Planning and running your open day or event for Open House Festival 2025

This page will guide you through planning and running your open day or event for Open House Festival 2025

We have other resources to help you with completing the application process and deciding when to hold your open day or event, as well as a series of online contributor surgeries where there’s an opportunity to speak to a member of the festival team.

  1. Making your open day or event as accessible as possible

  2. Promoting your open day or event

  3. Using the dashboard to manage your open day or event

  4. Festival volunteers

  5. Preparing to welcome visitors

  6. If you need to reschedule or cancel

Making your open day or event as accessible as possible

We understand that not every open day or event can be made fully accessible to everyone. But here are some simple things that you can do to make your event as accessible as possible.

We ask all contributors to provide information about the accessibility of their space or event, including the facilities and adaptations that are available, during the application process. By providing full and accurate information on the ‘Access, transport and facilities’ page of the application form, you will help all visitors to make informed decisions about where they would like to go and what they would like to do during the festival. If all contributors do this, it will help us to avoid situations where visitors arrive at an open day or event to find that it is not accessible to them.

Provide accurate information

If you’re opening a building, can you welcome visitors at the door then let them look around at their own pace? This can help make your open day more accessible to some people, as not everyone is able to join a tour. Even if you do decide to run some tours or other activities, can you still make space for those who would prefer to explore on their own?

Let visitors explore

Some neurodivergent visitors might find it difficult to queue. Please be open to requests from visitors to skip the queue on this basis and try to accommodate them if you can.

Remember, not everyone can queue

Think about where activities will take place

If you’re running activities such as workshops or guided tours of a building, can you locate them in spaces that have step-free access and are suitable for mobility devices? If you’re running more than one guided tour, could you run at least one version of the tour in spaces that are more physically accessible? Can you locate activities close to accessible toilets? If you’re giving a talk or presentation, is this activity taking place in a well-lit area? Are you able to avoid loud and/or echoey spaces?

BSL interpreter or deaf-lef tours

This year, we’re introducing a system for deaf visitors to contact us and request a BSL interpreter. If a visitor requests to attend your open day or event with a BSL interpreter, we’ll let you know in advance.

If you have the capacity to run tours or other activities that are either deaf-led or that have a BSL interpreter present, we encourage you to do so. If you would like any guidance, including on how to book a BSL interpreter, please contact us at access@open-city.org.uk.

If you are running deaf-led activities or activities with a BSL interpreter present, it’s important that you reach members of the deaf community. Please contact us at access@open-city.org.uk, so that we can offer additional marketing support for these accessible activities.

Are you able to provide seating for those who might want it? If you expect visitors to have to queue outside, are you able to provide some seating there?

Provide seating

Clear signage

Clear signage, in particular of toilets and exits, can help everyone feel more comfortable in the space.

A ‘quieter space’ is a room that’s made available for any visitors who might need to spend some time in a less stimulating environment. If you’re able to designate a room as a quieter space, make sure it’s as comfortable as possible, that no activities are due to take place in it, and that it’s clearly signposted.

Quieter spaces

Things to consider when planning walking tours (including tours that are accessible to people who use mobility devices)

  • Are start and finish points close to accessible transport links?

  • Could you plan a circular route (i.e. starting and ending at the same point) to make travel to and from more straightforward?

  • Could you plan a step-free route suitable for mobility devices?

  • Are there opportunities for people to sit down at points during the tour? Have you indicated this when filling in the application form?

  • Are there accessible toilets along the route? If so, have you used the application form to specify where on the route, to help visitors plan?

  • Are you able to provide full details of the route, via the application form, to help visitors plan?

  • Shorter tours (1 hour) will be accessible to a wider range of visitors

Promoting your open day or event

Promotion guidelines

Full guidelines for promoting your open day or event are available on our website.

The official hashtag for the Open House Festival across Instagram, Tiktok, Facebook and Bluesky is #OpenHouseFestival. Please include this hashtag on all social media posts related to the Open House Festival.

The festival does not have its own Instagram or Tiktok but you can tag its parent charity, Open City, on the handle @opencity_uk.

Social media handles

Our website

When promoting your open day or event, please direct visitors to the Open House Festival website and encourage them to use it. Even if you’re running exclusively drop-in activities, please ask visitors to click the ‘add to my itinerary’ button on your listing. You’ll then have a list of people who are expecting to attend which can be accessed from your dashboard (see section below), which means you can contact them if you have any information to share or if your plans change.

Using the dashboard to manage your open day or event

You can find names and contact details for everyone who’s booked onto a ticketed activity and/or added a drop-in activity to their itinerary on your dashboard, in case you need to contact them in advance of your open day or event. Just click on the ‘attendees’ button under each listing. Please note, this button will only become visible after your listing has been approved and the programme has gone live.

If you have essential information to share, such as clothing requirements, you should contact visitors in advance, even if the essential information is included in your online listing.

Please take care with visitors’ personal data. When emailing, always do so individually or using BCC.

Please only contact visitors regarding your Open House Festival activities.

Festival volunteers

What do volunteers do?

Open House Festival volunteers are architecture enthusiasts committed to our mission of opening up and celebrating London’s buildings and neighbourhoods. They give their time and effort for free, in many cases year-on-year, because they want to help you share your building or neighbourhood with other Londoners.

Stewards

You can request volunteers to help with tasks such as marshalling visitors, checking off names of people who have booked, signposting visitors around the building, answering any practical questions visitors might have (e.g. opening times, accessibility, toilets etc.) and other practical support on the day. These volunteers are known as stewards.

Guides

You can also request volunteers who will give informal tours of your building, or who will be able to give information and answer visitors’ questions about the architecture, function and history of your building. These volunteers are known as guides.

This resources page for festival volunteers contains some more information that you might find useful.

Do I need volunteers?

It doesn’t matter how big or small your event is, any contributor can request volunteers. But we ask that you think carefully about what volunteer support you might need and plan beforehand.

If you’re opening your home for the festival, you might find it useful to have a volunteer help you with welcoming visitors at the door while you show them around inside. If you’re running a walking tour and would like support with checking off names and marshalling the group, you can ask for a volunteer to help you with that. If you’re opening a large building, you might want to have a number of volunteers spread out across it, to help with wayfinding and to answer visitors’ questions. If you’re expecting to have a large queue of visitors outside your building, one or more volunteers could help you to manage that.

It might be that you decide you don’t need volunteer support. For example, if you’re opening a building that you work in and are expecting lots of other staff to be present on the day, you probably won’t need additional support from volunteers.

Whatever you decide, please try to have a clear idea of what it is you’re going to ask the volunteers to do, as it can be disheartening for volunteers to turn up and find they’re not needed.

How do I request volunteers?

You can request volunteers through your application form.

Volunteers choose which open day or event they’d like to volunteer at. We never allocate volunteers directly. Please note that, although we try our best to provide volunteers for every contributor who has requested them, we can never guarantee volunteers for every event or open day. Please have a plan B in mind for if you don’t get some or all of the volunteers you request.

Contacting your volunteers

You’ll be able to find names and contact details for everyone who’s signed up to volunteer with you on your dashboard. Just click on the ‘volunteer slots’ button under the relevant listing. Please note, this button will only become visible after your listing has been approved and the programme has gone live.

We ask that you get in touch with your volunteers to confirm details like date and time, and to pass on any key pieces of information they might need on the day, such as who to ask for when arriving on site. Even if you feel you don’t have any additional information to share with them, we find that volunteers appreciate and are reassured by an email from the person running their event, so please make sure you contact them.

It’s particularly important to contact volunteers beforehand if you’ve requested guides (as opposed to stewards, see the section on festival volunteers above). They will need to do some preparation, so that they can speak about your building with knowledge and confidence. Please share any information or resources you can.

Here’s the kind of information you might want to share with volunteers:

  • Confirm the date and time of their slot

  • Let them know where they should meet you, if not clear from your address, e.g. if there’s an alternative entrance they should use

  • Tell them who they should ask for, if someone other than you will be meeting them

  • Give them a summary of the day and what you’ll be asking them to do, e.g. greeting visitors, marshalling queues

  • Provide access information. Will they need to use stairs to enter and/or move around the building? Will there be an option to sit down while volunteering? Will there be scheduled breaks for volunteers?

  • Let them know if there are any special requirements, e.g. wearing closed-toed shoes because they’ll be on a building site

  • Tell them one or two things about the building - e.g. the name of the architect, a brief summary of its history - to help them feel equipped to answer simple questions

  • If you’re contacting a guide, let them have some more detailed information about the building so that they can prepare properly

Please only contact volunteers regarding your Open House Festival activities.

Preparing to welcome visitors

Open House Festival visitors are typically enthusiasts, but not specialists or experts. Visitors tell us that their primary motivation for attending the festival is to learn something new and to experience something out of the ordinary. Here are some things you can do to help you get the most out of interacting with visitors to your building.

Get ready to actively welcome visitors into the space

Be prepared to greet visitors at the entrance and introduce yourself. Tell them about your relationship to the building. This will help visitors to feel at ease, making them more likely to fully explore the space and ask any questions they might have.

Decide beforehand what you’d like to tell visitors about the space

Think of three (or more) interesting things about the space from the point of view of someone who knows it well and uses it regularly. For example, what are some of the things you most enjoy about living in, working in or using this building? What are some of the challenges? What have you learned about the building by spending time in it? You might also want to prepare some questions to ask visitors, as a way to prompt discussion. For example, ‘Have you noticed the shape of these windows and how that affects the light in the room?’ ‘What do you think of the materials that have been used?’ ‘Is this what you expected the inside of the building to look like?’

You don’t have to share the answers to these questions with everyone who comes to your open day, but doing some thinking in advance will help you prepare for conversations with visitors.

Do some research, if you can

If you know, or can find out, a lot about the history of the building, that’s great. Things like who built it and when; its architectural, social and cultural significance; how the building fits into the wider urban ecosystem; what it’s been used for in the past and how that use might have changed over time. This is all information that can help visitors to appreciate, understand and learn from a space.

But don’t worry if you can’t find that kind of thing out. Visitors really value hearing from someone who knows a space well and uses it regularly. Sharing your experience of a building will be enough to bring it alive for visitors.

Make sure you’ve read our community guidelines

The Open House Festival community guidelines, which are on the ‘Revise & submit’ page of the application form, give essential information on how all contributors to the festival are expected to conduct themselves and their events. We ask that all contributors familiarise themselves with these guidelines before taking part in the festival.

Use your contributor pack

If you’re planning to open a building, and you complete your application by the 1 July deadline, we’ll send you a contributor pack in the post. The pack will include a branded flag; please hang this outside your building to help visitors find you. We’ll also provide A2 and A4 posters, to help with wayfinding, and sheets of stickers for volunteers to wear, so they can be easily identified by visitors.

We’ll also be offering large banners for outdoor use. You’ll have an opportunity to request one of these closer to the festival.

Be prepared to give volunteers priority access to drop-in activities

We ask that, where possible, you give volunteers from other open days and events priority access to drop-in activities. This means allowing them to skip any queues. Volunteers will be able to show you a copy of their volunteer slot confirmation email, or their volunteer sticker, to prove that they have or will be volunteering elsewhere.

We don’t expect you to give volunteers priority access to ticketed activities.

If you need to reschedule or cancel

Before the festival programme goes live on 20 August, you can easily reschedule or cancel individual events via the application form, which you can access from your dashboard. Just go to the ‘Activities’ page of the form and make any changes you need to.

Please avoid rescheduling or cancelling individual activities after 20 August, as visitors might have booked places/be planning to attend. If you do need to reschedule after 20 August, you’ll have to cancel the activity and set up a new one via the application form. As a courtesy, please email anyone who has booked or added your activity to their itinerary (contact details accessible via your dashboard, see above) to let them know of the changes.

If you need to withdraw your listing from the festival entirely, you can do that by going to your dashboard and clicking the ‘withdraw’ button for the relevant listing.

Withdrawing from the festival

What do I do if I can’t find the answer to my question here?

Email openhouse@open-city.org.uk and a member of the team will get back to you.