 Hi everyone. Today we're going to talk about seasonal special events and caring for collections. So we're going to start. It should be fun. I just want to remind you that the Connecting to Collections Care Forum is online and there are people that will answer your questions within a day. It is the only part of our website where you need a password and need to register everything else on the website, including reading the forum, is open to anyone. So just keep that in mind. This is our website and you can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter. If you need to contact me, this is my email address and I'm happy to hear from you anytime. And coming up in 2016 in January, we're going to have a webinar on caring for furniture and one on frames and probably within the next two weeks, the entire schedule for until May will be posted. So keep an eye on the calendar and look out for that. And we want to wish you all happy holidays from us and thank you for having a great year this year. It was our first year as Connecting to Collections Care. So now I'm going to turn it over to Rebecca and Rebecca Newberry and Gretchen Anderson and they'll take over. Thank you. Thank you, Susan. I'm Rebecca Newberry and Gretchen and I are really thrilled to be able to present this webinar for you guys today. A little bit of background. Gretchen and I both have an extensive background in natural history and preventive conservation and we really focus a lot on integrated pest management and cleaning and things like that. So that's a lot of what this focus is going to be on. We both work for fairly large museums as well. So when we start talking about the amount of people that we use and the staff that's involved in these events, it can be pretty daunting if you work at a small institution. So just know that it's the roles that need to be filled, not necessarily the amount of people. You know, one person can do several different roles, of course. And then please, please ask your questions and we will stop about two-thirds of the way through the webinar and see if there's questions that need to be answered and then there'll be plenty of time at the end as well. So the webinar is organized into three sections. We'll start with some general guidelines for special events. There are, in your handout, there's a couple really good resources that are more in-depth on guidelines for special events and I'd really encourage you to seek those out. We'll just do a quick overview. Then we'll talk about our seasonal special events and then we'll talk about our favorite topic, which is navigating institutional politics. So obviously, events can bring up some unnecessary foes within your institution so it's good to keep everyone happy and working together. So what makes a special event? Why is an event special? Generally, they're unique. They're a special occasion. They're really designed to grow your audience, to bring in people who may not come to your institution all the time. They're used to raise money. They're used to cater to donors or to make a profit on one day a year or something like that. They're also, generally, you want to have food and drink at the party so you want to make sure that there's maybe more food and drink available during a special event than you would have during a regular day-to-day process at your museum or your institution. You may have bands. You may have dancing. You may have extra flower arrangements. These are all things that increase the risk to your collection, but that's what makes the event special. Of course, when looking at seasonal special events, these can become very cherished events in your yearly calendar. People may only come to your institution to see how you've decorated Christmas trees, for example, in December or for your spring flower event or for your creepy zombie Halloween party. That's super fun. So you have a vested interest in having these special events and working as a team within your institution to keep them being successful. So they are really important. We're going to start our first survey question, poll question number one. We can pull that over. The first question is, do you have a special events policy? I'll wait for a second to see. It's great to have policies for everything, right? If you have something written down, then you have a place to start when talking about what's good and what isn't good for your collections. It looks like a healthy majority of you do not have a special events policy. I would encourage you to create one. A general special event policy is really handy, especially if it's specific. It can talk about exactly how food and drink and flowers and DJ equipment can be delivered into your institution, where you can have food, where you can have drink. Having a really specific policy is great. It's also really important to bake that policy as a team, so getting buy-in from everyone involved, making sure that you're working with your membership and development people and working with your security people and your custodial staff and caterers just to make sure that you're writing a policy that protects collections but is also a workable document. You can't just say absolutely no food ever in the museum because people eat and you need to have food for people to make them happy. These are sorts of things that you need to work together with people. You can have a specific special event policy. You could have a general policy, but you could also have specific guidelines for certain events, especially if you're bringing in people from outside of the museum. You're bringing in your women's committee who are volunteering to set up floral decorations. You can have a specific set of guidelines just for your flower show or just for your sleepovers, things like that. You don't just have to have one policy. It's nice to have an overarching one, but it's also good to have specific ones. When you're signing contracts, if you're doing an event rental or something like that, you really need to see that collections protection language is included in that. So if someone's going to rent out your beautiful historic ballroom for a wedding, you want to make sure that you've got language in there that protects your collections as well. Some very general guidelines would be to make sure you're keeping your food and your drink away from collections areas. This brings up our second poll question that's kind of right on top of each other. So the second poll question is, do you allow food or drinks and or drinks in your galleries? And you can pick all that apply. All right, I have a little bit of background in surveying on this topic. I've been working on best practices for food and museums document through the Conservation Committee of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections. And we posted an online survey about a year and a half ago and found that about 5% of respondents said they allow food and drink in their galleries at all times. But when we said, do you allow food and drink only during special events, they went up to about half of respondents. So this looks like it's a sort of a similar result, which is really interesting. So you definitely want to keep your food and your drink away from collections areas. But you know that once a special event occurs, there may be a push to increase the amount of places in your museum where you can allow drinks. So that's where your policy can be really good about being specific. You can choose different galleries. Like in the lower left-hand picture here, we have a special table, a high-top table set up within a gallery that's all fossil material. And you can have drinks in this gallery during an event. The sign specifically asks you to put your drink or place your things on the table rather than on top of the vitrine that's located behind it. You know, people will set things down on any flat surface they can find. So it's saying set your drink here. And that table serves as a safety place to maybe prevent spills. And also knowing that this gallery is only fossil material and it's less likely to be damaged by, you know, insect infestation or something like that from spilled drinks. And also that most of the material is fairly easy to clean should there be a damaged piece. Signage is really great. The middle picture is an example of an area where food was set up for an event in a part of the museum that doesn't have collections, that just has like an interactive station, but they still don't want you putting your drink on the interactive surface. So there's a little sign that says, please do not place things here, but the food's right next to it. So it's clearly delineated here or not here. That's what the red circle is for. So it's always good to communicate. So high-top tables are really great in any event, especially if you are delineating between you can have food in one gallery and not another. So at the entrance to the gallery where food or drink is not allowed, having a tray stand or having a high-top table is a place where someone can put their drink. And so they have a place to leave it. It helps them help you. You know, you really want to encourage good behavior and helping people behave is important and predicting where people might be setting things. And you can obviously, as you have events, find the best places to put these tables and put these things. You want to make sure you're clearing empties in the event. We have this middle picture that's just a table completely full of beer bottles that are empty. When my museum, the Science Museum of Minnesota has an event where you can have drinks in the galleries, we actually have one catering staff assigned just to clear those empties and make sure that there's not drinks placed places. So obviously they didn't quite get to this one in time. But you can also use floor mats underneath places where there will be a concentration of drinks so that if there should be a spill, it'll go onto the mat and not into your carpet or onto your historic flooring surface, which is even more daunting. So you want to make sure you use mats. And the catering setup, so where they're setting up their bars, where they're setting up places to put trays of food or whatever, you want to make sure that those are well away from collections. So here you have your special event and now all of a sudden you need to have, you're getting pressure to have food in your galleries or drinks in your galleries. So like I said before, identifying galleries that maybe carry lower risk to the objects. If you have drinks in them, like places where there are cases, so for this example in this picture from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, you have a diorama gallery where the dioramas are behind glass so there's nothing out in the open. So having drinks in that area is less risky to the specimens because they're covered. You can also use stanchions or other barriers to protect objects in the open. So say everything is glazed or in cases except for one piece in the middle of the floor. You could put a rope barrier or stanchions around it just to keep people from getting too close to it with their beverages. And if worse comes to worse, you may have to temporarily move objects out of the way. If you have a small place and you're having a big party, it really might make sense to take a vulnerable piece off the floor for the event. And you can kind of use this to leverage maybe some work you need to have done. Like maybe that piece needs to come off the floor to have some documentation or conservation done to it or something like that. And maybe you can use your event as an inspiration to do that. Maybe they'll pay the labor cost to get that off the floor. So always be thinking about things like that. So of course housekeeping is really key for special events. You want to make sure you're cleaned beforehand and that you have someone responsible for cleaning during the event. On call to mop up any spills. And obviously you want to clean after the event as well. Immediately after the event is the best time to clean up after it. And we don't want to let something sit overnight waiting until the next morning to be cleaned. At the National Museum of Natural History, they have a policy called the event never happened. And I love this idea, which is that the event, you could have 3,000 people in your museum for an evening event. And they could have drinks in all your galleries. But the next morning when you open to the public, it doesn't look like anything's even happened. So everything's cleaned up. All the furniture and decorations and everything have been removed. And the place has been restored back to the way it was. It's kind of a leave no trace of that policy, I guess. So really kind of think about that. You really want to make sure that you're cleaning immediately after the event. You don't want to let that stuff sitting around and letting insects or a vertebrate pest get into it. So the people that are coming to your events, they want to have a good time. And they also obviously are interested in your institution because they've come. So you want to help them have good behavior. So once again, using signs, communicating expectations about behavior, which a lot of times it's signs or it's your staff saying, oh, would you mind leaving your drink on this table? Things like that is really important. And making sure that you are staffed well enough, that you have extra security. You have custodial staff catering staff. Everyone's heard horror stories about understaffed events. There's the famous one about the art museum that had all you could drink martini party that turned into a crazy fest where everyone was drunk and climbing out sculptures. And they only had scheduled one security officer. So think about that poor person. So you want to make sure that you have more people than you need and less. And then see if you can continue to have events and maybe not need that one extra person, then you can think about cutting them. It's better to start with more than have to add. And integrated pest management, of course, is really important for your special event. You want to make sure you know where the food and where maybe plants may be coming in. You want to know where they're being prepped, where they're being distributed. Maybe you would want to increase your pest monitoring in those areas. You also want to make sure that you stipulate that only greenhouse grown flowers are allowed for events. So these are things that have been grown in a pest free or really low pest environment with maybe a lot of pesticides. You don't want to bring in wild flowers for events because they bring in insects. And you want to make sure your caterers are setting up away from collections and they're bringing things into your event away from collections as well. So it's not a great idea if they're setting up on one side of the gallery and they have to pass through a gallery with their things to access the event. You want to make sure that they're not moving through areas of collections. You want to make sure you're wasting recycling and removed promptly and obviously once again cleaning immediately after the event. There's a terrible story from an anonymous museum in a very large city that would not clean immediately after their events. And they would clean the next morning and they developed a rat infestation. So they were really like the party was over and then the rats moved in for the second party. So they were able, the conservation staff at that institution was able to convince their facilities staff and event staff to clean up immediately afterwards and it greatly reduced that infestation. So it's not just you that's being affected. It can be everybody. And one of the last things to think about is noise in your events. Oftentimes we'll bring in bands or DJs because people want to have a good time. So you want to make sure that the noise isn't causing enough vibration to affect your collection, especially if you have collections that are on mezzanines or balconies which are already a part of the building which may have more vibration. So monitor objects during noisy events and think about controlling the amplification that's allowed for your musicians and for your DJs if you can see that objects are being affected. You can get a decibel meter, you can get a little micrometers. So I am going to pass this over now to Gretchen and she's going to talk to us about winter events. I'm on. Hello there. As Rebecca mentioned, I used to be with the Science Museum of Minnesota and she and I had the pleasure of working together for many years. So we tend to answer each other's, finish each other's sentences. I'm now with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History which is really big and very complicated. All right, the winter season is upon us. It's time to deck the halls or maybe not. How do you apply the general guidelines that Rebecca has been talking about without coming off as a total scrooge? As she was mentioning, you start with a risk assessment. You assess the potential damage and potential hazards to your collections and to your building. I have the pleasure now of working in a historic structure as well as with a very, very large collection. So I'm learning to appreciate the historic nature of the building. So one of the things you want to do is take a look at how many hazards there are to the collection. So for your winter holiday events, you have Christmas trees, you have candles, lights, decorative food and plants, and decorations. There's a ton of stuff that can go wrong. Let's take a look at the candles specifically. Candles basically should not be allowed. If your building has an automatic fire system, you could actually have a problem with the flames and the fire or the flames and the smoke setting off either your alarms or your sprinkler systems. You do not want this. So come up with an alternative. As Rebecca was mentioning, we need to work closely with our other colleagues and come up with solutions. Today you can purchase candles with LED lights that look amazingly good. Use these instead of real candles. If you decorate with lights, check your wiring just to make sure that it can handle it. If you have a historic house, your older electrical wiring might not be up to the task. With one of the big issues, especially in historic houses, is to deal with historic collections that are used as decorations. You might actually have a collection of decorations that you want to bring out. You can do this, but approach it as a temporary exhibition. Do not hang these on real trees. The trees can drip sap on the artifacts and will cause additional problems in the future. Set up the display so that it looks real. Use fake plants and make sure that your plants are separated from your collections or from the traffic flow. Keep them behind barriers so that they don't get bumped. Excuse me, I'm fighting the cold here. Christmas trees. This is the season for Christmas trees, and they're wonderful. They smell great, they look great. However, if you can, use fake trees. Real trees pose all sorts of potential problems to your collections and your building. You might be dropping sap on objects, on the floors, on your historic floors. There's always a danger with real trees of spilling the water when you go to refill the pans. Needles can fall off. Any of us who've actually had real trees in our houses know that you're vacuuming up needles for months after the event has taken place. Also, bugs can pop out at any time. If the tree has some kind of infestation, a bug might come back alive, might reestablish itself during the warmth of being inside. There's also a fire damage. The fake tree solves many of these problems. You don't have any water, they don't shed, they don't drip, and most of them are fire resistant. This is a one-time expense as well. Check with your fire marshal to make sure that you are not violating any fire code if you have to use real trees. The fire marshal will also help you make sure that your fire precautions are adequate. If you do end up using real trees, if you are pressured into it, then take all the precautions you can. Place plastic under them to prevent leaks. Provide plenty of a room around the trees so that they are not bumped and don't fall over. You can use barriers. Also, argue for fake garlands and swags. If you wrap garlands around say, Newell posts or drape them on mantles, the fake ones, again, will not leave as much residue. At the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, we have a magnificent display of decorated trees done each year. It's gorgeous. These are all real trees. We also have a huge space. The trees are placed in a gallery near the front of the museum that houses architectural models. These are actual casts of real architectural places. As the conservator that I spoke with puts it, she said, this is painted plaster and marble. There's not much damage that can be done. So she doesn't spend too much time worrying about this space. There's plenty of room to move around the trees, and there's a clear delineation between the trees and where the public flows. Meet Jane. Jane is a juvenile T. rex. You will be pleased to know that she is a cast and easily repaired if damaged. The curator responsible for this cast was consulted before she was ever decorated, and the paleontology staff works closely with exhibits to install the decorations and take them off. Repairs, if needed, are done immediately. Remember, she is a cast. This is not something I would recommend at any time. However, it was worked with. It was made clear, done in collaboration with the curatorial staff as well as our marketing staff. Avoid tinsel. At least, tinsel directly on your objects or furniture. Tinsel is very sharp and will cause damage. It can cause scrapes on delicate surfaces. It can break off and combine with the surfaces that it's on. For example, it might fall off into your carpeting or I've seen tinsel draped over antlers and around taxidermy. It's very difficult to get the tinsel fragments out and your taxidermy might glitter for many years to come. As Rebecca mentioned, housekeeping is absolutely vital. Clearly define as long as you keep the area clean during the event, you clean before, during, and after, that will reduce the amount of damage that is potential. You want to clearly define installation and cleaning protocols. At the Carnegie, we have a strict time schedule for installation of trees and decorations as well as for taking them down. Maintenance follows along closely to make sure that everything is cleaned at the end of the four-week event. This includes cleaning up all of the air and time needles. And conservation walks through after the event to make sure that there is no damage. If there is damage, we fix it immediately. Integrated pest management is always a challenge. It's a challenge on a regular day as well as especially for special events. It takes careful planning to avoid disaster. You have to increase your monitoring, especially if you have live plants. Also, always purchase the healthiest-looking plants. These are usually the best-looking. Avoid edible decorations. Popcorn, cranberries, dried fruit, or nuts that are used to decorate, to make garlands with. That will add an additional attraction to the bugs and vertebrate pests. Always consider where you place your trees, other plants, and food. If possible, don't place your trees in the same space as your collections. For historic houses, this will be very difficult. And again, good housekeeping is your primary defense against pests once the trees are in place. No sooner are your winter events done than spring has arrived. The gardens are coming to life. We all deserve to celebrate, and many museums hold flower shows. At the Carnegie, we hold a four-day event called Art in Bloom in which the participants interpret specific works of art in the floral arrangements. I should tell you that at the Carnegie, we are actually four museums. Two museums share a building. Natural history and art. So I, of course, am very concerned about the spring events. It's a beautiful event. It's quite spectacular. And it's organized by a special group of donors called the Women's Committee. The key to a successful event is to reduce the risk to the collections. Do you notice a trend here? First of all, develop guidelines and procedures for what should be done. Those guidelines should include what flowers are allowed and not allowed, where and when the arrangements should be delivered, what is the process for installation, and what is the process and timeline for removing the plants. Excuse me for a moment. I haven't coughed all day. Now I'm starting. So what you want to do is develop procedures as a team. Collaborate with your colleagues at the museum and with the external stakeholders, such as our Women's Committee. Everyone needs and concerns need to be discussed and addressed to come up with the best solutions. Keep the procedure simple and assign roles. Communicate those guidelines to the participants ahead of time so that they know what to do and to expect. In that way, you can head off problems ahead of time. And don't just turn the participants loose. Supervise the process of installation. Make sure that there are plenty of staff around who can help. Integrated pest management. You knew this one was coming. It's spring. The plants are alive. The bugs are alive. Everything is alive. As my colleague Tom Strang, the IPM guru from the Canadian Conservation Institute put it, use pesticide perfect plants when you have to use fresh plants. Greenhouse plants are grown with systemic pesticides. They are pest resistant and are less likely to bring in the pests than are the homegrown ones. And again, if you choose the best looking plants for your displays, so much the better. Those will be the healthiest. I just heard of a situation where during a spring flower show, a praying mantis crawled out of one of the arrangements once it had warmed up. These plants came from the local garden and the mantis was sleeping peacefully until it came inside. They found it wandering around the gallery. So avoid homegrown wildflowers if possible. Here are some of the guidelines that we use at the Carnegie Museum of Art. The conservators remove, examine all plants before they come in. All these are cut flowers. Any plants that do not meet the criteria that the conservators have set are removed. They're not allowed in the building. Lilies are a favorite plant for flower rangers. But their stamen are very messy. They tend to drop their pollen, and the pollen is sticky and will cause staining. So the conservator has made the decision that as she puts it, either spray or spay these plants. It's their choice. In other words, they remove the stamen, either cut the stamen out or, as is the case with this particular lily, or hit the flower with a squirt of hairspray. This will hold everything together for the four-day event. The exhibitors, each exhibitor is escorted into the gallery by exhibit staff. Their water is contained in closed containers. And the exhibit staff has already identified where everything is to be displayed. CMA provides the pedestals. They're placed in the galleries and weighted and secured so they cannot be moved. This includes using tacky wax on to the floor, which is a marble floor. Exhibits has placed plastic sheeting to protect any of the artwork that is close. The arrangements are not watered or sprayed once they are installed. Containers are waxed down to the pedestals, and the use of flower arrangement foam is recommended. There are no arrangements that are directly on the museum objects. Do not place flower arrangements on your historic furniture if that's what you have. It can cause serious damage. A few more guidelines, a rather process. The pedestals are capped about three feet away from the artwork. This allows the artists to create their arrangements. It also allows for a broad spray of the arrangement. And it keeps the art work away from, or it keeps the plants away from the artwork. Floors are covered if necessary. Once the exhibit is completed the day before it opens, maintenance thoroughly cleans up after the installation has happened. All the debris is removed, all of the plastic is removed. Conservation walks through each day of the event, removing the dead blooms. Water is under control the entire time, and the arrangements are all removed at the end of the fourth day. The containers are saved for the exhibitors to pick up, and if they want their flowers back they have to make special arrangements. Okay, I'm going to turn this back over to Rebecca. Thanks, Gretchen. So, another event that can happen in your calendar, sometimes in the spring or sometimes over the summer, are sleepovers or campings. And these are really fun events where either school groups or Boy Scout groups or Girl Scout groups or even just families can come to the museum and they can sleep over, you know, sleep under the dinosaurs, those kinds of events. Obviously, you can foresee a lot of problems that might come from letting a bunch of kids crash in your galleries overnight. So, one of the most important things to do is to write down guidelines and communicate them to the participants ahead of time. Here at the Science Museum we've been doing campings for about 30 years, and we send a whole packet of information to the participants ahead of time so they know what to expect when they get here and what they can bring and what they can't bring. They're allowed to bring sleeping pads and pillows and sleeping bags but they're asked not to bring tall mattresses, you know, like the big air beds. They're also not allowed to bring cots because we want to make sure everyone's low to the ground so we can keep an eye on them while they're sleeping. And then they're also communicated specifically for collections protection. There's absolutely no interacting with the exhibits once lights are out, so once you go to bed you don't get to, you know, get up in the middle of the night and jump in the dinosaur diorama or go play with an interactive. And there's never any food or drink allowed in the galleries. In this event we never allow food or drink in the galleries, even in water bottles. People need to go to the drinking fountains if they need to drink in the middle of the night. Another thing that's important is that we enforce a minimum one to eight chaperone to youth ratio so that there's, you know, the chaperones aren't overwhelmed with the amount of kids that they need to keep an eye on. So this is a way to set up expectations of good behavior and it's also we're taking a chance to communicate with our chaperones to make sure that they're ready to supervise their youth. That's not our responsibility. Our responsibility is to keep everyone safe and to keep the collections safe and to make a fun event. So it's also important in doing that to sort of emphasize the special nature of the event, you know, that this is a privilege and this is a treat. We do work with a lot of Boy Scout troops that come year after year. So we have ended up developing really good relationships with some Scoutmasters who really take it upon themselves to also help us enforce those rules. So when the kids come we have to provide secure storage for their belongings. As you can imagine there's a lot of stuff. So you want to make sure that storage is away from collections just in case you're bringing in anything, you know, bug-like with their stuff, which they shouldn't be. But, you know, they have a place to keep it. They have a reintroduction to your guidelines and what your night is going to be like. And then once again, you know, emphasizing food and beverage being in non-collection areas. And then we have a lot of activities planned for the campers. So they get to spend some time in the galleries. They get to go to the movie. They get a theater show. They get dinner. They get some more things to do. They get a late night snack. And then in the morning they're woken up fairly early and they have a breakfast and they have more entertainment and activities in the morning. So there's not a lot of downtime for people to get in trouble. So one of the main things we really want to try and do is to staff these adequately. Over 30 years of experience, we've kind of come to the happy place of knowing that we need about 12 to 18 camp-in staff. So these are staff that are just dedicated to the camp-in for 500 guests. That's about the average size of our camp-in. So that doesn't include the gallery staff that are already working, facilities, staff, security, custodial. Those people as well would be in addition to the 12 to 18 camp-in staff. We have six staff that stay overnight. And we keep three staff people must stay awake overnight, like facilities, engineer, a security person, and then a camp-in staffer. So they make rounds. The camp-in staff, we have a large atrium with a stairway that goes down it. So the camp-in staff actually camp on the landings of the stairways so they can sort of watch the people and make sure people aren't getting into trouble. And we keep those messages about behavior consistent the whole time. The sort of funny thing is that we have more trouble with our chaperones misbehaving than with the youth misbehaving, because adults always think they can get away with things. And one of the biggest problems is people trying to sleep on couches, the few couches we have through the museum rather than sleeping on the floor. We don't want them to do that. And then obviously housekeeping is really important. When they're having their late night snack, our third shift custodial crew comes in and they clean the bathrooms and make sure that the area is clean for the campers to sleep in. Then they set up their stuff and they sleep overnight. And when they get up in the morning and go to breakfast, our day cleaning staff comes in and cleans up after them. And then our exhibits maintenance staff also comes in at that point just to check for damage to make sure that anything hasn't been broken overnight. And we've really been really successful over the years by keeping high levels of staffing and keeping these consistent messages about behavior. I asked the guy who organizes them what's the worst thing that's ever happened. And he said once there were two kids who grabbed a bottle of soda pop and poured it from a bridge on one floor down to the floor below. They didn't hit any collections, they didn't hit any exhibits, and they were promptly sent home. And they made a big deal about cleaning up the mess just so the other kids could see that there's consequences for your behavior. Another event that might happen, maybe Halloween, I know that Halloween's become more and more of an adult holiday and more of a party kind of thing. And more and more museums are also hosting 21 and over events because we all want to get the millennials into our museums and get them excited and make them lifelong members and lifelong enthusiasts for our institutions. So having 21 and over events is something that's really popular. And merging that with the Halloween event is something that happens frequently. So when we have a Halloween event and we want to emphasize safety and security, we want to make sure that people have a good time, that they're safe, that the collections are safe. So we want to make sure for Halloween events specifically that our costumes, if people are coming in costumes, that those costumes aren't going to damage collections. So we don't want people wearing masks because we don't want them to trip and fall. We don't want them in messy costumes or large costumes. And we want to make sure we have enough staff, security, custodial, you know, again, catering staff just to make sure that there's enough people to make sure that people aren't going to get away with things. And we want to make sure there's fun activities planned. If there's things to do, people are engaged in that. It's a more fun activity and a more fun event for them and they'll keep coming back. So we also want to make sure those fun activities are clean. We had an event that was a murder at the museum night around Halloween. And you had to solve a murder mystery and there were all these different forensic activity stations. And one was a fingerprinting station where you would dust for fingerprints. Well, they let visitors have like free reign with the fingerprint dusting powder initially. And it was in an area that didn't have any collections, you know, it was just an activity station. And I remember walking up to it and seeing just clouds of this dark black dust and everyone's hands were filthy and everything was filthy. And you could see the people organizing it were like, oh God, what have we done? So they were quickly trying to like restrict the powder and get things to clean people's hands. And I just happened to run into the head of our custodians and he was just shaking his head and laughing because he knew he had some work ahead of him to clean up. So think about those kinds of activities and maybe change them for the next time. It's always good to learn from your mistakes. So at Halloween, you know, we really do want to encourage this good behavior again. So setting up, you know, tables to set your drinks on, things to control your zombies. The zombie is actually Gretchen's husband, Clint. So we had to throw this picture and this is from a Carnegie event earlier this year. So scheduling extra security and custodial staff is really important. And thinking about the alcohol that is served at the event, if it's a 21 and over event, people are going to come wanting to have drinks. So you don't want them to drink too much. So if you're going to offer, you know, a drink with the ticket, then maybe just offer one drink. And if you are going to sell drinks, then price them at a point that it discourages binge drinking. So if they have to pay, you know, five, six, seven dollars for a beer, they're not going to drink a ton of beers necessarily. And that combined with activities and different things to do will keep people from getting ratty and out of hand. And obviously, once again, with your housekeeping, keep it clean, clean during and after the event. Another thing to think about is your IPM during a Halloween event. This is probably a real urge to put pumpkins out and, you know, pumpkins can get messy really fast. So if you are going to have pumpkins or other plant-based decorations, you know, gourds or multi-colored corn, things like that, you want to make sure that they are treated like floral arrangements would be at another special event where they come in for the event, they're used and they're removed. You don't want to have things lingering around. And you want to obviously, once again, monitor during and after the event for pests and clean immediately. They're all very important. So I'm going to pass it back to Gretchen, and she's going to talk about politics. But before we do that, do we have any questions we need to answer right away or can we wait till the end? We do have a question about what specific flowers you should not allow. And I think Gretchen mentioned lilies are problematic. Do you have a list, Gretchen, of flowers that aren't allowed at your event? No, I do not. That's something we are working on. But there are several sites that are available. I think Detroit has a list. Detroit Institute of Arts, and there are several others that are available that I will try and look up and post later. And then another question about copies of special event policies to share. I am ashamed to admit that I don't have a current special events policy to share. But I know some good ones I can ask the writers of those if they'd be willing to share them. And the last question is what about camp and opportunities at small institutions? You know, I think the same recommendations exist. You know, you just want to make sure you have enough staff that you're planning, that you're telling people how to behave, and encouraging them to follow your guidelines. I think you can scale it down or up depending on, and you'll let experience be your guide. So I think we should probably switch up, go on to politics now, since we're running out of time. Okay. Flowers and plants, there is a recommendation to keep low, low light plants, plants that survive well in low light levels. I think that's mostly for living plants as opposed to cutting flowers. But I will try and find some resources. Okay. It is, as collections care professionals, it's our responsibility to think of the worst case scenarios for both the collection and the building. We need to recognize that what we see may seem reactionary. What our concerns are may seem reactionary to some of our colleagues and try and come up with some workable solutions. And that we can only do if all the stakeholders sit down together and work on it. Everybody, all of our stakeholders have different perspectives that they're coming from. So how do we approach that? First of all, you want to identify who your stakeholders are. Who do we need to work with to make sure that the event is both successful and safe for the collections? You've got a whole range of people inside the museum, administration, development, marketing, education, the board. You've got funders. We're all trying to bring in more money to the museums so we can keep our doors open. And these include the donors, again the board, special interest groups. And then the people personally I think are the most important are our public. And that covers a huge range of people. So first of all you need to recognize who holds the power and who holds the money. You also have to understand why the event is important. What is the event for? Is it to bring in money? Is it to bring in a new audience? There's a huge push these days to have what they're calling over 21 parties. These can be managed successfully. And hopefully they're going to be bringing in us a new audience. Is it just to bring attention to the museum? Or is it to keep donors happy? As collections care professionals need to recognize what the benefits to the institution that these special events are. We're all on the same team. We need to work together. We need to work with our stakeholders to identify our common goals and to recognize that we need to work together. In identifying roles and responsibilities of each group and understanding why they want this. So if marketing comes to you and says we have to do this big Christmas event, it's see that they are trying to bring an awareness of the museum as well as bringing more audience and more revenue. They're driving membership. The administrative functions of the museum are to increase the support for the museum. If our museums are healthy and making money, it's more likely that we can develop better collections. We can take care of our collections in a better manner. So they're all good reasons to have collections or to have these events and we need to keep our traditions alive. In order to do this, you have to create staff allies among your staff and your stakeholders. Cultivate collections advocates. You want to educate your colleagues and the outside stakeholders as to what it takes to take care of our museum collections. We are trying to align common interests. We all are coming at it from different perspectives. We want to have, we need to have these events to keep the museum open. The other thing, this is a little aside, is if you can develop your collections, if you can develop collections advocates throughout the stakeholders, you might find someone else that can say no when an event occurs or something at the event happens that you don't, that you didn't want. So for example, if you've got maintenance on your side, they don't want to clean up that powder that Rebecca was talking about any more than you wanted the powder there. If you've educated your colleagues and gotten them on your side, they will be telling you what the problems that they saw are. They will help support the collections care activities. We're all in it for the same thing. We're working at the museum. We're supporting the museum because we're passionate about the history, the art, the collections. And the other thing you need to remember is you need to be able to stick to your standards. So you have, if you've established your collections care standards, you need to be able to look at those standards and hold the line at some point. There are times when you have to say no. The more your colleagues understand this and they understand where you are coming from, the better the no will come off. Be proactive. If you suggest win-win solutions to the team, then again, they are more likely to listen to you in the future. If you just say, no, we can't have food and drink in the gallery, period, they're not going to listen to you. And they will fight you all the way. If you try and understand and listen to what their concerns are and what their needs are and work at developing these kinds of compromises, then you can come up with workable solutions. The more people thinking about those solutions, the better. There are times that you have to compromise. Again, if you're bringing food and drink into the gallery because you're being pressured to, you can look at it. If you can't stop it, then you think about different methods that you can mitigate that risk. It comes back again to the risk assessment. If you develop, once you develop your allies on staff and in the special interest groups, you can start leveraging the budgets to be used for funding collections work. Don't fear the event. There are always ways to make it work. You develop relationships with your colleagues, you learn how to trust your colleagues, and they will learn how to trust you. You build coalitions, then you can face the hordes of zombies. I'm sorry, I mean party goers with confidence and survive and even enjoy the event. Rebecca and I would like to thank the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Science Museum of Minnesota for allowing us to use images. And Vern Anderson, who is the cartoonist. So, questions? Rebecca, do you have anything to add? I think the last thing I would add that I meant to say before that I didn't was that it's important that you also attend your events. Sometimes it can seem like an extra burden to go to all these nighttime events if you're working all day, but it's good to go so that you can see how it's playing out on the ground so that you can offer constructive feedback. Maybe, hey, maybe we should put the tables on this side of the doorway instead of that side of the doorway next time or something like that. And that's the kind of thing that you do when you're building your status with your stakeholders. You're saying you're building collections advocates, but you should also be making yourself a custodial advocate and an event planning advocate as well so that you are working together. Agreed. And it looks like one more person is typing, but I don't see any more questions. If anyone has any questions, please type them out. I don't see any questions either. We do have an evaluation, and it's really important to do them, and we'll bring over the evaluation link in a minute. It says, what is your policy on use of sternum by caters? I would discourage sternum because it's an open flame. I would look for a better way to keep food hot. I don't know what do you think, Gretchen? I would agree with that. You may not be able to control it, but again, check with your fire marshal. Yeah, your fire marshal can say no. Yeah, it's really nice when the fire marshal says no. And if you are stuck using sternum, I would make sure you keep a close eye on it and monitor it to see if it's casting off any soot, if it could damage your collections, or just making sure it's controlled. They use them all the time, all over the place, so I would imagine the biggest thing would be combustion products. Water bottles in a private meeting held in a gallery. So water bottles are nice in that they are closed. So if you're having a meeting in a gallery and people have water bottles, as long as they're only open while they're drinking from them, and then they are closed immediately afterwards, there's really not much risk from them. So I think setting that as a policy, yes, you can have water bottles, but they have to remain closed unless you're drinking from them at that time. It's probably just fine. I'm sorry. The one question is often collection staff is required to oversee the event because we are the ones with collections expertise to enforce rules. And yet that is not our job to oversee rentals. Any thought on this? Should we train and trust our colleagues or continue to do it? It takes away from collections work. I am divided on this issue. I think that training and trusting our colleagues is really important. And so I was talking to a colleague about a weekly farmers market that they held in her institution. And when they first suggested it, she thought they did want to outside, but then they wanted to do a winter farmers market inside. And she was like, oh, this could be a really hard thing to do. But she worked really closely with it and was there to inspect all the incoming produce and be there through the event. But that meant getting there at 4 a.m. every Saturday. And so once she had done it for several weeks, there was the other people that were running the event. They were also there. And they learned from her what to look for. So she was able to build that trust with people who were already scheduled to work that event. And then they were able to fill that role for her. So really training and trusting I think is important because we only have so much time in the day to take care of things. So I think building those relationships with people and making your collections advocates, cultivating that is important. I would agree with that. And it's even more important, the more we can trust, we can train and trust our colleagues, they are our eyes in the galleries on a normal day. Once you get this information to them and they know that we respect them enough to let them help us, it's amazing what they come up with. They'll see things that you will never see. Yeah. And then the next two are about the same. Methods, sorry. Methods for business assessment. Yeah. Greshan, do you want to take that one? Sure. The methods I use are based on Rob Waller's methodology for risk assessment. Combining that with the... I'm a huge fan of the Canadian Conservation Institute's framework for preservation. They do have a new chart out that helps guide you through risk assessment. So you can figure out the best way, the most efficient way of preserving your collection and dealing with what you should look at as a procedure as opposed to other methods to block your risks. So that's the way that I go. And the more you do it, the more you look at things and think about how the damage can occur, the better you will get at saying, okay, well, this is a reasonable way to do it to solve the problem. Yeah, I would second that. I mean, Rob Waller is a great resource. And you can search. He's got several articles that are available online that are pretty easily found through Google just to get familiar with his technique. And obviously there's no one overarching, you know, this is what you should do, this is what you should do. A risk assessment is really unique to your institution and your collection. So you really have to do the work to go through it to figure out where your risks are and how you mitigate them. Emily has a follow-up on that. And the amount of risk that you've got is going to depend on your collection and where the event is being held. Yeah. Sorry, Emily, the answer to that is it depends. Yes, sure. But then you're from Ottawa, I'm sure you're used to Rob's methodology. And I think that almost all of Rob's papers are posted in the resources library on the Connecting to Collections Care website. How come that doesn't surprise me? So I'm looking at Julie's question about your HVAC system is turned off during events and the damage is not to causing temperature fluctuations. Is there any reason why they turned the HVAC system off during your events? Is it something that's programmed to go down at night? And so that's curious. I don't know. I would say ask them why your HVAC system has to go off during your events. It seems like you might have a lot of people in the museum and you want to keep that running. So the first tactic would be to ask, why does the HVAC system go off? Is it something that's programmed to go down at a certain time and it's difficult to override that programming? I mean, I don't know. I think that you should ask to be able to keep that. Keep it? I don't know. Oh, it's cold in the library. Oh, got it. OK, so people come in and it's too cold, so they want it to be warmed up. People are going to warm it up anyways, I guess. So that might be something that you can use signage to. Like why is it so cold in here? The cold preserves the books. Have a sweater. I don't know. I mean, something to warn people that it's kept colder in there than regular room temperature, so that they may come to the event with an extra sweater or things like that. I mean, that might be a way to do it. Or maybe you can hit a happy medium of raising the temperatures slightly for the event and then bringing it back down gradually. I'd say, I mean, of course I'm a collections person, so I'd say I'll put a sweater on, you'll be fine. But I don't know. It's probably maybe not the most politic response. Two thoughts. First of all, yeah, I agree with Rebecca that you would, if you could moderate it, not just turning the HVAC off, but allowing it to drift a little bit more. It's probably better for your HVAC as well. It would be more cost efficient. Also, yeah, use the temperature and relative humidity that is in your gallery as an educational moment. I think every time we can use it as educational moments, that is a good thing. And I think that's all of our questions. So we're going to wish everybody a happy New Year. We'll see you in January. And thank you to Rebecca and Gretchen. All three of us have had voice problems today, so I'm glad you all stayed and managed through our hacking. And don't forget the evaluation, please. They're very important, and we really look forward to them. And I read them. So we will see you in January for care of furniture. And I think that's it. So bye-bye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I will post the recording in the next few days. I'll post the handouts again, the PowerPoint slides, and I'll try to put together any additional resources from Rebecca and Gretchen and also the ones that were hosted in the chat box. So thank you very much. Bye-bye.