How many can fit, how close can we get, what can they touch and how do we clean it?!
Early this year as we, myself and my colleagues across the cultural sector, grappled with restarting onsite schools programs I saw many of us asking the same questions. We were all trying to interpret the guidelines, work with our health and safety departments, understand how schools had changed (or not) and adapt our programs to be safe, logistically manageable but still true to our philosophies of quality experiences.
It felt like the goal posts were constantly shifting and there was no hard and fast rulebook that could be applied to all organisations. It was clear, however, that everyone wanted to get the balance right: open but safe and meaningful but achievable. Ultimately we wanted to meet the needs of our audience, protect the safety of staff and visitors, while also providing exceptional experiences. I suspected that what that looked like was different for different organisations. But I knew that I would find it valuable to our planning to understand how our sector colleagues were tackling the challenge, so with the support and assistance of the AMAGA ENVi committee, I developed a survey.
It was my hope that we all be reassured by the fact that everyone was changing their programs and asking their audience to adapt. I also hoped that we may find inspiration, new approaches and help with finding solutions and processes to support our planning. I certainly found the results helpful. They also inspired us, as a committee, to develop a professional learning session for our new reNEWed series: Hands off engagement on 10th March.
As expected, the approaches did differ. But there were commonalities – changes had to be made to restart school programs. The changes may be to scheduling, numbers or process. Planning was , for most, becoming shorter-term. Online learning experiences were also an ongoing part of the planning for nearly all organisations. You can read a full summary of the survey results and watch reNEWed: Hands off engagement on the ENVi website.
Thornypebble's Pond 