With many clients in the tourism and visitor attraction, it’s been pretty full on at Rubber Cheese these past few days. We’ve been setting up online shops for venues that have now closed, and working with others to help them run workshops and classes virtually.
The strength and resourcefulness shown by our clients are truly inspiring, and its certainly helping to keeping our spirits high in the midst of the Coronavirus outbreak.
Over on our Twitter feed we’ve been sharing as many useful and positive things for the tourism and attractions sector that we can find, but also helpful things for everyone home-working or self isolating.
We’re collating these into one big blog post here, which we’ll update over the coming weeks with more and more resources.
If you find anything that we can share, anything that will help, please email me at kelly@rubbercheese.com.
WEBINARS
Visitor attractions managing through crisis: COVID-19
Brought to you by Dexibit, together with the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), IAAPA and Blooloop.
Join industry leaders and colleagues from around the world for this webinar to discuss impacts, approaches and strategies for managing visitor attractions through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Recording here:
COVID-19 Coronavirus Response resources for visitor attractions
Thursday 19th March 1300-1400 (GMT)
RESPONDING TO COVID-19. A special #MuseumHour focussing on how the museum sector is responding, how we can support each other and an opportunity to share ideas and best practice.
Even if you missed the live Q&A, follow the hashtag for excellent advice and support.
The Arts Marketing Association have two free webinars coming up.
Preparing your Crisis Comms Plan
Wellbeing for yourself and your Team
At the time we added these they were fully booked but, a wait list is in operation.
How to Captivate, Connect, and Communicate with Your Audience During Coronavirus.
Free webinar from @cuseum & @hammer_museum
Mar 25, 2020 02:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)
RESOURCE
The Arts Marketing Association have also pulled together a brilliant resource list to help you find relevant information for the arts, culture and heritage sector.
They’ve also created a Community Support Group on Facebook which is open to all sector professionals (not just AMA members), to share resources, ask questions and discuss ways to help each other.
The wonderful people at Museum Freelance have set up a resource page for freelancers.
Dealing With The Covid-19 Outbreak As A Freelancer
If you’re a Visitor Experience Forum member, then they’ve set up a private group for members tackling the challenges of CoVi Planning & Response.The idea of this group is to bring together a group of people tackling similar issues to share their experiences and learnings.
A strongly curated list of resources, companies needing help and companies offering help in the tours & activities industry
Super Quick DIY Podcasting for Museums & Other Nonprofits Closed by COVID-19
Hannah Hethmon makes podcasts for and about museums, history orgs & cultural nonprofits. She’s created this rather brilliant article to help museums and other nonprofits get podcast savvy.
Meetup have released resources for supporting communities online through the platform and beyond.
- Best practices for hosting an online event on Meetup
- Instructions to host an online event on Meetup
- Policy for hosting online events during the coronavirus advisory
- Meetup webinar about hosting online events
Arival is the source for insights, community and professional development for tours, activities and attractions. They’re currently running a weekly series of online events through to 9th April 2020.
Facebook are opening up a Small Business Grants Program – register by following this link. They’re offering $100M in cash grants and ad credits for up to 30,000 eligible small businesses in over 30 countries where they operate.
Visit Herts have created a new forum for Herts-based attractions, accommodation providers and other tourism businesses to receive direct updates from Visit Kent, share ideas and discuss topics.
Ticketsolve have two useful blogs:
Visit Norwich would like to offer cafes, restaurants and bars extra support and will explore how they can repurpose the VisitNorwich channels to promote independent takeaway and delivery services – especially those who are innovating their services in this challenging trading environment – in and around Norwich for the local community.
Please contact Caroline Mayers – Head of Marketing at Norwich Bid
Digital Visitor have a great blog: #Museumfromhome : 5 digital content ideas for Museums. Compiled from the webinar on How to Keep Your Audience Inspired in the Age of Coronavirus.
Follow #MuseumFromHome on Twitter set up by @sacha_coward Brilliant quick videos about favourite museum artefacts. So if you can’t go to a museum, they bring the museum to you!
Open your virtual doors this Easter – how tourist attractions can weather the storm – great blog from Museums and Heritage.
Arts & Culture Impact Fund – Nesta have launched the world’s biggest impact investment fund for the creative arts. A £20 million impact investment fund for the UK’s arts, culture and heritage social enterprises.
Have you subscribed to the #DigitalThings newsletter yet? It’s an invaluable source of helpful resources for the museum sector right now from Alec Ward. Sign up here.
Simon Applebaum is offering FOC support to anyone in the UK Attractions Industry concerned about their online capability, who wants some guidance on reservations. systems and distributors.
Good friend of Rubber Cheese Andrew Balerdi has produce a Content in Crisis Guide – How to deliver what’s most valuable and stay relevant.
GEM (the voice for heritage learning) is offering a free year-long membership and a complimentary supplier listing for freelance museum and heritage education professionals new to GEM. All current GEM members that are freelancers will receive a complimentary supplier listing.
Drake Music have been researching and learning about accessibility in video conferencing/online meetings/remote music sessions. They have a great blog on it – Accessibility in Video Conferencing and Remote Meetings
At Novorésumé, they are giving everyone 1 month free access to all resume and cover letter templates in their Premium membership. Offer available through April 10th. Read more here: https://novoresume.com/covid19/
Laura Crossley has set up the Museum freelancers coronavirus fund – Inspired by the brilliant Middle Child fundraiser for Hull freelancers, Laura is aiming to provide a minimum of 10 x £200 hardship funds for museum freelancers who needs support at this time. The first 10 hardship funds will go to people who started freelancing in 2019/20 as they will get no financial support from the government.
The Amusement Recovery website has been set up help amusement businesses endure the COVID-19 shutdown and create a plan for recovery. US based advice and education.
Visitor Experience Professional, Carlton Gajadhar MSc has handpicked some helpful information for people working in this space to inform and inspire during this difficult time. COVID-19 Resources for the Tourist Attractions and Visitor Experience Industry.
Not sure how your museums should approach digital engagement? Jim Richardson of MuseumNext and Jasper Visser have created a free book on the subject which you can download – Digital Engagement in Culture, Heritage and The Arts.
substrakt agency have launched Culture Fix. It’s for audiences to find all of the exciting digital content that cultural organisations produce in one place. And to support those organisations with donations if they choose to. For cultural organisations it is a way to reach new audiences with that digital content.
Tourism Strong is a pace for the tourism industry to come together and provide inspiration for one other, through positive messaging, community support, inspiration sharing, idea generation, and educational resources.
MARKETING
The Ultimate Guide to Doubling Your Visitor Numbers
Our free ebook will be available as a full download in the coming days, 10 chapters of digital strategies to get more guests through your door. Sign up now and we’ll get that out to you next week.
And yes, we know that right now that’s a slightly unfortunate title but, this isn’t going to last forever and attractions, museums, galleries etc are going to need support to get people back through the doors.
15 marketing tips for small and medium sized museums during the Covid-19 outbreak
Christina Lister has put together this great resource for smaller museums.
How to turn your Lookers into Bookers
Chris Torres from Tourism Marketing Agency is offering his brilliant book to download now for FREE.
NEW: Chris has also developed a free guide on how to market your tourism business during the coronavirus crisis. Download it here.
Andrew Cock-Starkey of Optimisey has compiled talks from 20 of the world’s top #SEO brains into chapterised sections. An entire SEO plan walk-through from the best in the business. Follow this link for the Twitter thread.
Arcade -augmented reality specialists, are offering free creative innovation workshop (over video call) to all visitor attraction, heritage site, retailer, brand or any other organisation wondering how technology might be able to help engage increasingly housebound audiences.
Ticketing specialist Spektrix have built a tool free-to-use for any not for profit arts/culture org, regardless of CRM system, in the US/Canada/Ireland/UK, to ask customers to convert tickets into donations and/or refund to credit.
The fab team that run The Marketing Meetup have taken all their events online, and launched a series of webinars…but not crap ones.
Think of these like talks, but online, with the world’s greatest speakers (no, seriously). We’ve lined up:
- Rand Fishkin (Founder of SparkToro and Moz),
- Dave Gerhardt (CMO of Privy, ex-Drift and my marketing hero),
- Margaret Molloy (CMO of Siegal+Gale and The Drum Marketer of the Year),
- Lisa Targett (General Manager of Tribe) and
- Jeremy Waite (Sustainability and Climate Leader at IBM)
Brilliant book you could purchase now: Your Museum Needs a Podcast: A Step-By-Step Guide to Podcasting on a Budget for Museums, History Organizations, and Cultural Nonprofits
Four types of digital experiences that museums can implement during this challenging time – via @Cuseum
How Can Museums Make Money Online – Great blog from MuseumNext
TRAINING
LinkedIn have made a number of their learning courses FREE. They focus on being productive while working from home, including tips on using virtual meeting tools to build relationships in a new working environment.
TedX is inviting you to use Skillshare Premium free for 2 months!
Remote Workmates has launched, online community of new and seasoned remote workers who support each other day to day, sharing advice, tips and resources to help each other adopt enjoyable remote work.
Aimed at children aged 6 to 14, the amazing team at Redgate will host free online workshops every Friday teaching the basics of computing. Details on what you need are in the blog but it is all free of charge.
TikTok for business Our good friends over at Sookio have lots of really great courses! From blogging for business and writing press releases, through Twitter strategy and TikTok for business… plus Skillshare Premium is free for 2 months!
Treasure Jam – a creative online jam primarily aimed at children (but anyone can get involved), and it runs until the end of July.
It encourages children, and anyone else who wants to get involved, to create something inspired by an object or work of art they’ve found in an online museum or gallery.
Participants can make whatever they want to, inspired by the museum object or work of art – a game, story, poetry, art, music, film, picture, or even a cat dressed up as Boudica, or a knitted velociraptor dinosaur, and upload them to the Treasure Jam page. If they can’t be uploaded (eg because it’s not physically possible to upload a 3D printed model of Mary Seacole, or a Victoria sponge cake in the shape of Queen Victoria!), they can upload images, videos and text to the Treasure Jam page instead to show others what they’ve created instead.
INDUSTRY NEWS
Blooloop are releasing weekly news bulletin of news from the attractions industry concerning the Coronavirus.
Good news – Theme parks reopen in China!
Brilliant article again from Blooloop on How museums are engaging with visitors during social distancing
More good news! Beijing Zoo and parts of the Great Wall reopened this week, but with advance reservations to limit visitor numbers.
PODCASTS
Has a superb new podcast with will keep you entertained.
Our podcast has 7 episodes all focused on the attractions sector, and more launching imminently.
The Arts and Everything In between
Special Episode – How the arts sector can get through the COVID-19 outbreak. Brought to you by Ticketsolve
MuseumNext have launched a new podcast – In the first episode of the MuseumNext Podcast, Jim speaks with the Executive Director of the Philbrook Museum of Art, Scott Stulen. They talk about how museums are responding to the COVID-19 crisis.
Official London Theatre has a great list of top theatre podcasts you should listen to right now.
ENTERTAINMENT
Stuck at home now? These 12 famous museums offer Virtual Tours you can take from your sofa
The Metropolitan Opera will be streaming encore presentations from the award-winning Live in HD series of cinema transmissions on its website amid COVID-19.
The National Trust are aiming to open many gardens and parks for free during this time so the nation can use open spaces to relax and refresh, while following the government’s social distancing guidance.
Tim, Head of Security at The National Cowboy Museum in Oklahoma is taking over their Twitter feed, and it’s genius.
MuseumNext have a great blog on how a handful of museums are delivering authentic and entertaining posts to bring smiles to a worried world. Museum Social Media Entertains During the COVID-19 Crisis.
Chris Packham has set up The Self Isolation Bird Club over on Twitter. Where we can share bird sightings , photos , videos etc. Enjoying nature as much as possible.
Chatter Pack have created a brilliant list of free, online, boredom-busting resources! Online virtual tours, music, geography and nature, arts, culture, online learning and more.
#HomemadeThemeParks – fans create favourite rides at home in this awesome blog from Blooloop.
Cultural Digital have a list of arts and culture organisations making streaming content – and it’s brilliant!
Harry Potter at Home has launched! You’ll find all the latest magical treats to keep you occupied – including special contributions from Bloomsbury and Scholastic, nifty magical craft videos, fun articles, quizzes, puzzles and plenty more for first-time readers, as well as those already familiar with the wizarding world.
FITNESS
Need to keep up an exercise routine – or start a new one – while working from home? Here’s a guide to the 10 best free online home workouts.
Author:
Kelly Molson Managing Director
Host of the popular Skip the Queue Podcast, for people working in or working with visitor attractions, she regularly delivers workshops and presentations on the sector at various national conferences and universities including The Visitor Attractions Conference, ASVA and Anglia Ruskin University.
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