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

Page 1 of 1