February: Planning your Event

So, you have made the decision to take part, perhaps to open your property or to lead a guided walk, and you may have contacted others to become involved in the event as well. However you intend to participate; now is the time to consider a whole range of aspects that will influence your planning.

Entry Criteria

Start by checking whether you are able to meet all four entry criteria:

• Interest: HODs is about celebrating a building, place or any heritage asset that is either of architectural, historic, cultural or social interest.
• Interpretation: You need to provide information that helps visitors understand the history, architectural merit or function of the property or the aspect of your heritage you want to share with them. The information you offer can take such different forms as guided tours, talks, pamphlets or exhibitions. For more ideas go to April.
• Free admission: Admission to properties and participation in activities must be free of charge during the chosen HODs opening period. Properties that do normally open free of charge should either open an additional part or arrange a special activity.
• Opening times: All openings and events branded as HODs must take place within the dates set by the Civic Trust each year. The current HODs dates are available from our homepage.

Shaping your Event

Assuming that you can fulfil these criteria, there are further questions that you need to decide upon.

When will you open? You’ll need to decide on which of the HODs days you want to participate and for how long.
How will you open? Will your visits require pre-booking? If so, you should decide who will take the bookings (as this can’t be done through the HODs national office).
Will you conduct timed tours? You need to be aware of how many visitors the site can take. This question is also relevant for guided town walks. There’s a limit to how many people will realistically benefit from it.
How will you explain or interpret the special qualities of your property/ies?
When you first open a property you will obviously wish to attract as many visitors as possible from within your community. In following years you may wish to attract other audiences. Do you want to target children, family groups, schools or those with disabilities? If so, will you offer special activities for these groups?
Will you open alone or as part of a group of properties?
You will also need to consider some legal issues that can have practical implications for your event, such as accessibility, health and safety and insurance.

Accessibility

Everyone who visits properties and activities that are part of HODs should feel welcome and comfortable. Being inclusive is not only part of the event’s spirit but has also a legal aspect which was defined by the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995. As HODs is a public event, our organisers count as service providers and hence are affected by this law. The purpose of the DDA is however not to intimidate or to discourage people from being involved in programmes such as HODs but to ensure better access for all visitors and reduce discrimination against people with disabilities, whether they are wheelchair users, people with visual impairments, hearing difficulties or other special needs. Although we recognise that you won’t be able to anticipate access implications for each and every type of disability, it is important for successful events that you think about your potential audience and the difficulties it may face and then consider how to improve accessibility of both the building and the interpretation. Where access for wheelchair users is impossible, e.g. up a bell tower or a steep and narrow staircase to the second floor of an old building, think about alternatives to physical access, e.g. a photographic exhibition on the ground floor. The HODs registration form will ask you to indicate how wheelchair accessible your venue is. Please tick the respective boxes so that we can advertise this in our event directory.

Risk Assessment

We strongly recommend doing a risk assessment of your property or planned activities before registering with HODs and again shortly before the event. The aim is to identify risks and to take suitable and sufficient measures to minimise the likelihood of any harm or damage occurring. Examining and preventing risk is sensible. It may take up some of your time during the preparatory stages, but it may also spare you a lot of worry later on.

Insurance

Please read the HODs Insurance Information you receive in your registration mail carefully. You need to make sure your property/event meets the insurance criteria. If your property/event involves any hazardous features and/or activities that are excluded from our cover, you will have to arrange your own cover in order to take part in HODs. If you have any insurance related queries, please get in touch directly with the insurance broker, whose details will be available on the information sheet.

1. Brush up with the DDA 1995
2. Find out how to carry out a risk assessment and other health and safety tips