you're very welcome to this morning's meeting, and thanks so much for all of you who are attending I know that a few people still logging in and but we're going to start on our plan is to finish at one o'clock, and a couple of things to note, we are going to record this meeting, so would be great if you could keep on mute, just to protect the sound quality, and we'll have the recording up on our site later today along with all different presentations and links to important resources from today. And in planning this meeting, we realized that we've, we've had a lot of questions which is fantastic. But we realized as well that we do need to program an additional meeting on programming and production. And so our plan is to do that next week on the 23rd and I will send out information on that. After this meeting. And also I want to welcome theater Forum has a new staff member which is brilliant. We're really delighted, and it's Katie Kelley, who's on the zoom there as well I'm not sure if she's in your window and but we're really delighted to have Katie, working with us as well. And so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to hand over to Anna and Anna is going to bring us through the next part of the meeting.
And thanks so much, and welcome everybody, and the numbers for these meetings seem to grow all the time so we're delighted to see so many of you here this morning. And it's been a very long, I suppose 14 months, and there have been lots of ups and downs and changes and reprogramming and rescheduling along the way. But I think this morning and I hoping they're on the call, we're delighted to welcome Sharon Berry and Mary Nash from the department, who will be joined with by, we'll be joined by Peter. Peter Jordan of slower, and to just take questions about an overview of the guidance that's currently in place for reopening over the summer months and into the autumn. So many of you have sent in questions. We'll answer all of those that we can this morning, but some of the more detailed program ones and production ones, we might hold on to the next session because it might be difficult to get through everything this morning. and, but as of this Monday, just gone. It is possible and it is now possible for theatres and art centers to be open. Obviously there are guidelines and number guidelines in place for the sort of events and the numbers of people that can attend those events. And I think the department, and indeed the minister in her discussions with cabinet and method set out for to make sure that theaters could reopen in June, rather than being left languishing waiting for, you know, the situation to change over the coming months, so we're very grateful for those efforts that achieved that reopening and our purpose this morning is to understand, and the context and the guidance that applies to those reopening situations. And many of you have come to us with particular questions about a particular event context or festival, and if we don't get to cover that this morning, we will come back to you directly. And so, if I can, if I'm not seeing everybody on the call, but if I could invite, Sharon. Sharon berry of the department to take the, take the mic, and, and to give us a, An Overview a brief overview of the guidance, providing pilot events, events, and over the summer months. Thanks Sharon
center. Morning everybody it's lovely to see so many people and great that we're able to have a positive conversation about things actually reopening so it's great to finally be seeing some movement, as Anna said, I suppose, teachers, the minister particularly wanted to get to users reopen to that start is with us was reopening them as a workspace earlier. Last month, and we appreciate you all being closed, are not able to attend workspaces for a very long time and that that's very frustrating and we're hoping over the coming months that we'll be able to increase capacities as time goes on. Suppose we're starting very cautiously, which, you know, I think is necessary to kind of do a proof of concept and make sure that things are working as they should do so for June. It's obviously 50 people is the maximum number that will be allowed inside the theater. And I suppose that's an exemption because there aren't apart from theaters and cinemas there's no other indoor events allowed during June through July before other events. Other areas could open up for indoor events with 50 people outdoors, obviously, you know there's a greater number so it's 100 outdoors or 204 venues that can hold people of over 5000 people that have that kind of capacity, and in terms of guidance and I suppose, Peter proud to be talking about this demeanors this the theatre forum guidance applies, but in general, suppose for those 50 people, it's, it's on the basis of two major social distancing indoors, and you can do ticketing and pods of up to six people six adults. And, yeah, so I suppose it's two meters between each of those pods, is, is the idea. And, and I think what we're looking at then is we keep assessing and reviewing as the weeks go on with a view to increasing those numbers over the summer, particularly in August and September, so we don't have we don't have numbers yet, what we will do is we'll see how it goes. We have the pilot events which are starting tomorrow actually with the IV gardens, the concert hall. James Vincent McMorrow and circle Richardson will have another, there's an event in the console in UL in the towards the end of the month in Killarney in the IBC, and we'd also hope to have an outdoor music festival with around three and a half 1000 people towards the end of June as well. The idea of all of those is really to test the guidance documents that are in place to review and see are there any lessons that we can learn in advance of a wider reopening and as we increase capacities. So, you know, with yourselves, I don't know piece would there be some kind of feedback process push, you know as you open up and as you look at bringing people back in, you know, it'd be very useful to find out what your experience is, and how your audience are actually finding being back inside buildings and what the reaction to that is, and again, I suppose. One thing to note, I know some many teachers will have their hospitality options or dining options, and that can't be done indoors that's there isn't an exemption for that so that's subject to the same rules as the outdoor dining for you know, bars and restaurants so it's outdoor only, and that will be subject to the forge art and guidance, which you can find on the bar chart of websites. So it's slightly different because that's there is a one major social distancing allowed for tables outside when you're doing hospitality and but it more in general I suppose we'll just say that there was some activity back in the sector and we're looking forward to seeing what happens over the course of the summer, I just don't married, did you have anything Mary Nash, it's also the department's you went, do you want to add there.
Thank you, Sharon, and yes, I'd like to echo Sharon's words like to see everybody delighted to be here for a change saying yes you can do this and yes you could do that. And it's going to be confusing for a while, it always is. For the first few weeks people aren't sure what they can do, but it was it's fairly simple because we're repeating it. And there's just one thing that I would like to add, and that is that on Monday I went out from my first point with my husband. And the place I went to as soon as I was in tears was clearly not legal or not not obeying the rules as we understand them. It was supposed to be outdoors, and just, there's no point coming to us. If you see something like that. Just take responsibility for your own your own situation and make sure that you're abiding by the rules. And sometimes I think people feel that they can look at the rules and say oh this is clear that is clear I think in most cases, if you are following the theatre forum guidelines or the cinema guidelines, and they're not. They're confusing you just ask a professional. There's like many people out there running facilities. It's not always, you may need more help on this than just trying to work it out for yourself so just check. So that's it that, those are my two things so there will be people who are getting it wrong, but that doesn't mean that we have to get it wrong. Thank you.
Thanks, Mary and Sharon just the guidelines that Sharon and Mary will reference referencing they're there to to have the relevant set of guidelines at the moment, and from our on theater forums website and we'll post the links in the chat for you, but one of them is the art centers we opening one which covers all of the audience and public facing aspects of reopening art centers, and the creating work guidelines and effect rehearsal room stage and backstage, and all of the workplace issues for productions and performances in art centers are an indeed there's a section on outdoor spaces. So all of those guidelines were put together by pieces on this call, and we have some specific questions but just before, as we have Sharon and Mary here this morning and after the early weeks of June and reopening where everybody is really testing and looking to interpret and apply those guidelines in the most informed and best way they can. And I think there have been discussions as Sharon and Mary, about a move to capacity based and audience numbers, hopefully from August but maybe it may be September, and that that approach would be informed by the pilot events, and the state of play in relation to COVID and vaccination programs and but it's very important I suppose for people on the call this morning, to know that that might be coming for September, October, but unfortunately, it's not possible to preempt to predict what those capacities might be. But as a starting point for discussion, an increase on a capacity based approach to 25% from September, possibly increasing to 50% and from October, sounds like a workable approach for people I don't know Sharon if you want to come and just on the napot and department mindset in relation to September onwards.
Yeah thanks that I suppose you know as I said, we're starting very cautiously with so it's the, they're still sticking to the levels so that's where the 50 comes from because that was the original level to indoor numbers that you were allowed. I think we are going to try and move away from that over, August, September, it hasn't yet been decided because will depend really on the pilot events are very much and the reopening of the theaters are very much a proof of concept, there's, you know, we just need to demonstrate that those safe controlled environments, and that we can create them and that we can maintain them and run them safely and we will take all of the learnings from that back to NASA and the Department of Health, what we've we're certainly looking for a move towards a percentage based capacity I think it's, You know, so that we dependent on you know being able to maintain that social distancing so let's say for example it was 25% in August, which could be like if it hasn't you know hasn't been decided. I mean I think the next decision point really is around the 19th of July is the next set of new regulations that we'd expect. So I think we're probably the last week in June, get a decision on that. And it is probably going to be a capacity based percentage capacity, again the vaccination program plays a huge part in this, you know, the quicker that rolls out, the faster we can increase capacities, you know what, we're being quite cautious for now because there are concerns around you know variants of concern you, there's the Delta variant to the Nepalese variant and they just need to see as the vaccination program increases what that looks like but you see yourself, Even though the numbers have remained kind of static around four or 500 years, the number of cases every day the hospitalizations and the ICU in particular have fallen off quite dramatically and they're the key numbers for getting things back up and open so you know it'd be quite hopeful last August and September, that there'd be really decent capacity numbers, and we should have, we should have more clarity on that within the next sort of three weeks. And, but again, it'll be a lot of it is down to the the rollout of vaccination program.
Thanks Sharon and just to be clear for everybody the numbers that we're closing the wall sometimes in previous sets of guidance that the numbers included front of house people are included cast and crew. These are definitively, or every number quoted this morning is the number of audience members or people attending the event and excludes anybody working and cast and crew. And while we have you just shared a Maryam, I just go to piece just to see if there are questions that he's getting very frequently or issues that need to have needed clarification for people over the time or maybe directing people to outdoor events, particularly given that we're at the early part of the summer, the outdoor events section of the guidelines prepared by patients Luer and are available, and it gives you as at the headlines of, you know, an outdoor event and what's involved, and the work returned to work safely protocols for anybody who's looking at a building, and opening an art center or theater in the next while. But Peter, do you want to come in on just any of those issues.
I suppose the big thing at the moment because I'm going to steal Nick's thunder here a little bit. Apologies Nick is that the revised W SP has significantly increased the measurement ventilation and for ventilation risk assessment and and ultimately that's what's at the core of a lot of our issues moving forward because airborne has become such so prevalent within the conversation so we can't underestimate the requirement to go back into your venue response plans because your venue responses that you had last April or May aren't fit for purpose anymore, and they need to be revised with regards to the new W SP, that looks at looking at your response trying to hate as a as a fantastic suite of online documents I always recommend go and say look for your pre Return to Work forms, look at your response, response forms, also update your links, because some of your definitions around close contact contact arrangements etc will have deviated and they are actually constantly being more nuanced definition from public health advice to make sure that your, your planning is still up to speed. And then for people who come back to work, maybe you've had COVID or long COVID or high risk or vaccination, they need to be looked for fitness to work form as I know a lot of this is contained within the, the newly revised W SP so I would encourage people to look for that. and as Nick is showing there yeah, sorry, Nick, and the one thing is I suppose the outdoor document, and the elements within our plan I think still stand, obviously, I came to standards involved in the LPs and the ongoing, the guidance coming out for, for DOD. So I think they still stand for the moment while they've been sincere what what those guidelines come out, I have to say I was at two events this weekend in Kerala, and they were fantastic. And I think the sense of relief, actually being in an audience space, and also in the audience were very self managing and that I do art. Audience generally are extremely compliant as far as I was kind of in. Sometimes when you've been away for so long when you develop so much paperwork to do something. And what we do very well is actually stage events which sounds kind of obvious, but I think we can't forget that. And the audience very much can with the, the event always encouraging to see that self as well as those might take outs at the moment.
And again just picking up on a question and there was a lot of debate in previous months about social distancing and what level of distance was required. Again, unambiguously and clearly for June and July, and audience numbers are all subject to social distancing of two meters, there's no change to that.
In theaters and art centers, yep. Yeah, and I think that the reason I love finance is that it's underneath two meters you become close contact and I go, we can have an argument about wash is one meter 1.5 Whatever. If the definition of becoming close contact over two hours is below two meters and this is why it needs to be two meters and as the same went for cinemas and same would probably went for theaters as well. And hopefully that does change, but that definition of the close contact is two meters in two hours, or you know or within a, an environment and that becomes a major part of our understanding of physical distancing and preventing
the peace, I've heard you give the definition of indoor and outdoor spaces really clearly in the past, and, and because the numbers differ for indoor and outdoor events, and just would you give your definition of what an outdoor space are 1010 tenten marquees is the is the, is one of the questions.
Yeah, and outdoor spaces. Let's say if it's a marquee 50% your walls are down so 50% of your walls need to be removed, and even within an indoor environment 50% of your awards cannot be doors or windows, so it actually needs to be 50% of clear space. And so, like I mean it's maybe I'm being naive and saying, This sounds pretty obvious but it literally is Louisa was basically presented that needs not to be there and that doesn't mean replace it with trailers or something that will feature a percent of your total surrounding clear.
Thanks Pete, I think we have the, we get the benefit of having Mary and Sharon with us, with an inside track on test events and discussions within the department in there but at the moment. Does anybody have anything specific that they would like to ask Sharon and Mary. The I'm just I think we've answered the controlled environment and one meter, one meter is not part of this, these guidelines, and they're reopening at this time. So we're definitely at to two meters, and I'm just looking at the chart here for anybody who wants to ask anything specific to F. OB Sharon Ameri.
So Anna sorry question there about live music as a performance indoors, it's absolutely allowable.
It is
outdoors, I suppose, this is where the noise on live music was it's not allowed in the outdoor hospitality settings. At the moment, but you know if you're having them as part of the audience of 50 if you're having live music as a performance that's absolutely provided for.
And again, we would understand that that music as a live performance and an art center appear to space and cabaret style seating is fine, and from July bar service, add to those tables is absolutely fine, within the, within the context of an event like that. And the only issue for that art center venue to be concerned about is just that on ticket sales if they're registered and I'm looking to Pete here for.
Sorry I actually was reading the chat room so I'm sorry apologies, and he made me to repeat that again sorry,
and we're just, we're just trying to, there, there appears appears to be, and music events are not allowed, and in under the fourth Ireland bar and restaurant and guidelines and but obviously in theaters and art centers, some of the events, programs are indeed music events, and for some of those art centers, they may well set up cabaret style seating and offer bar service to people seated and in the auditorium for those events. So what Sharon is confirming is that those music events are possible in theaters and art centers, and we're just asking the extended extension of bass is just questioning whether bar service is permissible in that context from July, I think, indoor service from July, it's sort of a combination of the both the Ireland guidelines for bars and restaurants, and the theaters and art centers, being able to open from June.
My understanding is that it wouldn't be a you know is that that the traditional theater makeup as you say in your season you said and done, obviously what a cabaret that that's still the same you experienced your I wouldn't see how you could mix and live performance and a, a food service our drink service will within the gathering space outside the auditorium. Now, I know, I heard you I know Liam and Nikki were talking about this on the call but the follow the intention of public health guidance that would, I would associate that cabaret arrangement as a light bearer, and there's a restriction on that presently so
I'd agree with a repeat, I think what you could, what could be allowable from the fifth of July, is that your bar can be open, but I don't think that you could then translate that into cabaret seating because, as Pete said, you effectively end up being in the same situation as a pub with music, and that would, I don't know I mean, it's maybe further up the food chain, altogether question that one but it would appear to me to be the same thing.
Okay, we might come back to that because it is quite detailed and it's quite particular to, you know, a small number of venues, and their ongoing questions about a two meter distancing relevant to outdoor events and yes that's my understanding Sharon if you want to
look I'll come back to you on the the bar and carry, I'll come back to you maybe later today and you can send out something other animals, in terms of distancing it's two meters for everything. The only place there's any exemption at the moment is for outdoor dining, that you could have one meter between the tables but everything else is subject to two meters for now, including outdoors. So your pods outdoors or pods of six you'd need two meters from the next part similarly indoors.
Yep. And maybe, maybe one of the last queries just on bars, I, my understanding is that from July and indoor service in bars in parishes and art centers can happen, and the bars can be open pre at the interval and post show.
Yeah, I think it's, it's probably really going to be based on, you'll have to do a risk assessment yourself of whether you can maintain that social distancing, because that will still be your requirements. So, you know, people queuing up ingress and egress out of the bar area, you know, maybe you can consider table service, Something like that. I think it's, it's really around a risk assessment of being able to manage that social distancing when your bar is open
at the ports that the port questions, it's an odd one for the outdoor, because there are so many different guidelines going on so like in our sports ports were allowed up to 15. And I thought I read somewhere that you can have a port of 15 from three households, or you can have a port of six from any number of households. This is Outdoor. And I'm struggling here on the other computer to find where I might have read that, or possibly made up in my head. Does anybody
know it's, it's kind of a confused, it's, there's one basic rule which is six adults I suppose that's the, you know, The 15 includes children, so I'd have six six adults at a table or in a park, and it's 15 if it was each copper brought along the children, for example, but it's a maximum of six adults I think is easiest way to think about and that applies to joining, and to all the pod situations both indoors and outdoors. Lovely, thank you.
It's like a mastermind of guidelines, this morning and said, thanks to Tim, thanks to Sharon and Mary for their, their expertise. I'm just wondering if the. There are a number of festivals that are, I suppose. We've had em Carlo last week but there are other festivals that are being organized over the coming months. And just, it might be worth peace if we could ask you for an overview from your point of view of the protocols and the what needs to be in place for a festival that's using a multiple multiple sites and different events which are not necessarily, you know, they're often hires or they're often available. And you know, free of charge to the festival, but just the considerations in going into, you know, open spaces, churches, halls, hotels, all sorts of other places within, within the, the Office of the festival
angsana it's really fair question. It's only like before 12 And I suppose a lot of this will come out hopefully shortly Sharon can voice when the five Darren guidance comes out or a lot of it is if you're going to external venues that the principles still apply. You're not going to contact trace, you're looking for a very robust room assessments ventilation assessments to include pre and post so it's like how you set up your game, the gig. Afterwards, I think, something that, that was obvious when we were putting together the guidelines even of course the last couple of months it's actually harder to stage the work backstage than it is to bring the audience into the, into the house or bringing the audience is one thing but then how you work, the space is theater. So I would say the room of ventilations assessments are critical to all that and then your contact tracing and social distancing capacity your pod arrangement, etc. And those are the big things I'm sorry I'm trying to think on the whole fair little bit you know but um, that's, that really is the core of it, unless I know Liam you've been in that the working groups and there's no from from the working group you can bring into that.
I suppose the, the audience contact tracing and selling tickets and configuring spaces for to the festival and the festival team, and then maybe a lot of the backstage production and performance issues, fall to the performer the production company, and, and the production company, in this case or the producer would have to work to the work safely and protocols that are current in currently in place, which are quite as you say are quite onerous,
Dr. Sorry, you're dead right to calculate them but obviously it's about reinforcing the message to public don't come to the gate if you feel unwell and that needs to be reinforced pre on on the GIG itself, and then even outdoors or indoors, the common is within a crowded area that it's fully masked as well you know so so what you're trying to do is, is kind of keep the eye the infection prevention control measures known and that the audience know them in advance, and, and ultimately if you're going to conduct tracing it's about how your ticket policy is about what your ticket resale policy is there's non transferable tickets or how do you manage that and how do you make sure that the audience knows what to expect. The,
there's a lot more, just on the production performance and managing all of those issues in the creative work documents which covers. And I said, a lot of those same issues. And, and, as I say, I know there are some questions which we're not getting to but I think a lot of your questions will be answered. And in the creating work guidelines which he's put together. And, you know, and those have been reissued and updated. And so, sorry,
can I just say for a sec I saw a message come off there from just as somebody is asking about a two meter distancing on stage as well. The same applies on stage and it does that is workplace and it's the same as everywhere else. And if you're going to work on stage and work in close proximity, unless in working in an on mass environment, you need to have a really robust risk assessment, around that. And if you take the mitigation measures the way of mask wearing, then that needs to be reinforced with with testing program, or I would advise you bring an Occupational Physician to to advise in your risk assessment, you know, workplace on stage is the exact same as everywhere else, and those ABCs need to be followed and if you're going to deviate from that you need to be really tight and how you do that, and your risk assessment process.
And it may, it's not really it's probably too extensive a subject for today but we will have draft contracts which have been revised to take account of COVID situations where performers and production companies, and, and promoters and those revised contracts will be available in the coming weeks, but it's, there's quite a lot of detail. I suppose in managing all of those contractual arrangements, but then employer responsibilities around testing and keeping everybody safe, and the additional, and it puts pressure on the producer and the production company and they're also cost implications I think involved as well. And at that point if we can just thank Pease Sharon and Mary, very much for joining us this morning because it is, it's such a, there's so many overlapping sets of guidelines and we're all trying to navigate through them so sometimes, a clear overview as you've given us this morning is hugely helpful so thank you, thank you for that. And we're, we were coming to where we were hitting on some issues around ticketing and pads and contact tracing indeed from an audience point of view. So I'd like to welcome Paul Fadden and Paul Simon of ticketsolve, and for the two just to introduce the next topic which is a look of ticketing and audience issues but as well as ticketing and the practical concerns around contact tracing and Paul has also been talking to some of his colleagues and clients in the UK, about how to make audiences feel comfortable and welcome them back into theaters because we can all get very concerned about the health and safety aspects as we should be, but also making people feel comfortable in the space, and whether it's an indoor or outdoor event is also I think hugely important. So, welcome to Paul
review. So thank you, Irma, and an average day for organizing it so what we did was that we've created a little landing page for everybody so you don't have to listen to me ramble on too much detail about the various different tools that are available. Some of the toolkits that we have as part of this site, you just simply sign in with your email address and then you're done with the wall you should get within two to three minutes to your into your inbox, but it's reopened safely to clear communications, some case studies social distancing and seizing sessions on resilience audience engagement webinar, various different things. There's also a brilliant podcast there as well that we recorded recently with one of our customers are going to give you some of the nuggets from that now, but they're Commedia, you may be familiar with it, they are based in Brighton, and they also spoke to a lot of our customers in the UK just to guide to get some kind of cold from them as well, because prior to today's call. I did speak to some of my Irish customers to ask them okay what would be a benefit for today, what would you like to hear, and that was the kind of the main thing that came from it was like, Okay, what are the UK doing because the view is is that they're slightly ahead of us. So, and that's from a rule of but there's two camps in the UK. The first camp is the camp that are waiting until June 21 Which I think, personally, we'll see. I'm not sure if that's going to go ahead. But there are people are just waiting for that and that's when all restrictions are going to be lifted. The second camp is obviously organisations who are happy to open up with social distancing and play, and those are the ones that I spoke to to kind of get some feedback from them on what how they manage that whole thing from an internal point of view, but also as an as rightly said about making their customers feel more secure. During the time. So, one of the things, again, is really important for them is, is just not to look too far down or too far ahead of it so a lot of them are only planning, like six weeks ahead.
They're not looking any further than that silly because it's, there's no point, and it's really really difficult to plan that far in advance, it also brings an added level of anxiety to them if they have to think about six weeks in advance where they're trying to understand fully how to get better at what they're doing. Also, if you'd like, each member of the team had a different reaction to the pandemic and key for them was to be very, very open and have like an open forum for where staff can come so I'm just going to post after, frankly, first of all, come to them with any concerns that they have. Then if, in tandem with this, there's what I really liked was to get customer feedback, because customers, we all our customers. Our customers are key to this, but our customers, ultimately will give us the information that we need to add that extra layer to make them more comfortable now touch on that in a second. Try not to think of everything in one goal is what they said. Again, if there was one, what are the lessons that you learned it would be exactly that like to sit down you're planning, we need to have every single thing boxed off I understand that we do and don't get me wrong on certain aspects of it, but we can't get too much open our head about all of this, and just the team being well trained and understanding procedures is key so constant learning. So what they do, after each show, which was interesting is that they would have around, and feedback from all of the team on the show, and what can they do what, how can they improve how can they make the actual better and safer for their audiences. So again, constantly reviewing the process was key for them. You also, some of them had bespoke signage and posters, and again you ceiling one of the case studies there is from Hertford theater, it's quite an interesting cinema, it shows what they're putting on at the moment, in tandem with some other theater shows but cinema and they're using, like, like Terminator I'd be back and various different things plays on various different movies from the past, as part of that. So again, creating parallel creativity is part messaging and still very welcome without being seen as being too star right. So, they also updated all of the T's and C's and I will COVID all tickets were fully refundable which is like always interesting on the give already mentioned Peter, where if somebody does come along and says, Well, I have to isolate, there's no credit from them whatsoever. So the risk time is taken away from the punter helps them feel safe and give people confidence to buy tickets, and the feedback on that was that very few people are coming back to say this, you know, I can't come. So they're not really taken off that sort of key again, key is to give that option to the customer. The other side of it as well which is really good. Again, it's a feedback here is that the customer has come back very strong with, they are just delighted to be out there are delighted to be attending venues, they're like delighted to be there, and they're compliant, and they're compliant with the rules and regulations that are obviously put in place by the organization. Some of this is kind of done into the kind of the technology part of it but again this is all within the system, and it's very useful as well. In terms of your ticket design, you know, you have lots of different information points, whether it be on your website, your pre imposed emails your ticket design so on so forth where, obviously you can communicate various different pieces of health and safety regulations that you need your audience to adhere to. One of the things that they did say is one of the customers is that they got all of the legal pieces done very early in the customer journey, ie customer journey coming to the venue. So what if they were outside or on their way in. And they obviously clearly set out what those were. But once we have that, again, they were brought to their seats. After that, they didn't go too hard on all of that, because again they just wanted to obviously make the venue, a place where people felt comfortable in and felt like they're coming there to obviously view cinema shows or whatever they're screaming at the time. The alternate the scanning option as well as because some of the customers we spoke to were weren't using scanning before, and obviously scanning is perfect for not having to take tickets from the customer, or print tickets out again, pre booking at all pre booking for all customers for all of their end customers. And again, they were quite surprised that not many people were arriving on the day like looking to buy tickets because people have been conditioned into that. So, which was interesting. Again the email reminders not overkill. Again, explaining the process. As I said the team being well trained is very very important. One of our customers said Yeah, older audiences are a concern, some of the shows that they've programmed whether would be of an old roll the slant, they're not getting those back and the numbers that they would have liked, which I think is to be expected.
After the show, which is, this is the piece that I absolutely love, and I think it's so important. So we're thinking about how do we get people to feel comfortable again. One of the ways to get people to feel comfortable again is to see other people saying that they were comfortable when they were in your venue. So how do we do that. We do that by sending them partial email to ask them Do they have any feedback, and then what they were doing with that feedback was obviously anonymously, they were then posting that onto a source of social media channels and their email campaigns, to see what people were saying about being at their venue, and that's been worked amazingly well for people. So again, people are also. Okay, I've seen really really positive feedback from customers that have been to exhale. Some of them said are not doing any prints or brochures whatsoever. They sandwich the whole program together and as I said they're only looking at six weeks of shows. Another interesting one was at the reboot, I don't know if it's a possibility but they've negotiated with x to do two shows that I would know intervals. So, where they can put on two shows, as opposed to just having one. And overall, as I said, quite people are quite responsible and they're delighted to be able to come on to be. He also said this is a time where they look at, you know, taking it as a positive, and it can be difficult in this time to really look at this as a positive but to change things up, and they feel like, necessity is the mother of invention here and they're doing things that they would never have done before. It's they know that it's a temporary measure and working in the now, they put their July shows so this is I think is another really important thing because I'm going to touch on this in a second because it comes down to our parts and what we were talking about earlier and I mentioned, is, even though you can't come out and say, June, 21 is when everything is supposed to be put back up running again there enough programming, or they're not running their shows to full capacity, because they're not fully sure if that's going to actually materialize. So what they're doing is that they're still doing limited capacities, because their view of the world and that one is that it's easier to ratchet it back up as a ratchet back down, because you're gonna have to tell some people that. Okay, we're back down to 20% or 30% or 50%, whatever the case may be, again, that's just learning from them, and they're just as I said just taking it very much like one week at a time six week blocks that's all they're looking at, and that's sensible they are been around. From our point of view in terms of like the data that we've seen is that we've handled, lots of on sales now some high profile ones, some normal just one of the bell shows, but the demand is very high, it is very very high, and people are coming back and buying in numbers. So, the things I think that everybody should be focused on. From a ticketing side of it is, well, how are we going to make obviously our audience safe, so all the communication points are just highlighted there earlier a burger are important, but I think on allocators, this is mine, and again the feedback from our customers. I think allocator is the way to go. To start off with, because I just think if you're bringing allocators venues into play. I think it's going to add a layer of complexity for you and for potentially your your end user and buyer that I don't think we need to do. I think having unallocated venues as 50 Obviously, it's going to be for the next two months, which I heard today, is the way to go. And from there on, you can rack to the backup as needed. And it's way easier to do that as opposed to have an allocators option, as I said again, the pre and post email alerts that they really found was very very useful and the customer was very appreciative of the extras which I will demo in a second and kind of asked me to do this for today is within the system you do you have the ability to ask additional information. So we'll put into this, I just want to show you this the true customer journey online buying a ticket, I'll show you that in a second. Also the other things as well that's still available, that rooms and streaming on demand, and again I'd love to get your feedback on that. Not a huge amount of organizations have at the end of that, is that something that you believe is going to be a big part of the future is going to be still a hybrid of people having live shows plus rooms and on demand. And again, that that functionality is still there, and you also still have the ticket exchange, too. So, again, I think people just need to be mindful of that. And also as well, how well that was received, like where, you know, if you do have to cancel a show in the future, you still have the ability to go and ask your customers would you mind give me back some of that as part credit or some type of donation, and I'll give you back the remainder and it's amazing how many people actually took up on that, because there is a there is a lot of money out there, and a lot of disposable income. And then also just having a resources page online. So, if I show you real quick. No, Anna, how to do this here in a minute for a while, share this, you should be good to share Paul, Camille, thank you very much. Share this. Yeah, that's right. So, if we went to the event page here, so this is just a domain event that we run. So if we click in here, full price ticket. Okay, go to checkout, run through the steps,
and I will
definitely ask for a donation, absolutely make sure that's part of the, the checkout journey for your customers. But the last piece was, This is where you can add in the extras, the attendees name, their age, vaccination status, fully vaccinated first dose received not vaccinated and mode of transport, now I think I'm gonna maybe, do you want to just jump in on this one because you asked us to do this yesterday so yeah
be and actually we're, we're robbing time from the end of today's program and we do this now because the idea is that every event, and every attendee at every event, and that this information will be collected, that they're not necessarily linked to their name but anonymized to age vaccination status and mode of transport, and that all events from June July onwards, whether it's beyond the tickets sold on the tickets sold on the tickets off platform or any other platform, we would hope that this information could be collected and fed back to the department team, and indeed shared with the Arts Council, it's really useful for the department to be able to make the case to Nevitt and department on T shirt that events have been run safely, and also to give the quantitative information about the age vaccination status and mode of transport of the people attending those events. The only reason for a mode of transport, just because it's an odd one that we don't normally collect, is that a lot of the transmission I think in the early months was people traveling in the same car. And so, that's of interest to never particularly, but those are the key variables that the Arts Council, and we're looking to collect and the department are looking to collect around pilot events, and we just try and match and mirror that and around events that are happening from June onwards. So, we're just trying to make sure that we can, and enable us or extras can enable you to do it in a reasonably automated and simplified way, so it doesn't add to any survey or administrative stuff that you have to do already.
Okay, perfect. Thanks. Sorry I've ran over a little bit so I'm happy to hand you over to Jane Brennan and Ashley Lynch from the National Gallery, and really speaking to them today is, obviously, they're open, and they've had a huge amount of learnings that they're happy to share with us today so I would just pass you over to them. The last thing I say before that. Please place the link that I sent you on here, just all you do is just simply put in your name and on every one of these resources will be sent out to you. So, click onto that. And I would definitely listen to this podcast here. It's very very very important.
Okay.
Thank you.
Hi everyone, and thanks for having us. My name is Ash Lynch, and I was part of the reopening in the National Gallery of Ireland as was my colleague Jane Brennan and Jane and I will be talking about our experience with our reopening. We were thrilled to reopen our doors on the 10th of May, alongside other museums and galleries, which means we've now been open a month, and we've learned a lot in those four weeks and we'll share some of those learnings with you shortly. Getting operational again there are a few things that needed to be implemented in order to reopen, including revisiting our when I wrote refining our on site signage, but it was important to us that while we were refining these things and putting in new systems to ensure the guy there was ready to open, and was safe for our visitors that these systems, didn't impact the visitor experience. And we kept the kind of welcome feel for our visitors, and didn't impact any, it didn't create a different kind of experience for them they were coming back to the same gallery that they love. And so making the online booking experience, as well as on site experience, as simple as possible, was, was really fundamental to us, and just refining what we had in place a previous Reopenings one system that we had to implement before reopening was the contact tracing system, although some other galleries, like Emma had implemented this last year. This was new territory for us. And now I'll pass it over to Jane who will kind of go through the contact tracing process in a little bit more, more depth.
Sure. Okay, thanks, thanks, Ash and Irma if I could ask you just to go back to, I think, actually, sorry, we're on our first slide now. And so yeah, just by way of introduction, and I'm legal and compliance manager at the gallery, and I'm also the gallery's Data Protection Officer So, and was involved on the contact tracing parts of implementing the solution. So, Irma, would you be able to go back to us to the agenda slide please. And just so I can give a rundown of where we're going to go, banks, and so just Yeah, first of all just to give you a bit of background, and to introducing our solution, and our overall objective, then I'm going to look us and issues that we wanted to overcome and requirements for the system to be implemented. Then we'll take a look at what solution we selected, and the approach we took in terms of actually putting. And that solution in place and then outlining kind of the key steps that we went through, and then I'm going to hand back over to ash. As regards the feedback to date since we opened our doors on the 10th of May, and if people go to the next slide please. And so on the next one. Thank you. And so just firstly on the back end and objective, and everyone on this group has is very well versed in the concept now of contact tracing but of course, back in there already 2020 It wasn't a concept that, that many people were familiar with, and, and we've had a kind of a phased understanding and approach to contact tracing. When we initially reopened in summer 2020 And we had read the return to work safely protocol as it then was, and we had understood that, and our duty, there was to honor the health and safety legislation was to provide a safe place of work for our staff, and, and back of house visitors so people like contractors or anyone undertaking work, and you know on site.
That was the approach we initially took. And then, once our cafe was open, in line with four to Ireland guidance for bars and restaurants we also implemented a kind of pen and paper contract trace installation, then by the time the May 2021 reopening was upon us, and we've been in touch with our line department, and, you know, The overall understanding there was therefore that the, the, the definition of visitors would extend to all visitors so with that in mind we have to look at a suitable solution which was scalable as well because obviously the numbers we were talking about were greatly increased from, from the measures we had in place before. But always, we have the overall objective in mind of ensuring a safe and welcoming environment for our visitors, and you know this is contact tracing as. One such measure you all again very familiar with all of these things and I even look at my list there and see I haven't put down masks or various other things that add measures that we have in place but it's one of that whole suite of measures to make the gallery as safe and pleasant place for people to visit. And next slide please. And so, then just look down at the issues and the requirements. As mentioned already the kind of pen and paper solution that we had for our cafe, which I'm sure many of you have encountered in your day to day, it just wasn't an option for us anymore due to the numbers, which the overall capacities as I understand them and ash might give some detail on this, but is at any one time on the gallery complex on Marion Square, and we're looking at numbers of 630. And now that's at any one point in time, not a kind of daily capacity but that's kind of a scale of, of visitors that we expect. And for any solution that we were to put in place we were keen to avoid any congestion at entrances or direct cover, I suppose mitigate rather than limit, then avoid direct contact with stuff, bus, and you know any we'd want to avoid points of congestion. At the moment we've a one way system where you come in at the Marion Square entrance and you go wait by the clerestories access. So, it's to keep the flow of people going, the system has to be of course GDPR compliance which I'll come on to in a bit more detail, and, and then under GDPR there's various headings there, you know, you have to make appropriate use of technology, where possible, and where it's suitable for to, as part of your solution. You have to minimize the amount of data that you collect and use so again here with the aim of contact tracing in mind, we were very much focused on, you know, that limited information that's shared with the HSE so name and name contact number number and party and the date of the business data security, obviously, massively important here, and, and I'll get onto how we address that in the solution identified. We were keen that, and where we were notified of a case of COVID-19 and we would have to provide the information on where to the HSE, that the system would facilitate easy reporting an extraction of that info, and so that it can be shared. And the system of course have to be intuitive and easy to use for end users. And, you know, generally people coming to the gallery and used to walk in the door, there was no requirement to book a ticket, you know we go across every demographic so to make sure that it was something that was really easy for people to use was essential. And then it also we wanted it to be integrated to our website. And so, next slide please. So then we landed on our solution, and I'm just going to outline our approach to bringing it in and the gallery, and ticketsolve, where our pre existing service provider for box office and online ticketing. And so they're a natural fit for for something like contact tracing for us. And in some visitors now have to book a free general admission tickets via our website in advance, whereas before they could they could just walk up and walk in the door, and then I've already outlined obviously that's the information we share on to the HSE, and if we're notified that we need to do so. And next slide please. So just to give you a sense this is kind of the landing page where it flashes up as soon as you land on our website, you get a notification to say, great to see you. But please, book your fried fish, and you can go on to the next slide please. And so, So where to start with all of this in the gallery, we actually undertook a formal data protection impact assessment, and which actually was the first time we've done that since the introduction of GDPR, I guess, in our case due to the numbers of people involved, and members of the public still on.
And, sorry. We thought it was a necessary step to go through, and there's a prescribed form for that I guess that we used. I talked to a lot of people talking about risk assessments, and it has an inbuilt risk assessment. When you're considering the solution that when we were collected considering the solution that was on the table. And, but in general, you know where to start with this the same place we start with, anywhere, any new measure or revised measure in the gallery that involves the, the use of contact, or sorry, the use of personal data, I should say. And so it's really just to go back to first principles, looking at the purpose of the processing, whose data are we collecting and why. And obviously this is data being provided by individuals or lead parties leaves individuals going to party have up to six. Why are we collecting it, for the purposes of contact tracing. And I suppose the really key one being, how we collect us us at stores and delete us. And in terms of collection, we're collecting. During the booking process online as outlined and we outlined very clearly to people that we can and must use the data for the, for the purpose of sharing with the HSE if necessary. In the case of an outbreak, it's stored securely on ticketsolve, I suppose, even beyond that, it's as much base, and your internal protocols so our ticketsolve account is only accessible by designation staff who have the login details and and kind of skipping down to the last bullet on this slide now but, you know, We also in the case of having to share the data with the HSE we put together a very short, and not even a one pager, in terms of the protocol. In terms of getting that data off the system, and making sure that it's limited to only the data that is to be shared with the HSE. We have a sign off of two senior staff members myself and our commercial manager Jillian DeMarco, just to make sure that there's no additional data being inadvertently shared onwards so and so it's kind of, there's ticketsolve is one part of the solution and then we just have our own internal post code to back that up and get on just on the issue of data retention and minimization within the ticketsolve system if you come on and you you book a general admission tickets and you do nothing else, your data will be automatically purged after 30 days, I, you know your contact details and the fact to your business. If you choose to do other things with your ticketsolve accounts, whether it was pre existing or if you choose to become make a donation or buy your friends membership any of those sort of transactions, while booking your free admission tickets, and that will be stored as part of your customer kind, but we like with any of these things I think you just flag it upfront and you tell people and you say this is the way that this is operating, and that we haven't got any kind of negative feedback on that. And just again then to look at whether the measure is necessary and proportionate. Of course, here you have to look at your legal basis for introducing any of these measures, health and safety legislation being the key one here but the overall public health interest as well in preventing the spread of COVID 19. And again under GDPR an appropriate use of technology, and for numbers of our scale, and it makes sense to have a technological solution which, which had a pre booking feature. And the next slide please.
And so just outline the key steps, as mentioned we undertook a formal DPI a data protection Impact Assessment, which has an inbuilt risk assessment and, which was a detailed enough exercise, but essentially, you know, touch touched on all those first principles, and headings that was then signed off by senior management, and we put our data processing agreements in place with ticketsolve, and we would have had one in place before for our other online ticketing but we had a specific one for this but that's, you know, there's kind of mandatory provisions under GDPR which are contained in that and it's part of ticketsolve standards contractual documents, and we then just to reiterate what a few other people have said on the forum so far, just tell people everywhere, wherever you can watch you're doing. So we updated our privacy notices on our website. And just to let people know that we were collecting this data for contact tracing purposes. And we also updated our online ticketing T's and C's which you come across, and when you are booking a ticket, and with the same information, and then the kind of belt and braces was, again, as Paul showed you on the demo though, there we added a note at the start the ticket booking process and outlining, basically, what data can be shared in the event of contract tracing being necessary. And just to flag again this point about the difference between one time users and account users who are undertaking and other actions. And next slide please. And so this yeah this is just a screen grab of what you see and have the whole message but again they're just a welcoming message to say, great to have you back. Then, once if there's kind of an arrow that you click on and then it gives kind of a note of the stars of the booking process, and just outlining contact tracing and and how we treat your personal data. And next slide please. So on feedback to date, I might hand you back over to ash now, who can, who can give some detail on these insights to date and and feedback to date with Thanks.
Thanks, Jane, I'm just going to go through some of the things that we've learned over the last four weeks, and how visitors have responded to the new contact tracing system in terms of level of understanding amongst the public, you know, booking in advance is kind of every, you know it's part of our every day, everyone is kind of getting used to this slowly but surely, visitors were just so happy to be able to enter the gallery, and a lot of them are most of them were checking info in advance online on our website, and this is clear, kind of from our numbers which I'll go through in a moment. And so we had over 18,000 visitors during May, just gone. We opened on the 10th of May, and the first three weeks, the numbers were quite high, especially at the weekends. We have noticed things have gone down a little bit in the last week and a half, probably due to the fact that more things are open in the city and in the country. 80% of these visitors booked online in advance of their visit, we had anticipated, roughly 50% of visitors to book ahead and the other visit 50% to turn up without a ticket. As for what we were hearing from other museums and galleries in the UK. Thankfully, the numbers are a lot higher, which makes it a lot easier for us to manage our numbers, and we can kind of adjust the amount of tickets that we have available online or at the box office, and according to these numbers in terms of our no shows, and we haven't we've had a kind of consistent rate of about 30% and the entire time since we opened at the beginning of May. And as they were free tickets we were obviously expecting a decent amount of people to book and potentially not turn up. Luckily it isn't as high as we thought. And on the first day we had about 32% No shows, but other than that it's been quite consistent. And then a few other things after the initial evaluations, and other additional measures that we that we put into place was time ticketing, on the weekends. At the start when we first reopened, we created an all day ticket for visitors. There was no obligation to come at any particular time, we thought this was the best strategy to start with since we didn't really know yet how many visitors would, we would have, and when they would opt to come. The first and second weekend, we had quite high numbers, which were being booked online. So we decided to start implement time ticketing for the weekends, as a trial and now we've kind of implemented that for weeks in advance. And we've created four time slots on Saturday and three on our Sunday is our shorter day. And it's really just to manage numbers, but still offer some flexibility to our visitors. And so for example if a visitor booked a 11 to 1:11am to 1pm timeslot. On Saturday, they can enter any time between 11am and 1pm, and then they can leave whenever they wish, so any anytime during that day so there's still offers a lot of flexibility for them. And we did also revise some of our additional wayfinding routes to make to make exiting the building a little bit easier. So yeah, that's all from us, initially, and thanks for your time and we hope that that was some of that was useful for you going forward for your own reopening there's anything that we've mentioned that you'd like to clarify just let us know.
Thank you, thank you both very much. And I think it's what's very striking. I'm hearing you talk about how you implement it is that your, you need to think of people as visitors and or as audience members rather than as risks. and I think the contact tracing and all of the work that needs to go into contact tracing needs to take place in the background, and all of the risk assessments need to be, you know, confined to, if you like the the workings of how you welcome people back into places, as, as important and as lovely as the gallery with thank you both, and I'm sure the contact tracing and systems will be a value, and information about them will be a value to everybody. And if I could pass over to Liam, welcoming Leamas and Chair of ASD, but also with his huge experience of work at energy theater and keeping all of that working and getting it back and reopening in the coming months. And Liam has done a lot of work and he's shared some of this with you before around seating plans, and, and particularly the H vac systems which he is significantly more of an experts than any of us here. But, over to you, Liam and thank you.
Thank you very much. I will share my screen if you don't mind. The thing I suppose I'd start before I start. What I'd love to say to everyone just as a personal comment is that we should try and approach these things as not as what we can get away with. But what we should be doing, because our problems are not a problem but our challenge at the moment is that we are essentially being watched, this, this is about the next month or two is about proving that we're a grownup industry and that we are capable of putting on events, indoor, outdoor, as the case may be safely, and that we pose no more risk than any other part of society does. So, we want to approach that as much as possible as what we, what we can do as opposed to what we can get away with, with regards to seating seating at the moment is a big part of this, simply because there is requirements about boundaries around events and outdoor events so it's a little harder to put together some of the less traditional formats of events, and keep the most controlled environments and such as, as required. So, we're going to just briefly explore seating, I know we're running behind so I'm going to skim a lot of this.
The
mouse click. There we go. So, what I'm doing here is I'm asking the questions I'm not going to give any particular solution to any particular venue, it's all going to have to be done by the venues themselves but I'm going to try and arm you with a few questions that you need to ask yourselves during the process. Each theater space is unique, the things to look out for are what we're going to explore here. The lobby is generally going to be the more challenging element. It's actually quite a simple process to decide how many people you can fit in your auditorium based on distancing based on different systems of layout, or your lobby is your challenge in most people's cases, there's very few theaters in the world where the lobby is as big as the auditorium, and people need to move around and queue in the lobby, that's where the toilets queues happen in potentially barbecues when buyers are open. So lobby true force is going to be your biggest, biggest challenge far more necessary than your seating. So we'll talk about a few things that might mitigate that. The access for access required seating will still need to be at the same percentage of what you hire at the moment if you've got 20% or 10% or 5% or whatever your access enabled seating is you need to maintain that which are relevant kills. So there's a couple of definitions here I'm not gonna dwell on them there's what I'm referring to the seat left empty between two pods or two patrons is a bowl for seat, everything else is probably familiar people gangways aisles walkways seat ways, things like that. So one of the important ones when you're calculating here is just how you measure. This is easy if you're using plans or card, and it's slightly more tricky if you're using tape measures in person in the auditorium, you need to measure on the horizontal airflow can affect things, but I'm not going to get into that right now because I don't think we really have the opportunity, but you can do some tests if you want in your area to see how ventilation is the key to an awful lot of the mitigation. So measure on the horizontal not on the diagonal, if you're on a rate platform. The methods of doing, it has to be the real world, you can't use something like an Excel spreadsheet like they're in the bottom corner. That's not actually telling you if you looked at my plans inside for the theater, they would look like people are far too close together on fire to fire to pirates in other circumstances because it must be on either something like CAD paper plan, or in the actual auditorium with paper and pencils, and tape and tape measures and stuff like that. It must be real world that you're measuring, and you need to keep in mind that you have to work around some of your fixed points, or your doors, your access seating, your leading edges, which I'll explain now in a second. So, currently the seats entering is two meters, That's from nose to nose, there may be changes in the future, but right now we're going to concentrate on two meters. It might be no harm to have plans donate on different basis, if you have time, so that they are ready for the future. But if you sell your plans based on this, the minimum capacity that you can achieve then obviously it's easier to add in seats afterwards than it is to take them away. That's something that was touched on earlier. So, leading edges just to define that, these are the things, the most fundamental thing that we need to keep an eye on. You're talking about the front rows of balconies the front rows of boxes, the front rows of orchestra pits and the actual front row with the state at the front of the stage as well. These are whereby somebody is over somebody else, and that front row should always be left empty. That's the bottom line because if they are sitting in the front row, that means they're less than one and a half or two meters away from everybody below them. So, your front row of balcony is always left empty.
The actual implementing the buffer seats, this was explored a lot more in detail it's getting less the case now, but the thing is, there were people removed them completely, there were people removed the seat basis themselves, so they can't flip down. There was also tying them up. But the main thing you want to, if you're in an environment where you have flipping seats that flipping mechanism is part of your fire systems that enables people to leave quickly and clear the rows in the event of an emergency evacuation. So, having said that, there's full if people start using those empty seats for bags coats, it prevents the mechanism from flipping up, that's a problem because it's it's contravening your fire evacuation systems, So you just need to find a way that people can't just use them for storage, and preferably find a way that people can't amalgamate into pods, without your knowledge, whereby they know somebody, two seats away, or should we just shift over to them, we'll get 12 people together rather than two sixes, so you do need to find a way of keeping the seats on occupied for a couple of different reasons. The thing with a lot of people I've looked on have had success with cabaret style, there's a couple of things we just need to keep an eye on your compatibility with your fire sir to the building the cost ability but the public licensing for the building and mitigating against furniture movements during a fire escape or evacuation mitigation against fire, furniture movements for ingress and egress where people, you just need to make sure that they're not forming new pods or over stuffing the tables. And then there's the more artistic stuff like sightline implications that you don't have a rate system necessarily anymore that you might be used to, or your patrons use to this format so there's other stuff there to ask yourself in relation to. And then later on in the process where it may be feasible to serve alcohol in the auditorium, there's a vast implication to that. And that should be explored with your accountants because if you serve that within the space you are subject to VAT on your tickets. Sorry if you serve alcohol within the space you're subject to VAT on your tickets, and that's something you need to check with your accounting setup. Are you even registered for Vash and how that would work. So, that goes for table service whether it is in a seated environment or cabaret environment, you intervals. We've talked a lot about this it's not in the broader scheme. The intervals will need to be assessed, also in terms of lobby and toilet capacity. The length of them, whether there's barriers in operation or not, whether you're using hawkers in the auditorium how that would work in terms of queuing and aisles and all those kinds of stuff. There's a couple of. Keep it down to aisle queuing is part of the issue. So, consider the length of the interval, and consider whether again Vash kicks in if the Hawker starts serving alcohol. So, using every door is a good piece of advice if it's possible, doors that you wouldn't traditionally have necessarily turned to emergency exits for ingress and egress can ticket scanners be added to alternate doors to relieve pressure on the main door egress needs to be managed, whether there's a system of going row by row section by section. The security and staff levels to be addressed by opening more doors into the building, obviously, some of them can be opened into potentially back lanes things that you wouldn't normally do, is your lighting suitable for egress through those laneways and stuff like that. Keep in mind exterior crowd management, There is a certain level of responsibility of people on to what's, what's known in the large outdoor event world as as zone X. It's also known as the last mile, there, there is more onus than there used to be on events small events, and fixed, who would normally have had to deal with the guards on the local authorities on zone X issues. Now that's starting to creep in, to interaction because you have an illness if you're generating cues on the street and things like that. So, keeping an eye on zone x in terms of using extra doors is something that needs to be just monitored queuing within the auditorium or your toilet entrances inside the auditorium, or if there is likely to be queuing in the aisles for any circus circumstance, well then you need to address that in where you start seating people at the row ends. So, allowing for queuing in the auditorium, or if you suspect your, your exits are going to be slow to get out you have to monitor how your patrons deal with that
in extreme circumstances, it might be a consideration of increasing the aisle widths. In some theaters, that's just not viable but if you've got seating that you can choose your layout you may choose to increase your aisle widths, and whether you use in retail kiosks or hawkers again we'll make queuing in the aisles. If you are do anticipate queuing, well then you need to kill the roll ends basically on that, that's, that's going to impact on your gross potential. So, you have to come up with policies which aren't directly related to the seating, but they do impact on how you managers. Late admission readmission egress passing and mitigating lobby congestion. So, the late admission and readmission people leaving, go to the toilet, people do they come back to the same seat. Do they come back to a seat by the door that's a loss of a seat obviously if you're keeping seats for doing that. Increase passing and the seat way, loss of earnings through keeping seats related missions or readmissions, you can, you're going to have to impact that on your communication strategy, because people need to know in advance if they're not going to be left back into their same seat, and if they're not going to be allowed in late, that's something that really has to be communication so you don't end up with big rails which are patrons, and they don't come out looking for people who have previously left. So egress systems. Again, this has to do with assessing your particular population your particular patrons how they deal with it, or their age profile stuff like that so announcements keeping people seated at the end of the performance, so they don't all jump up like a plane and then stand in each other's faces. Yeah, ask people to remain in their seats, you keep the OSHA safe while they're managing this so they have to be allocated the appropriate PPA, whether you're going to be going out roll by roll is probably the best option, You're going to have aisles to center, where you let people move from the edge first, and how would you manage the cabaret model in terms of egress that you allocate people and move your ushers through the auditorium to let people sort of queue, the sectie exits don't get queues at them and not get overloaded and utilizing as many doors as possible. So, there is a whole discussion about passing I'm not going to concentrate on it but ultimately we are effect any fixed seating bank involves a certain degree of passing whether there's a one way system from one aisle to the other or not, you're still going to have people who are late commerce and toilets and such like that that have to be dealt with. There are. So, the lobby. Are you going to open the bar queuing for the buyer auditorium and toilets, make sure there's actually space for all these things to happen. Does the opening of the auditorium at the same time as the lobby doors make sense in your particular case, where people can throughput straight away if they wish, or not concentrate on and not dwell in the lobby. There's options about tray service in the auditorium instead of opening the bar in the traditional sense, but whether that would be feasible in terms of us and everything else. And if it's, if it's possible with your particular set of patrons to have staggered arrival times, and how that would work, and how you manage that. And again, staggered arrival times are one thing, getting them through the front door, but whether that staggered arrival time then persists through into getting them into their seats. It's a lot of people management to do.
And with regards of different styles styles of seating layouts, I'm going to flick through these relatively quickly, this slides will be available afterwards, and we will at some point in the future have a more detailed discussion about this, probably aimed directly at the tech managers. So, I'm just going to flick through some of the things and point out the options to major distancing that's where we are. It's where we're going to be for the next certainly month, two months whatever it is. It's just, if you're going to be opening sooner rather than later, clearly you need to do a two meter plan. If you're going to be not opening maybe into the autumn, then maybe you want to consider other options as they occur, and leave off so planning for other distances for the future is potentially something that's there it's a time based issue and do you have the time to do it. The household group spacing is generally accepted as the way to go. It certainly increases the potential revenue. So you have up to groups of six at the moment allowed, and it is a more complicated booking process, it does need more leads you to more likelihood of fixed maps, or non fixed maps but it's a it's a lot more workload on your box office. So, there are a couple of reasons for using individual spacing. But the big problem with it is it massively reduces your capacity. That is where every person is separated, it also is a really unfortunate experience for the most of the audience and I would be surprised if many venues went first, but the option exists some cinemas went without and in the early days of the process we saw lots of pictures from Malaysia, China and some of the other Ferrovie Singapore, where everybody was separated in the auditorium. It exists but it's, it's a poor experience, the allocations. When do you allocate your seats for people do they booked at the time of booking into a fixed map allocated into a flexible map is more workload on your box office but ultimately it might get more people into the auditorium allocated some time between booking and frongia house opening so that can be, you get all your figures in, and then you allocate them into your groups, it's very efficient in terms of maximizing your capacity but the problem is you don't necessarily know how many tickets to sell. And that can be a big problem so you end up might have to end up cutting off, and then opening back up, and then cutting off again. It's, it's very hard model to manage, but it is possible to do. Completely you only got allocated is, is not an option really at the moment. You can't allow people to take their seats just randomly around the auditorium, you're going to end up losing loads of buffer seats but also you're going to make a messy or contact tracing so it's it's it's not something that can be explored in the short term. There's two ways you can lay out you can lay out in the grid or in a checkerboard. There are. If you lay out a checkerboard each row impacts on the row in front and behind in terms of sequels because all you're starting to measure across some diagonal rather than in straight lines. If you lay out in a grid, you separate your rows. And if you shuffle within a row to change the way the pods are laid out, it doesn't affect the rows in front and behind. So, one is more useful for a fixed map, and one's more use less useful for a fluid map. The grid is the opposite. That's where you lay out an each row doesn't depend on the other one. This is the same concept roles depending on each other or not, there's pros and cons to both, and it depends on how you are fluid or fixed with your, with your mapping loading in for the pensions to center out. This is really difficult to do. It's like the right getting on a Ryanair flight where you're called by row, you'd be asking people can everybody for the center number seats, please come first, and it's gonna be incredibly time consuming and laborious to manage the concept exists but it's going to be tough to do, you're probably better off calling by row, or simply by letting people take the seats in their traditional sense that they always have done, and you will have more passing in the aisles and the gangways, and in the seat ways, but you will ultimately have a more pleasant experience for your patrons and there is a hell of a lot less work for front of house management, the likelihood is that people will tend to do this anyway, because people arrive, inevitably arrive late, and outside their time that they're called for and stuff like that so it can be very hard to stop the natural order that people have been used to for decades. So sometimes it might be just better to embrace it in that sense.
And this is ultimately the short term, the overriding cops, is where we are right now, at the moment where TSR is an indoor cinema cinemas have a cap of 50 and that is made up of pods of six, that is based around an exemption for those two styles of building it, the point is it's the building that matters, not the performance. So, theaters and cinemas are exempt older forms of indoor entertainment venue be that a hotel ballroom or something like that or not. Not until July, is it possible to have general forms of indoor events, again, at a capacity of 50. There's proposals for July numbers, which are in the public domain at the moment. There are all hopefully increased, all it says at the moment for August is for further increases in numbers permitted, we don't know what they are yet. We don't know what form, they're going to take if they're going to take a hard cap, or if they're going to take a proportion of capacity cap. But one way or the other, there will be some sort of cup, and in the short term, the capacity limit is probably going to be way lower than what you can achieve with social distancing in your auditorium. There will come a point where one passes the other, but we're not there yet. We're probably about a month or two away from that in most venues. So, the, and that's all the slides. I know there's probably loads of questions and I've run through that at a dramatic rate, but I think I would prefer to leave time for questions rather than to have spend too much more time on the, on the details that
just as we thank Liam Thank you very much because yourself and every member of ISP and indeed especially Nick have been a huge help to us in these past 14 months in sort of rationalizing and if you like, and relaying the key points of all these guidelines back to back to members and meetings like this so if we go over to Nick just for other headlines in relation to reopening that maybe haven't been covered.
To be honest, but I think everything's been covered, we've been kind of filled enough questions there as they came in, unless anyone has any specific questions, I just can't stress enough that everybody needs to get there. To download the copy of the work safely protocol, and just read it thoroughly. Everything that we need to know is available in the documentation that's on theater forums website in work safely, and I would I would basically, I would not look at the Folger Island documentation for any of their specific things like hotels, restaurants and stuff like that, unless you have a hotel, a restaurant. It's the biggest problem ends up being when you start cross referencing everybody else's documentation. That's when the waters muddy, so stick with the stuff that's on theater forum, get the work safely protocol, it's all just basic risk assessment, and how, and ways and means to keep your employees safe, and then therefore for the employees to then keep the public safe. Mostly you know where I am, I'm at dunamaise Arts Center. My phone is always on unfortunately so if you do have a direct question, contact me or contact the ISP, as well. And if we can't answer, well, but rather than take up any anyone else's time at this stage. I think everything has been covered really
sure which you probably have already answered in the chat, Nick, but just mouse squaring is part of attending indoor and outdoor events for the coming months, there's no doubt about that, and social distancing is part of indoor and outdoor events for the coming months until there's a change to to it being a capacity based system. And there was something else people are asking about COVID testing, and as entry, you know to indoor and outdoor events, there's no requirement in any of the guidelines to do that at the moment, and somebody else was making comparisons with the data that we're hoping to collect, and we're hoping to mirror the data that's been collected around the department pilot event, people are suggesting a lot more detail would need to be collected. I think what we're trying to do is we're trying to enhance and augment the data that's already been collected around the departments, and departments pilot events, not invent a completely separate reporting sort of structure and system. So whenever we will be asking, and art centers to try and collect using their box office systems will be for the purposes of the department rather than for anything else. And also I think it's, it's worth bearing in mind that we're talking about things changing quite dramatically every four weeks for the coming few months, so it's important to figure out at what point in that timeline or in that cycle, are you looking at, you know, reopening and program and events happening, because there are so many factors to be considered. And rather than trying to look at everything at the same time as Jane and the gallery team were outlining to us it's important to know what you need to do for your art center your theater or your festival, whenever that is happening, and the conditions prevailing at that time. And I think Irma has already highlighted the 23rd of June event, there have been questions that we haven't answered this morning about touring, but I think you'd probably be under a PCH pie. And because I said the capacities and the potential to program and book that far in advance, are just not available to people at the moment, but we will, we'd love to see you again on the 23rd of June which is Wednesday I think again, isn't it Irma. And, and, meanwhile, if your questions have not been answered. Just remind us, and we'll, we'll get to them, and we'll try and answer them as best we can. But as I say we can't thank everybody, you know, Paul, the National Gallery team. Sharon and Mary for joining us in the department, and everybody else for joining us this morning. And it's great to see everybody. And I think there's a momentum and enthusiasm for reopening. and that will sustain us all through the next few months of working through all of the details discussed this morning.
Can I just just, I just answered one question in the chat there before we leave. Just because there might have been a little confusion. The reference to killing row ends, if there is likely to be queuing, in the, in the aisle. I appreciate that access seats are regularly the most at the row ends, and I certainly over indirect where I was, where I was for a while, the entire front row was part of our access seats and they would all need to be killed because that's also the thoroughfare for getting to the fire aisle. And I get that the access seats are regularly in both there are other, you need to look at is it likely that the I'll be used for queuing and whether or not that's necessary but it might be feasible that you might have to end up moving your accessories
when they should be, you're obviously going to be retained and they're important.
Yeah, they do have to be retained at the same percentage as your current license says they are
great. They said they were the insights, and the clarity and Lehman's as at this event, I mean, it's a, it's an event which we're delivering with all of the help and support of Lehman the HST, and everybody else who joined us this morning but as I say, We'll be in touch with everybody. And with details of the next reopening forum, and its emphasis on program, and, and production and performance considerations, but look forward to seeing you there.
