Cheltenham Science Festival 2021 - Speaker Information Pack

2021 Speakers Information Pack

1

Operations Team 3/25/2021

2021 Science Festival Speaker Information Pack We are delighted that you can join us at Cheltenham Science Festival 2021. In order to operate safely and responsibly in the Covid-19 era, we have put safety measures in place and ask that you please read this document carefully.

A selection of events will be filmed for live broadcast online, and we will also be welcoming a reduced capacity live audience into our three venues - creating the ‘festival feel’ and audience interaction which we’ve all sorely missed.

BEFORE THE FESTIVAL We are asking everyone to check if they have Covid-19 symptoms before attending the Festival. By agreeing to attend you are confirming that you do not have any symptoms.

If you show any signs of Covid-19 closer to the Festival, please contact Joe Trigg immediately to discuss next steps. (joe.trigg@cheltenhamfestivals.com) FACE COVERINGS Please remember to bring a face covering with you to the Festival this year as you will be required to wear one within our venues. If you are travelling in a Festival car, face coverings will need to be worn for the duration of your journey in order to protect both yourself and the driver. We recognise that some people are exempt from wearing face coverings - please be patient with our staff if they remind you to wear one.

VIP ROOM We are asking all participants to arrive in the VIP Room no less than 90 minutes before the start of your event. This is important in order to reserve your essential sound check timeslot and keep us on track for the live stream schedule. You may be contacted to arrive earlier than this if your event has additional set up requirements.

The VIP Room will be located in the Cheltenham Town Hall and can be accessed directly through a side entrance door on Imperial Square (For any users of the mobile application ‘what3words’: what3words: pouch.rental.salads). We ask that you use this entrance rather

2

than the main public entrance in order to help us manage audience flow in and out of the building.

Upon your arrival in the VIP Room, the VIP Room Manager will ask you to log your contact details for NHS Test and Trace. This information will be stored in accordance with GDPR compliance and destroyed after 21 days.

Working closely with the Cheltenham Trust, we will provide a comfortable and quiet place for you to relax, meet your fellow participants and enjoy complimentary food & refreshments during your visit. To reduce single-use plastics on site, we ask you to consider bringing a water bottle with you. There will be water stations around the venues to refill your bottle during your visit.

You will be collected by a Cheltenham Festivals representative to be taken to your soundcheck.

The VIP Room capacity will be monitored throughout the Festival and is limited in accordance with socially distanced guidelines. Therefore, we are asking speakers to travel without guests or publicists to the Festival this year. Rest assured that you will be very well cared for by our experienced team.

Please note that we cannot allow dogs into the VIP Room unless they are guide dogs. If you are planning to bring a guide dog, please contact Joe Trigg so we can make appropriate arrangements (joe.trigg@cheltenhamfestivals.com).

PARKING Whilst there is no free parking at Cheltenham Town Hall, there are plenty of pay and display options nearby. For more information on parking in Cheltenham please see https://en.parkopedia.co.uk/.

If you have any access requirements, please log these in your Travel & Logistics Form which you can find a link to within your letter of agreement.

TRANSPORT If you have selected in your Travel and Logistics Form that you’d like to be collected from the train or coach station in a festival car, a member of our team will be in touch closer to the Festival to confirm details. In the meantime, we ask you to familiarise yourself with our Festival Car Policy below before you arrive in Cheltenham.

•

• •

Festival Car Policy Face coverings will need to be worn for the duration of your journey, from the station and back, in order to protect both yourself and the driver. We recognise that some people are exempt from wearing face coverings - please be patient with our drivers if they remind you to wear one.

Participants are encouraged to wear their own face coverings, though disposable masks will be provided if a participant has forgotten to bring their own. (Disposable masks must be disposed of once worn for 6 hours.)

Drivers and passengers will be asked to maintain a physical separation of at least 2 metres when meeting up and loading the vehicle. If possible, we ask that passengers carry and load their own luggage.

3

• • • • •

We ask that passengers sit in the rear-left hand seat of the vehicle in order to maximise separation distance from the driver.

Hand sanitisation and disinfectant wipes will be provided within each car.

Where possible we will be scheduling the same driver to collect you and return you from the festival.

Drivers will be encouraged to set the ventilation in the vehicle to ensure maximum exchange of fresh air is circulated throughout the vehicle.

Cars will be cleaned and sanitised between drives. There is a checklist that drivers are required to complete to ensure the car is comprehensively cleaned.

VENUE SPACES Festival events will be held in three socially distanced venues with capacities as follows: • Cheltenham Town Hall o Main Hall (capacity 216) o Pillar Room (capacity 49) • Imperial Gardens o Apollo (capacity 67) We are working closely with the Cheltenham Trust to ensure audiences are managed safely in and out of the venues in accordance with government guidelines.

Audiences will be wearing face coverings for the duration of their time in our venues and will be seated in a socially distanced configuration.

It will not be necessary for speakers to wear face coverings onstage during their events. Each stage will be configured to 1m+ social distancing.

All sound checks, distribution and handling and cleaning of headpieces and microphones will be carefully managed with Covid-19 safety measures agreed and approved by our external H&S consultant. All venue spaces will be cleaned in between events.

SOUND CHECK Sound check slots have been allocated for either a 40 minute or 1 hour duration depending on the content and digital requirements of your event. The timings of your specific sound check time(s) will be shown within your letter of agreement. Please note that sound check and door times across our venues vary, so please refer to your specific timetable.

EVENT FORMAT Events will run to 55 minutes (unless otherwise agreed), with roughly the last 10 minutes of this allowing for an audience Q&A. A countdown clock will be provided onstage in order to keep to time.

Audience Q&As will be facilitated through a platform called Slido. Members of the audience will be able to submit questions via their phones using a unique reference code shown on screen during the event. As the Town Hall (Main Hall & Pillar Room) content will be live streamed, questions in these venues will be taken from both the digital and live audiences. All questions will be collated onto a tablet and given to the chair by their event manager before the Q&A section starts.

4

A number of events will be live captioned for digital audiences. You will be notified by one of our festival team if your event has been chosen for live captioning.

Due to safety measures in place this year, it is important that no audience members are invited on stage during events.

SCREEN CONTENT / PRESENTATIONS All PowerPoint presentations should be provided in 16:9 format, and any videos need to be 1080p and .mov or .mp4 format.

Please ensure that you have the appropriate permissions/copyright in place to utilise within your event.

Please remember to bring a back-up copy of any presentation, video or music clips that you intend to use during your event. A USB memory stick will be adequate. If you have a presentation with a film or music clip embedded within it, it’s vital that the clip is also brought as a separate file on the same USB memory stick with you.

WATERSTONES The Science Festival enjoys the same relationship with our partner bookseller Waterstones as with the Literature Festival. Books will be stocked in our online bookshop which will go live when we announce our programme and run until September. Live audience members will be able to purchase festival books either on site or at the nearby Cheltenham Waterstones, and we’re working with the team at Waterstones to establish the scale of this offer.

DRESS CODE As we are filming events for live broadcast, we ask that participants avoid wearing stripes, as this can cause distortion when being relayed. Please also avoid large earrings as these can interfere with head microphones.

PR & PUBLICITY Our PR and Communications Manager Bairbre Lloyd manages the Festival’s PR. Bairbre Lloyd bairbre.lloyd@cheltenhamfestivals.com Mobile: 07729 396749 We expect the Festival to achieve widespread media coverage and would greatly appreciate your help with our campaign. If you have any press coverage already confirmed for the next few months, then please do let Bairbre know so that she can further promote the coverage.

If you have a website or blog then please include a reference to your event, with a link to cheltenhamfestivals.com/science. Please ensure that the details do not go live until after the embargo on our programme announcement is lifted at 6am on 23 April 2021.

SOCIAL MEDIA 5

Please help us to promote the Festival and your involvement in it on your social media channels. You also might find it useful to follow our social media accounts to share our content about the Festival. So that we can share and like your posts, please make sure to use #cheltscifest and tag us in using our social media handles – see below for details Platform Twitter Facebook Instagram YouTube LinkedIn

Platform Account Link twitter.com/cheltfestivals facebook.com/cheltenhamfestivals https://www.instagram.com/cheltfestivals/ youtube.com/cheltenhamfestivals linkedin.com/company/cheltenham-festivals

Handle @cheltfestivals @cheltenhamfestivals @cheltfestivals

Our Marketing Team will be in contact prior to the programme announcement to provide you with social media assets to share.

CODE OF CONDUCT Please take a few minutes to familiarise yourself with our Code of Conduct. All Festival participants - including co-creators, performers, speakers, partners, suppliers, staff, volunteers, patrons and the general public in attendance – are all expected to abide by it.

Our Festivals and events are dedicated to providing a safe and welcoming experience which is fair and enjoyable for everyone. We do not tolerate any behaviour which is discriminatory or makes someone feel threatened, intimidated, humiliated or otherwise violates their dignity.

Festival participants in breach of these rules may be sanctioned or expelled from the events without compensation at the discretion of the festival organisers.

Unacceptable Behaviours The following are examples of behaviours considered to be unacceptable within our community: • Any discriminatory language or gestures.

• Violence, threats of violence or violent language directed against another person.

• Posters, banners or other displays of materials which contain sexually explicit or violent images that are not in keeping with the event.

• Online social media postings which contain discriminatory material.

• Inappropriate photography or recording.

• Sexual harassment. To include sexualized comments, inappropriate touching, groping, and unwelcome sexual advances.

• Deliberate intimidation, stalking or following (online or in person).

• Possession of any weapons or illegal drugs at Festival venues or consuming alcohol which has not been supplied at authorised outlets on-site.

• Causing a sustained disruption of community events, including talks and presentations.

• Advocating for, or encouraging, any of the above behaviour.

Need help?

If you feel you are being subjected to inappropriate behaviours, you are worried about the safety of other festival attendees, or have any other concerns about your experience at Cheltenham Festivals events, please contact us: 6

On-site: Festival team members on-site can be identified as they’ll be wearing pink branded t-shirts or pink branded lanyards.

Email: peoplematters@cheltenhamfestivals.com Thank you for taking the time to read through this information. We look forward to welcoming you to a safe and enjoyable Festival in June.

7