating risks to their collections and begin taking preparatory or remedial steps.  In the first step of this initiative, organizations are encouraged to assess how ready their organization is in the event of a disaster. Ready or Not preservation consultants from the Northeast Document Conservation Center conduct on-site assessments across California, free of charge, to identify risk mitigation measures and preservation priorities. 

Groundwork Grants, developed in partnership with Myriad Consulting & Training, builds upon this first step by allocating essential financial support to address the identified needs, prioritizing institutions that document the experiences of individuals, groups, and communities whose contributions to California’s history and culture have long been underrepresented in mainstream memory institutions.

Groundwork Grants will also ultimately produce long-term economic benefits by reducing response and recovery costs. Most importantly, this collaborative effort will help to safeguard California's cultural heritage, in its most inclusive form, for generations to come.

Community networks are essential when preparing for and when facing a disaster. To ensure your cultural heritage organization is prepared for disaster, strengthen your community network and attend one of Groundwork Grants’ Spring Regional Meetups! You can RSVP here! To keep up with everything happening through Groundwork Grants, subscribe to the newsletter here.