>> >> Hello. Welcome, everyone, to the easing restrictions and increasing responsibility webinar. Very serious sounding! Presented by NAVA, Create NSW and Art Gallery of NSW. Thank you for joining us. I can see people are still coming in but I'm going to get started so we have time for questions and answers at the end. First, I want to acknowledge and pay respect to the rightful custodians of the many First Nations lands upon which this online event will be streamed and received. We recognise custodians of countries throughout owl lands, waters and territories and pay our respect to elders past, present and leaders emerging today. Sovereignty was never ceded. My name is Mimi Crowe. I'm meeting you from Adelaide where I live and work. I started in June this year as advocacy director at NAVA. I will do a bit of quick housekeeping before I hand over to Emily Crocker from the Art Gallery of NSW for her presentation. We have live captioning available as well as Auslan interpreter... >> She is not here yet. >> She should be joining us. In the interim, to view the live captions, please click on the button on the bottom of your screen that says, "Closed captions, CC". If you have any issues, put it in the chat and we'll help you out. This meeting will be recorded and made available on our website for those who were unable to make it. We are all about to embark on change. For some of us, that means decreasing restrictions and coming out of lockdown and, for others of us, it means increasing restrictions as borders open in the coming months and currently COVID-free communities implement new safety procedures and protocols. What we're sharing today will impact us all at some stage and we're really pleased to provide a platform in partnership with Art Gallery of NSW and Create NSW, to hear from Emily Crocker, head of Government and Corporate Planning at the Art Gallery of NSW about the extensive planning and preparation they've done for communicating with their visitors, vaccination and mask mandates and the work they've done in looking after their team and the people who work for them. After Emily's presentation, we will hear from Rebecca Dean, the acting senior manager of partnership/policies at Project Awake at Create NSW just to hear more about the public health orders and the situation in NSW as they are at the front of the changes occurring nationally at the moment. Penelope and I want to thank them both for sharing their experiences and information and we really look forward to the national learning and takeaways from this webinar. I will hand over to Emily now. Once you finish, Emily, I'll ask Rebecca to come straight in without further introduction. These presentations will be followed by question and answer session before we wrap up at 3p.m. Eastern standard time. I will hand over to you now, Emily, thank you for being here. >> The curse of 2021. Apologies for that, everybody. I hope everybody can see the presentation. Yes, I'm seeing nodding. Hello and thank you for having me. I'm Emily Crocker, the head of Government and Corporate Planning at the Art Gallery. I'm dialling in from the north of Sydney today and my main job at the gallery is liaising with the government and managing our strategic planning. As of about January last year, I took on a fairly significant additional portfolio of managing our COVID response. That's taken up a fair whack of my time for the last 18 to 20 months and hope I can share some of that today. I'm going to go through three prongs of the work we've been doing so far, starting with the communication strategy, mostly with visitors but also the staff and the approach taken to communicating to the most important people at the Art Gallery and, likewise, the most important people for each of you and being proactive about being consistent and positive in the way we talk about COVID re-opening and the plans we're going through as we evolve the way we operate. Then I'm going to talk about how we manage the in-person interactions at the Art Gallery because that's a particular piece of work that has been presented - some anxiety for some of our staff and the way we've helped support them as we've re-opened, in a challenging time, not just for our institution but the whole country. Third, I'm going to talk about what I'm seeing in my work and the future and the way that informs our planning again, at institutional level and what we can draw on that no matter what state or territory we're based in. Without further ado, I will move on. Can you see that? Excellent. The three prongs of our communication strategy is that we are being proactive and that's about preparing our staff and our visitors for what's going to happen when they come into the gallery. We manage our visitors' expectations in advance as much as we possibly can. That is mainly through our website but through every other avenue of our communications. Our social media, our signage preparation, our web site, as I said, the advice and training that we provide for our staff, invitations to events and openings and other kinds of activities at the gallery, any kind of art mail or member communications, any emailing lists have the same boiler plate communication in it. Our front-of-house staff, the venue hire clients and sponsors and the scripts we provide to our reception staff for phone inquiries and the recording that we have on our answering machine. We're trying to make sure that our visitors have a really clear understanding of what they can expect when they come to the gallery because we have found that the vast majority of the work to interact with and make sure our visitors are on board is done in advance, when they're planning their visit. Likewise, we have worked with our staff to prepare for the worst-case scenarios and I put an open call out when we found out we were re-opening to all of our front-of-house staff in particular to ask them and brain storm any questions they thought visitors might raise or any conflict situations they might face so we can make sure they were armed with the tools that they needed to address that when we re-opened . So, again, they came in there feeling they had everything they needed to be support and safe. We have been consistent with our messaging. We've got a whole lot of communications channels as most of you do, so we've made sure the messages we use have consistent language and that they're as clear as possible and accessible as possible for all of our audiences so we try to keep it fairly plain language wherever we can. We make sure we refer back constantly to being led by the public health advice and the risk assessment. That not only confirms that we've got a legal basis for what we're asking but also that it's based in the best expert advice on safety and keeping our visitors and our staff as healthy and well as possible. Thirdly, the third prong is being as positive as we can. We're in the business of people and we're in the business of welcoming people. Warmth and humanity is a big part of the way we interact with our audiences anyway but it's become increasingly important we've found over the last couple of years. Those who follow the Art Gallery on social media would know that we've injected a new level of warmth into a lot of our communications with our members and we've carried that through as we've re-opened because we've found that our members and our visitors respond so strongly and positively to that connection and that has really helped in terms of ensuring that when we've re-opened, they're supportive of what we're doing to keep the gallery safe. That brings us back to the idea that the visitors are an active agent in keeping the community safe. We make them feel as empowered as we can, as positive about that. So it is not a big stick, it is about encouraging them as much as possible to feel like they're allies in a wider community effort. A big part about our communications and clarity is making sure that we've got a really consistent message. This is a screen shot of our main FAQ page on the gallery website. It says what you need to know before visiting. We treat that page on our website as a single source of truth. I really do recommend, if you don't have this - most institutions will have some sort of communication on a public-facing resource like their website but that is where we steer any kind of questions so most of our other ticketing information, our emails, they direct everybody back to this one document which we've made sure is absolutely as clear and up to date as possible. We use visual cues to reinforce pretty easily that when you come on site, you're going to be needing to be vaccinated, need to have a mask, we're enforcing distancing and you'll have a QR sign in. The visual element which duplicates the more complex messaging that follows is important and it cements in the brain of our visitors that, when they come in, they will see the same signs at the gallery entrance and that's the path they see through the gallery. Now, when we re-opened, it was just 11 October, so a week and a half ago now, and we, for various reasons, did not announce that until quite close to our re-opening date. That was partly a logistical issue because we were confirming what the arrangements were going to be but it was also a strategic decision because we wanted to make sure we had our ducks in a row as much as we could and we didn't leave enough time for potential anti-vaxxers or any other kind of groups to mobilise and decide they were going to target us in any way. We also had a strategy where we mixed factual information with that warmth and humanity I talked about earlier on. We started out on the 8th with factual information which outlined that we were going to be re-opening, what the date was, that we've missed our visitors and then it directed to the single source of truth on our website in terms of what the practical requirements were on site. At the Art Gallery, we had a complex message because as well as re-opening and being able to go through what our exhibitions were and offer, we've got quite significant building works on at the moment where we needed to prepare our visitors for that appearance as well. That was a -- experience as well. That was a slightly complicated piece of work but that first email set the scene. We followed it up in quick succession with one of the social media memes that we've become pretty well known for during the lockdown in Sydney and this was really effective. If you look at it, at that point it had 700 plus interactions and a lot of shares so we've reinforced messaging that we're going to have public health measures in place and, again, directed our visitors to that single source of truth but it's also got a sense of humour and bit of irreverence to it where it diffuses any anxiety or negativity we anticipated could be a possibility. We did notice there were some international experiences, especially some corporates in Australia, where they announced a vaccination mandate and it was immediate, and they were done in a straight-laced approach, and that got a lot of negative feedback. This was part of our plan to make sure it was as warm, as humorous as possible so that it would try and mitigate that. It was really, really effective. The next day we followed up with the nuts and bolts information, reiterating the pillars of our re-opening safety plan in terms of vaccination requirement, QR codes, wearing a mask and a few of the other logistical requirements. I do recommend having multiple messages to your visitors in advance of your re-opening but maybe taking different approaches with the way you present that information. This has been really highly effective. I will go on to how we manage our social media in particular but we've had very minimal negative feedback from our visitors, both online and in person. I think we've deleted maybe four posts in total since we announced our re-opening. Now, this is some further information from our social media gurus about the way to manage commentary online because it is something that most organisations are a bit anxious about at this time. We've set up a frequently-asked questions which we've provided to all of our Comms and public-facing staff. I'm happy to share that with all of you, which addresses some of the questions about who can visit the gallery, what the arrangements are. If you've got a child who hasn't been vaccinated or a medical condition that prevents you wearing a mask. They've got that single reference document they can use to answer any questions that may come through via email, social media or in person. Genuine audiences, when we look at any kind of negative comments on our socials pages, we look at whether they're real followers of the Gallery or not. We can see whether they've been following us for very long. If they're a genuine respondent who is part of our audience, we give them a fairly quick response and fairly substantive one. If it's an obvious spammer or cut-and-paster, there is a lot of that on social media in particular, we may delay responding, provide a fairly high level response or delete it al together if it is a spam bot you see across some channels. This is beyond my own personal expertise but our social media team are fantastic in terms of managing the algorithm and their advice is responding to positive comments is a really good way to push those up on your social media feed which reinforces the fact that your audiences are excited about re-opening, that they're supportive of the safety measures you have in place and anybody who wants to try and start something online may not have the support they are hoping for, if it's clear the audience is widely supportive of your museum, which in our case, we found it absolutely has been the case. Having actual responses from your staff to those posts is a really helpful thing. Likewise, avoiding lengthy responses to negative comments is a good idea for a couple of reasons. First of all, engaging in back-and-forth is never a good idea online. That's why it is a good idea to direct any specific complaints to D merchants -- DM s or emails. Moving on site there are three real sources of conflict in COVID. It's been a really difficult time for everybody, certainly everyone that I know has had some kind of stress added to their lives. It falls into these three spaces that I've identified. First of all, it's fear. That may be fear of getting sick, it may be fear of the really enormous amounts of change we've all gone through as a society but also that we're going through as individuals. Then the unknowns that come with that. Likewise, fatigue. Whether you've been in lockdown for four months or what feels like 40 years in Victoria I'm sure, everyone's got some level of stress and to a degree, when you've not been out and about, your social skills and those - every day-to-day resources that you use to manage stress have atrophied to an extent so people are, again, finding their feet a little bit. It is like getting off a boat. Finally, the one thing to remember is that there are also physical sources of stress. For some people, wearing a mask may accentuate anxiety just for the sensory input. Likewise, being out and about with crowds can create a level of stimulus that people aren't conscious of but it elevates their stress levels. From a personal experience, being at the supermarket with a mask, it is beeping, people wherever, it can be overwhelming and that can send people over the edge, even though it is not your museum that is the source of their stress. The way we respond to that on site, we looked at the physical set-up we have. We have moved our check-in process outside the gallery. There's a couple of reasons for that. It means if there is anybody who needs to be turned away, they're already outside so it is not a matter of removing them, it is just a matter of asking them to go away and come back with the materials they need but also you're in the outside world and you haven't come in from outside into an environment where you're adjusting to the light and all of those other sensory inputs that people are trying to manage at the same time and also you're avoiding bottlenecks. If you've got the resources in your staff to manage that outside, or even in a threshold area, I do recommend looking at your options for handling that check-in process. Likewise, we use physical barriers - barriers is not the best word but physical guides to direct our visitors in, to make sure we're not having people brushing up against each other and triggering potential conflicts between our visitors or between visitors and staff. We use a lot of visual clues. There is a lot of signage that's require and recommended under our various COVID-safety plans but we at the gallery have developed signage which is clear and as minimal as possible so it boils down to icon-based reminders of what we're requiring and it is a very clear process that's spelt out to our visitors about what needs to happen. We also - I recommend avoiding visual clutter. If there are too many signs around, it can create elevated anxiety for visitors but it can give an impression that perhaps things aren't as under control as much as you'd like them to be. My first visit outside after a lockdown was to a pub. It had three little signs with what needed to be presented as you came in. It was organised, orderly and gives you that feeling as you're coming into a venue these are people who've got things under control. Likewise, using floor markings to reinforce the distancing requirements, even though it is not a big part of COVID-safety plans these days, it can be really useful to have nonetheless because it subtly reinforces to visitors the way they're expected and being encouraged to move through the building. Welcoming your staff with a smile and with welcoming body language is a really critical part of that first interaction being a positive one where they feel really good about the process that they're going through with sharing this information, which is, for some people, quite sensitive. Again, we've armed our front-of-house staff with key phrases where they know this is the way they greet their visitors, "Thank you for checking in. Thank you for coming back to the gallery, we're pleased to have you here . Can I help you get through the processes?". It is all about welcoming and assisting and encouraging them to have a good experience with entering our space. We use our visitor hosts as the first contact point. The gallery being a larger organisation has got reasonably strong security presence and we rely on our security guards only if we need to escalate the situation if it's become quite serious. We're 11 days in and we haven't had that yet so, again, it just shows that if you use that welcoming approach and you manage that entry chain, it can be a really good experience for your visitors. We have also armed our staff with a couple of reference documents and, again, I'm really happy to share these. These are the frequently asked questions. We've got a copy of our COVID-safety plan which is required by law to be presented to health inspectors or police but also that's a good reference in case there is somebody who raises concerns about the rules we have in place, our staff can refer back to that and show this is the reason you need to do this. We've also got hard copies of the official proofs of vaccination and exemptions that we're allowed to accept. The one thing that we have encountered is a handful of people who may not have had the appropriate proof of vax and being able to show these are the particular proofs that we can accept has been a really helpful resource for us. I'll share copies of the NSW versions later on and hopefully there will be similar things in other jurisdictions in due course. We've equipped our staff with frequently asked questions document. Before we re-opened, we did a walk-through and role played what a vaccination check would look like so we could make sure everything was a good experience. We also worked with a couple of outside friends of the gallery who went through that process with us just to make sure it was completely foolproof. We've got the sample proofs of vaccination and really importantly, we offered our staff extra PPE. The reason we've done that is we've offered them N-95 masks which have the extra bit of protection and the use of face shields if they need or prefer. We do have obviously accessibility considerations with some of our visitors who are hard of hearing or have other conditions so the face shields for staff who choose to use them can mean they can lower their mask to communicate with a visitor and feel there is extra protection. That was welcomed by our front-of-house team so it is something worth considering for you as well. Before I go on, we've got a lot of information about in-person conflict. A lot of this is what we would use in the gallery anyway for any kind of conflict. We find that it's a really happy place for the majority of the time so I don't want the fact this is all about managing conflict to suggest that re-opening is hostile or difficult process. We've had a very, very tiny number of - they're not even incidents, just issues where we've had to have a different response for a visitor than otherwise. But these resources are really important for your staff to make sure they feel supported and they've got the tools they need to respond to a difficult situation. When you're dealing with any kind of conflict, body language is a really important thing. We encourage our staff just to take a step back so that they not only are not in the visitor's immediate bubble of space but also that if something escalates, they can remove themselves a bit more easily so they're less at risk. We encourage our staff to keep their gestures fairly minimal and avoid gesticulating which might increase stress levels and have a relaxed posture. That relaxed posture doesn't just help communicate a relaxed vibe to the person they're talking to but it also helps that person stay calm themselves. Again, we talk about slow breathing and keeping a level voice and reassuring yourself using self-talk that, "I'm calm, this is something I can manage and I'm supported". We encourage our staff to listen first. It's really important that any visitor feels that they have been heard. That also gives our staff the opportunity to take stock, work out what's going on and, as well as listen to that person, they can work out the best next steps. We also discourage, although it is counterintuitive for some people, we discourage multiple staff from joining a conversation immediately because that can overwhelm the visitor and escalate their sense of feeling negative or feeling that they're being ganged up on, that kind of thing. So we try to keep it one-on-one and then try and diffuse the situation and bring in somebody if absolutely necessary. We encourage our staff to use active listening techniques to show they're hearing the person and they're actively engaging with what they're saying. The most important thing, as I said at outset, is to have the human connection with our visitors. If somebody is agitated, use humour, a human connection and to invoke empathy because we're all going through stress at this time. With my interactions with visitors and stakeholders, acknowledge we're all going through something pretty tricky and pretty challenging is the best way to diff use the us and -- diffuse the us and them situation. Our staff are focused on offering assistance. A beautiful visitor experience team have a stock of face masks they can offer for a visitor who may have turn up having forgotten or chose not to wear a mask. They can gently offer one. On the mask mandates in NSW at least, that's not something that we as a venue are required or empowered to enforce so we take a relatively light touch with that. We've got signage which reminds people of requirements. We may offer them a mask but if they decline, we accept that because we note that there may be people who have got medical or other conditions that prevent them from wearing a mask so we tend to let that go. We've got language that we use if people raise concern about that as well. With our visitor experience team in the last week, helped out our visitors who didn't have the right proof of vaccination and they helped them set it up on the Medicare app. It took three or four minutes but it was a value-add for the visitor and they felt good we supported them in their first outing to a public place. We offer reassurance to visitors that every rule is based on health advice to make sure it is keeping them safe. When we're engaging with negative feedback, we focus our staff on I statements, "I feel I can't continue with this conversation at this time" , "I need to ask you to move away from that space please". Rather than being a barked order, it actually helps that connection, that humanity. We've got a list of hot topics. I'm happy to share our longer version of this but these are the key criticisms and concerns we anticipated with our visit yoirs. We've correction correct visitors -- visitors. We've mostly emailed feedback we've received and the way that we respond to these is, again, we acknowledge that person's position. We recognise that vaccinations are a personal choice. We recognise that some people have legitimate reasons not to be vaccinated. We recognise the importance of people's privacy. We then follow with the reason why we're asking them to do what we are. We're following the public health orders because it is legally required and keeps people safe. It's our acknowledgement of their position, it's the reason why we're asking something and finally a call to action, "We appreciate your understanding with this, can you talk to your doctor about getting proof of vaccination? Thank you for helping keep the gallery safe by wearing your mask". That three-pronged approach responding to things also really helps to soften their response and it's thoroughly reasonable and it acknowledges that they've got their own views. In terms of managing incidents, I've talked at length about having talking points and scripts. We've got an agreed escalation process at the gallery and that will vary depending on the size and your circumstances but it's really important that any of your public-facing staff know and feel empowered about how and when to seek help and that they feel empowered to walk away and remove themselves from an unsafe situation as well. To support that, the Art Gallery is connected to the local area command police and if you haven't already done this, I'm sure you've all got relationships at your institutions with your local police but we had pre-emptive catch-up between our teams to make sure that they were aware of what we had in place and that we had an agreement that, if anything became particularly hairy, we would reach out to them and they're really happy to do that and support us and that's really given our staff, again, a lot of peace of mind about knowing what the process is if that's to happen. We have got support for our staff which includes having time off the floor to recompose if there has been an incident. This is not just COVID related . This is something we do generally. That might involve going to a room where they can be on their own and they can decompress, take their mask off and listen to some music for half an hour. If it's particularly serious, they're allowed to go home. Again, we've never had anything related to COVID but a couple of other completely unrelated matters where people have taken that up. We have supervisors who will sit and debrief and verbalising the experience that somebody has had, if they've been in a situation of tension and conflict, being able to actually articulate that is a part of a really important process of switching their experience to that from the flight-or-flight to rational response and processing it. That's a really important part of it. We have group discussions where we talk about at workshop how we might have handled something differently and we encourage our staff to take extra breaks if they need to, if they're finding things are particularly overwhelming on a given day. They're allowed to go for a walk in the domain and come back when they feel refreshed and making sure they feel their wellbeing is front of mind is important. We have got a staff handbook which is treated as our Bible. It's got every single piece of information about what's going on at the gallery with COVID management and that helps our staff feel they're safe and they're supported and they know what the processes are. Again, I'm really happy to share that with you all of you. It is specific to us but it ma I be useful -- it may be useful for you to refer to. If things get really tough, we have an employee assistance program at the Art Gallery and other resources like the support act helpline, Lifeline, there is a whole lot of resources available to help people through. I'm going to touch on this quickly, it is more so you can have a copy of this as a reference. These are the three forms of accepted proof of vaccination in NSW. There is digital forms. The printed version of the digital certificate or immunisation history statement or the successful Service NSW check-in which kicked in last Friday and has been a huge game changer for us. That has been a big part of our successful re-opening. It's important for us to note that medical exemptions are only allowed to be the ones on your immunisation history statement or a couple of other approved forms. Possibly the most challenging situation is where you may have a visitor who has got a letter from their doctor which may not be acceptable. Again, getting ahead of that with your communication on your websites and other formats is really a useful thing to do. This is a resource I set up for our visitor experience staff when we re-open and it basically walks through what the different validation aspects of the Service NSW check-in app are. When you first look at it, you may not necessarily know the ways you can confirm it is legitimate. In the early days of re-opening, it was very helpful for our staff to know, "This is what I need to be looking for to make sure that is a valid proof of vax". This is the Service NSW version of the proof of vaccination and proof of medical exemption. I had put together a slightly more dodgy version prior to this being released which our staff used and had printed out but I strongly recommend having this printed out at your front desk so it is a reference point so that if you've got visitors who have concerns, you can point to that and say, "These are the ones we're allowed to acknowledge". Again, this was a resource we provided for our staff, walking them through what they need to be looking for, making sure that you've got a signed and numbered medical contra indication certificate and that's really the resources that we've been providing so far. I would say that our re-opening has been really, really a lot smoother than we expected. We expected more negative feedback from anti-vaxxers having seen some pretty horrible videos. I'm sure you all have. Little vigilante actions in cafes and particularly overseas. We've had no issues at all and I put it down in large part to the fantastic visitor team and the efforts they make to make our visitors feel so part of what they're doing and feel this is the norm and they're not going to get anywhere even if they want to try anything on. It has been a really, really smooth experience but having all of these measures in place has been really important for our staff to feel as safe as possible. Going back to the communications techniques I talked earlier about, about being proactive, we've said to our staff, "You've got this". We've made sure they know they're backed up by the public health orders and by our policies. In terms of the positives, we learn from the overseas experience and the huge vaccination rate that we have in Australia is, in NSW at least, and growing across the country, is a really huge plus. They've got a lot of comfort that the majority of people who are out and about are not only are they double vaccinated but really supportive and not going to cause problems and it's not become a political issue in the same way it has in some parts of the world. Most importantly, they're really excited to be back. I can't begin to tell you how much our public-facing staff in particular have been excited to come back to the gallery and to see people again and to be doing what they do the best and so making sure they feel, again, supported and empowered and equipped to do that as well as possible is really great. This little map is a coverage of where all of the states are at the moment and the reason I'm sharing it is showing we're all in a slightly different position depending where we live and work but we're all going through change. As Mimi said at the beginning, we're all going to be going through varying levels of either easing restrictions in some states or increasing restrictions in others. I noticed that Queensland has signalled they're going to bring in some venue restrictions from December when they start opening up to NSW at least and to Victoria and I would expect you're going to see something similar in some of the other states of Australia as they start to look at opening up. They need to strike the balance between re-opening to the rest of the country and to the world but also keeping the population safe. I would expect that, no matter where you're at, you're going to be looking at some level of managing these issues. We also thinking about the way that impacts our visitors and staff, particularly in NSW and Victoria, we're going through a fairly rapid transition between telling people to stay home at all costs and, to within six weeks, we're relatively open and free and returning to normal pretty quickly. That's a big shift in mindset which can be destabilising. As an institution, being able to provide a sense of being support and safe is really critical to making that as seamless and psychologically supported as possible. That's all I wanted to cover off on. I've seen some questions flick up so I might quickly say I've got some useful links, again I will share this in the presentation, and I'm very happy for you to contact me if anyone has any questions that pop up afterwards about how we've done things at the gallery. Really happy to share and care and all that kind of thing so I'll stop. >> Emily, that was so fantastic. Thank you. I hope everybody got a lot out of that. I know that I did. I might throw to Beck Dean who is here from Create NSW who was going to say a few things and then we'll jump into questions. >> I don't want to take up too much time. That presentation was so fantastic and I'm sure you have a lot of questions about that. I just wanted to point out a couple of things that might be useful for us. I think, as Emily has described really well, and especially around Australia, everything is very different, we're in a very dynamic environment at the moment. My advice to all of you is to reference the digital source for public health order, for your roadmaps, for all of the stuff that's coming out because things change really quickly. I've been doing webinars for arts organisations and artists in NSW for many months now and sometimes I feel like I've given information one day and, 24 hours later, the information I've given has changed. I'm starting all of these conversations basically now by saying, "Go to these specific places in the public health order" and then you can contact us to get the detail that's relevant to you if it's still unclear. What I might do is just quickly share a few nuggets of information that are available in NSW and I'm sure all of our counterparts across jurisdictions in Australia will have these same sorts of resources so we do know that Victoria's similarly going through a roadmap shift into re-opening. These sources of information are very important for you to understand where they sit and that you can access them quickly. If you were in NSW, I would book mark these links. The one that changes the most at the moment is the roadmap because it's contingent on reaching particular targets in terms of vaccination and obviously the NSW government has been doing a huge amount of consultation with industry just to make sure that the settings they've got for things are the right settings to embark on. If you want to find out what's going on, what the situation is at the moment, you can turn to this part of the roadmap and that will - my computer's just frozen, that will give you basically a summary of the situation for masks, the situation if you're visiting family and friends and all of these sorts of different details. You can get a very quick picture of what's going on. The next thing that you need to be conscious of is where the public health order fits. There is a page for public health order restrictions and and that that will take you to the legislation. As you can see, there is a number of public health orders in force at the moment but the one that we are looking at in relation to our venues is the general order. As you can see, this is the order that's just been in place since 11 October and it's been updated six times since then - republished six times. It is important, if you want to stay on top of what you can and can't do, that you know where these things sit. The great thing about the public health order, at least in NSW, is that when you download it as a PDF, it's an interactive PDF. If you want to find out a particular thing within the order, you can click on it and it will take you to that setting. It's also searchable so if you want to find out anything about masks, as I've done here, you can search for "fitted face coverings" and see what the order says about that or see what the order says about singing - I get asked a lot about singing! I can very easily go, "What's the situation for singing now?". I can find that information by doing that search. As for organisations, many of you will be concerned about what your responsibilities are. Having trouble getting to that particular place. Safe Work is your go-to area to look at what you need to be doing for your employees. Obviously there is the Safe Work Australia site and that Safe Work Australia site has resources for all of your particular states and territories. But you might want to choose the Safe Work site that is relevant to your jurisdiction. You can find out what your responsibilities are as an employer and, if you're a worker, you can find out what your employer's responsibilities are to you to keep you safe in your environment. Basically, with COVID-19, it's really about creating a safe environment in your workplace in relation to vaccination and mask wearing and those kind of things that are relevant to COVID-19. Another really great tool, just quickly, that NSW Health has produced is a contact risk assessment for community and workplace settings. This is a piece of information that's been really useful to me in talking to members of the sector who are concerned about inviting unvaccinated people like children under the age of 16 who are in that high-risk category now into their theatre spaces and gallery spaces et cetera. This risk assessment provides two main tools to assess risk in your environment and it's based around close-range activity between people and a time and space risk consideration. I'll take you down to those really fast now. Very happy to send all of these links on to Penelope and everyone or just feed them into the chat as we go. Basically, this kind of shows the risk for our unvaccinated people at the moment. If you're in direct physical contact with someone that has COVID-19 during their infectious period, you could be classified as a close contact. So that, in NSW, means people have to self-isolate for a number of days until they return a negative test. Obviously that has implications for your staff as well as people coming into your venue. If you're a fully vaccinated person, you'll only ever be classified as a casual or low-risk contact in those same close contact situations. This second table shows the risk in terms of time and space. If you have a small space under 100m squared, and you are doing an activity with people that is over 15 minutes, and some of those people are unvaccinated with partial or no vaccination, they would be deemed close contacts within that situation but, as you can see, if you're fully vaccinated, you fall into this low-risk and casual risk sort of contacts. That's been really useful particularly for - I know it is not particularly relevant for NAVA but there are a lot of organisations at the moment in performing arts that have huge amounts of requests from the community to bring back eisteddfods and other forms of dance for young people but does require those young people to be squished into a space together and they're unvaccinated. This tool gives them basically a resource to go, "Maybe this is not a good thing to do right now". I just wanted to take you through a few of those resources. I'm very happy to answer questions but I don't want you to lose the value of Emily's talk just now. I'm very happy to hand back over for questions. >> Great. Amazing. Thanks for that, Bec, really useful few tools for everybody. There are a number of questions and we've got 13 minutes so we're going to smash through them. One question was for the Art Gallery specifically. Which was about welcoming vaxxed and unvaxxed after 1 December. That's probably of interest to the galleries who are not in an area that is mandating just yet. >> Yeah. Thanks, Penelope. That is on the roadmap for that 1 December in NSW. We have not made an announcement in terms of our audience or our staff for that matter just yet because we've noticed in the last few weeks, as Bec has said, when there has been feedback from industry and from the community, that the roadmap has been tweaked a little bit and having seen the international experience, I would not be surprised if there were some further tweaks to what those settings are so, for those who aren't aware, from 1 December in NSW, they're looking at lifting the QR check-in, the mask mandate and the vaccination mandate all at the same time as well as moving from four square metre rule to two square metres. That's quite a lot to be happening in one go. We just - so that we don't make undertakes to our visitors and staff that end up being changed, we, again, try and be consistent. We have - our messages to our visitors and staff have been we're going to be led by public health advice, our own risk assessments and our visitors' needs and we're going to be make an announcement closer to the date. It is six weeks away - six hours is a long time in a pandemic so we're going to be re-assessing that next month and making announcements. >> So is six minutes which is more than that we've got left now. The next question is - how does the QR code work? Does it notify the staff of vaccination record? >> NSW is fantastic. You check in using the QR code and it pops up saying whether your vaccination status is confirmed. It doesn't include the date of birth. I noticed that was another question. It's just got their name and vaccination requirements are covered. >> Thank you. >> Just on this, on the point you just raised, the NSW COVID check-in - I mean, proof of vaccination status, it does have your birth date on that. Some people are sensitive about their date of birth being known. Do the Art Gallery of NSW have measures in place to protect privacy around that? >> I was going to say, if they're using the Service NSW app, we don't see their date of birth at all, so that's why it's a great tool for us to be directing people towards using. It's incredibly quick and incredibly user-friendly. If they just import their data from Medicare, it is easy. They've dealt with a lot of the privacy concerns, it's fantastic. >> That's great. That was in your notes you shared because it is not - when you use it in the wallet, it does have your date of birth on it. There is a question about - I think that was from you, Janet, about targeting advice for not-for-profit incorporated associations with no employees, only members. I'm assuming you're a gallery with volunteers, is that correct? That is my vacuum cleaner robot I just kicked! Should I say that again? Do we have targeted advice for not-for-profit incorporated associations with no employees or members? >> I think if you're classified as a volunteer, you can still use the resources that are available through Safe Work. That is my understanding. >> I think - was that Judy? Yes. If you have some other questions, Judie, you can ask us afterwards. Everyone is commenting on the vacuum cleaner. So funny. It is a new member to the family. Haven't bonded quite yet! A question from Off the Kerb Gallery concerning drinks at the openings. >> That's right. Does anyone have any information on that? >> That will be in your specific public health order from Victoria. Once that is produced, that information should be in there. For NSW at the moment, patrons need to be seated while consuming alcohol and that is likely to change but those are the conditions currently if you're indoors. If you're outdoors, I believe you can be vertical while consuming alcohol which is the term they're using, which is very funny. At the moment you'd need to be checking your public health order as it's produced. >> I think a few points, both Bec and Emily have brought up, are so complimentary. Bec, making sure you book mark the links direct to where the public health orders are updated. Emily, just ensuring you've got a consistency around your social communication and when you communicate. I think while we like to be prepared, the reality is at the moment that these directives, you really do have to check even on the day of the event to make sure there haven't been any changes and that you've got a clear plan for when and how you're going to communicate to your guests no matter what changes. Those two things really work so beautifully together. >> Thanks for answering the question, guys. >> You're welcome. Do we have any other questions? Back to Judy that asked specific tips for being a small studio, sometimes open to the public, I'm assuming that's for studio visits? >> Yes. When we have a local festival, it won't be until next year, I know things will change but just wanting to get ahead of the curve and maybe wonder what's going to happen. >> Absolutely. >> I'm happy to give a response to that that might bring some comfort to you. As you may or may not know, Create NSW has been part of some research that's been undertaken by a group call ed Pattern Makers. They've been producing data around audiences and their desire to get back to events and recently we asked them to conduct a pulse check to support the sector to understand what we're actually emerging into for audiences at this time of re-opening. Really pleasingly, Pattern Makers came back with information that our sector of audience are vaccinated to the hilt basically. >> Yes. >> About 99% I think of the respondents indicated they either were vaccinated or intended to get their second vaccination within weeks. It was a really very, very small contingent - I don't even think it was 1% of people that were asked these questions at this time so I think it kind of shows we're got a really conscientious sector that really want to get back to a safe way of experiencing art and culture again and so I think the weight of obligation is around that cohort of people who are ready to return, they're doing everything they can to return and so I think the concerns that we have about people being challenging in that working environment is probably down to a lot of fear and anxiety on our own part but I do feel like - I mean, obviously, when you open your space to anyone, you run the risk of them doing anything to you. Yeah. >> Our position would be not until early next year or maybe - probably not to early next year, it would be a local arts festival in a regional area so it would be general public coming in. I know things will change many, many times between now and then. Just trying to read the feeling of it now. I understand that the arts community, mostly, are pro vaccination and do prescribe to that idea and do support it. But we - there would be other small regional festivals happening through summer when it all opens up and just trying to get our head around what things we might have to think about. We don't have meetings very often, we need to plan months ahead and there is not many of us but there will be hundreds of people wanting to come and visit. >> Where are you? >> Illawarra. >> Don't he is tat to give us -- hesitate to give us a call at Create NSW. I will give you my email so you can call closer to the time but very happy to assist with any information you might need. >> Thanks, Bec. >> Over to you, Mimi. >> Sorry. I thought you were doing the wrap-up, I apologise. Look, I just want to thank Bec and Emily again as well as all of you. We had 168 attendees for the majority of that webinar and it shows the appetite that is out there for people to learn and to come together and share the experiences that we're having. Unprecedented - it's totally precedented now. One of the great lessons that I've taken from today is to keep humans in the human planning. Emily, you've really articulated that in a very organised and process-driven way that at every point when you're thinking generously, empathetically, compassionately, both about the people we're caring for as our staff but also the people coming to experience whatever they are coming to experience, whether it is a small studio or a state gallery, the principles are the same. If you welcome people and respect who they are and their choices and you're consistent in why you're making your choices around the safety of them and others, I think a lot of the fear can be alleviated and the resources that the Art Gallery of NSW have to pull this kind of work together is really incredible and to be able to share that so generously with the broader sector across the country, I'm incredibly grateful for it. It is a short-cut as to where we all need to get to together. I want to thank everyone and wish you all well in the coming days and do not hesitate to reach out to NAVA, let us know how you're going, let us know where the sector is going and what people need. That's what we're here for. Thank you Create NSW and Art Gallery of NSW. >> Thank you, NAVA. Thank you, Emily, so brilliant to see your wonderful work in action. >> Likewise. Bec and I have had each other on speed dial for the last couple of months so it's always a pleasure to share. >> Wonderful. We'll make this available on the NAVA website afterwards when we can get the tech up there as we need to. Thank you very much again and have a great day, everyone. >> Thanks, everyone.