1. The Katrina National Memorial Foundation Museum (KNMFM) started as a community
museum. Located in a mixed zoning hub that has community resource centers and
retail establishments within the first block off a major major city artery, Broad Street,
KNMFM is now a Hurricane Katrina resource center of national renown. The visitors,
supporters, and ongoing contacts of KNMFM include local residents, tourists from
several states, advisors to the mayor, all members of the city council, a Louisiana
senator, nationally recognized public figures, a foreign embassy, and thousands of
Internet surfers who visit the webpage of KNMFM. These visitors, supporters, and
ongoing contacts are the source of inspiration that compel the museum’s founder, R.
Omar Casimire, to seek funding for the project in this proposal.
The quintessential museum artifact of KNMFM is the Katrina List, which is a
spreadsheet of approximately 10,000 names with contact information collected by the
museum’s founder in New Orleans after the evacuation for Hurricane Katrina while
thousands of residents remained trapped to face the floodwaters of the storm. Every
person who was a resident of New Orleans in August 2005 had some association with
someone on the Katrina List. Visitors to the museum express a wide variety of emotions
when searching the list for familiar names. Some say that they are surprised to know
that a particular member on the Katrina List failed to evacuate. Many reveal sadness
because a person whom they knew on the Katrina List did not survive the aftermath of
the hurricane. All express amazement about this remarkable snapshot of history. The
Katrina List, hundreds of photographs, and documents of the founder comprise an
unparalleled record of Hurricane Katrina that requires preservation.
Therefore, the purpose of this project is to provide a proof of concept blueprint
for ensuring the preservation of the artifacts in the KNMF Museum. The project
has three components.
(1) Natural Disaster Preparedness Education,
(2) KNMF Museum Exhibit Preservation, and
(3) KNMF Exhibit Computerization.
First, KNMFM will create a lesson plan template and a document of disaster
preparedness protocols. The purpose of this component is to provide secondary
schools with a centralized source of information for engaging students during hurricane
season. Second, KNMFM will contact survivors and families of survivors from the
Katrina list to get interviews and video recordings of their Katrina Stories. The purpose
of this component is to create one hundred digital records with background information
and post-Katrina updates. Third, KNMFM will produce two versions of the project
deliverables: a comprehensive collection for the museum and a subset of that collection
for free distribution to the public.
The intention of KNMFM is twofold: (1) to develop a cost-effective way to replicate
the processes of the project, and (2) to engage the community in creating a
centralized source of information and protocols for hurricane response.
Museums for America Funding for 2015! KNMF® Museum Proposal
ABSTRACT
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