The University of North Carolina Asheville today announces a multi-day Post-Helene Symposium, set to take place from September 24 to 26, 2025, one year after Hurricane Helene ravaged the WNC region. This free event will be hosted on the campus of UNC Asheville, with additional ticketed events taking place at select locations across our city. Led by faculty and based in cross-disciplinary collaboration, the event will assess the impacts of Hurricane Helene through the themes “Remembering, Rebuilding, and Reimagining.” A schedule of events will be announced soon. To register for the event and learn more, visit posthelenesymposium.com.
UNC Asheville’s faculty-led Post-Helene Symposium will draw upon university resources, faculty expertise, community participation, and partnerships to facilitate reflections on the impacts of the storm on Asheville and the surrounding areas. Scientific and humanistic panels and lectures, art exhibitions, musical performances, film screenings, shared storytelling, and other interactive events will bring the community together over three days on the campus of UNC Asheville.
Founded by NEH Distinguished Professor and UNC Asheville Professor of Music William Bares, along with co-organizers, Chair of Sociology/Anthropology Megan Underhill and Chair of Environmental Science David Gillette, the Post-Helene Symposium was created to offer a space for collective reflection on the theme of community resilience.
“Our community of faculty, staff, and students experienced real hardship and grief. But they responded immediately, and in solidarity. Since then, the focus of our community has been on the rebuilding process. What we’ve been needing is the space to pause and reflect as a community, to sit down and collectively process what we all went through. We believe this kind of commemoration is important. This is our opportunity to bring people together to honor what was lost, to examine where we are as a community, and to imagine what’s next for us,” says Bares.
Planned events and panels offer attendees a diverse exploration of our region’s response to Hurricane Helene. A few highlights of the yet-to-be-announced schedule include an exhibit curated by Ramsey Library’s Special Collections team using a variety of materials from its archival collections, along with selected contemporary items donated by faculty, staff, and students, in partnership with Come Hell or High Water, a community memory project held at Buncombe County Special Collections; scientific contexts supplied by panel discussions involving Atmospheric, Environmental, and Computer Science departments, in partnership with NOAA and NEMAC; a performance from the Blue Ridge Orchestra, under the directorship of UNC Asheville’s Dr. Emily Eng, featuring new works, including a symphonic premiere from local musician-business owner Jay Sanders, at the Diana Wortham Theater; a film screening of Small Mountain Strong: The Documentary, hosted by the Department of Mass Communication, who will also host a panel discussion on media coverage of the storm and its aftermath; entry to Looking Back to Move Forward, a month-long exhibition presented by the Department of Art & Art History highlighting work by students, faculty, and alumni; and, much more.
“We, as a university, witnessed the damage firsthand—and our faculty, as experts in their respective fields with strong connections to students and the broader community, are best positioned to drive this kind of coming together. It’s incumbent upon us to take the lead in orchestrating this kind of event,” says Bares. “Plenty of people are going to write about how Helene affected Asheville in the coming years. We want to share the voices of people who lived through it and preserve them for the future.”
The three-day symposium runs Sept. 24-26, 2025, and will support the planned remembrance by the City of Asheville on the anniversary of the storm, September 27. Symposium events will mostly be held on the UNC Asheville campus, in academic halls, the Highsmith Student Union, and on the Quad. All on-campus events are free and open to the public. Additional evening and weekend special events will offer further opportunities for reflection, connection, and creative expression throughout the city.
Visit https://www.posthelenesymposium.com/ for more details and to register for the event. A schedule of events and speakers will be coming soon!
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