Buildings FAQ — Open City

FAQs: Opening to the public for Open House 2020

We’re incredibly grateful to all the buildings that are opening their doors this year and ensuring that our festival is able to provide the memorable experiences and great hospitality that we are known for. Below are some commonly asked questions regarding opening your building to the public for Open House 2020.

How can I make sure I’m open safely?

The safety of our audience is vital to ensuring that Open House is able to run successfully. Before your submission is approved you will have to detail in your listing the steps you are taking We recommend taking the following steps to ensure that you conduct public visits in a safe and responsible manner.

If you would like visitors to wear face masks or covering make sure that this is stated in your building listing. Visitors will be asked to provide their own face masks and hand sanitiser but if may be a good idea to supply your own where possible.
Ensure that you take the details of anyone that visits an indoor space or takes part in a walking tour, information on what information to take and how long to keep it can be found below.
Schedule regular cleaning breaks during the day, close the building to visitors temporarily to do so if this is necessary.
Keep indoor areas as well ventilated as possible

When should my tickets be available from?

Pre-book tickets should go on sale on Wednesday 26th September at 10:00am.

How do I manage visitors/tickets?

If you are planning to manage attendance through pre-booking we strongly recommend doing so through a third-party website such as Eventbrite. Tickets will need to be monitored by buildings as the Open House team will be unable to help with any booking queries during the event. You should make sure that the link or information on how people can book is included in your listing under the ‘Booking’ section. If you have already submitted your listing then please email the link to openhouse@open-city.org.uk and we can add it for you.

There is a useful video on how to set up an event on Eventbrite here.

Tips for managing visits:

Use the reminder email setting on Eventbrite (or similar function if you are using another method) which will send a message to people that have booked a ticket the week before the event takes place. It should also prompt anyone who is no longer able to attend to return their ticket. Open House will regularly update our website and social media channels with the names of buildings who have tickets available.
We recommend slightly overselling tickets as it is unfortunately often the case that people will book for events and not show up. For example, if there are 10 spaces available make 15 tickets available for booking.
If you would like to offer tickets to people on the day you will need to collect the same information as pre-book visitors (name, address, and telephone number). You should make it clear to visitors that they are not guaranteed entry if they turn up on the day without booking.

What visitor information should I take?

For each group that visits you should collect their name, telephone number, and date and time of visit. Only one person per group needs to provide this information. You should keep this information for 21 days only in accordance with the current Test and Trace procedures. NHS Test and Trace will contact you if a person who has tested positive lists your premises as somewhere they have recently visited and may ask for the details of other visitors to contact them. We advise buildings read the government guidelines on Test and Trace here.

What if I need to change some information?

If you have already submitted your listing information please email us at openhouse@open-city.org.uk and we can amend the information for you. We will be stressing the fact that the listings are subject to change this year so don’t worry if you need to change something close to the event.