How are you all doing and dealing with COVID-19?

For us at the CMHR, we have all been working from home since March 17th other than essential Museum staff to keep the building and artifacts safe.  I have never done so many conference calls in my life!  But am super thankful to still have a job...definitely a bit of pull and tug there (internally) around being disappointed in so many things being cancelled, but thankful I at least have a job.

We have no idea really when we will be opening again, other than, it is going to be a while.  Since we are all public servants, it adds a bit of a layer of complexity as, even if 'Manitoba' goes back to 'normal', we would still fall under the national scope of decision making...so who knows!! 

We are lucky that we aren't a theatre and didn't have to process tons of refunds, subscriptions, etc... However, we do have a large membership base and know that retaining that base once we are back open, extending memberships, convincing people to come back, etc... is going to be a big job/hurdle. We are slowly putting plans in place, but trying to not have anything too concrete and things keep changing.

In the meantime, we are trying to offer more and more digital content, including two new digital 'tours' that have been published online and received a great response.  Go take a look if you have some time :) I love sharing the Museum with others: https://humanrights.ca/visit/explore-the-museum-from-home

Would love to hear how others are doing with all of this :)

Hi Everyone,

What a great post idea, Derrek! There is a lot of US-focused stuff out there and things are different here in Canada. If there are any suggestions of what Tessitura can do to help that is unique to Canada, please let me know and I can pass the suggestions along to appropriate teams here at the Network. I'm always happy to help bring issues unique to Canada to light.

Take care of yourselves!

Jessica

Thanks Jessica! :)   I did notice that there aren't a whole lot of people in the TUG...so I do wonder if people even know it exists.  Maybe, at some point, if there is an email going out about Forums/Groups, it might be something to highlight.  (I will for sure highlight it at our next Winnipeg TUG meeting).

Thank you Derrek for starting this conversation!  I completely agree that it would be great to have a forum for us Canadians to chat about our industry and our challenges! 

Thanks for replying Tal!  If you are able to, once things settle down enough, help promote this existing Canadian TUG, it might be a good place to start :) 

Great idea.

We at Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall have been working from home since the week of March 16. We began rolling out show postponements that week and continue re-schedule our spring concerts to the fall. We closed our ticket line, initially fielding any refund requests via our "contact us" email but have since rolled out the TNEW return request feature with good success! I'm also working on a soft roll out for selling accessible seating online for those optimists out there who are buying tickets for our fall concerts.

My colleagues in Marketing, etc. are working on initiatives like promoting of digital content. For example, we have an archive of over 45 Live at Massey Hall performances (https://www.masseyhall.com/live-at-massey-hall/)

Like all other construction projects in Ontario the Massey Hall revitalization work was suspended when the province imposed further restriction to the list of essential services. 

I'll spread the word on this user group with my colleagues here. I wonder if there's an effective way to get the word out about the group to all the Canadian users on the network. 

Glad to hear that you are getting some new features rolled out and they they are working well!  I will have to go take a look at your TNEW site at some point, I always like seeing what others are doing with the product.

Totally agree that it would be brilliant if there was a way to 'target' all Canadian main organization contacts to let them know this group exists.  I think lots of people are trying to connect with others who 'get it'....especially as this situation continues to extend itself.

Hi Wes!  I can send an email to the SOTUG group to encourage them to join the Canada group as well. If there are other local Canadian TUG groups, perhaps we could send messages to each one and ask their members to make sure they're in too. That's probably a good start for increasing membership of this group.

Hello friends!

I just joined. I had no idea this TUG even existed! So thanks to Meredith for the message in the defunct Calgary TUG. 

We have been working from home since March 13th.  We cancelled our first show on the 12th (and subsequently canceled the rest of our season)  and have been slowly (oh, so slowly) contacting patrons to process ticket returns.  Right now, our Audience Services team (with some help from Development) are manually processing the returns.  It's kind of horrifying how something like this highlights the truck size holes in your processes. We had almost no cancellation strategy - at least nothing on this scale. :( 

I am trying to play catch up with the new cancellation tools that Tessitura and Wordfly have released. But I am down a team member (it's just me right now) so it makes for slow going.  Hoping to automate some of the return processes by the end of May.  We were also very, very close to announcing our 20-21 season and kicking off our subscription renewals campaign for the new season. Needless to say, the brakes have been slammed on that as we need to regroup and figure out what 20-21 might look like. We already did our subscription rollover, so I suspect after our returns are taken care of, I will be up to my eyeballs with seat releases and new season config.   It's great to be busy, but wow. :)  

As for our artistic endeavours, our Artistic and Marketing & Communication teams have started to roll out a little bit of digital content with more in the pipe. At least until we get a better sense of what the future holds.  We don't have a timeline for getting back into our theatre and back onstage, but my gut is telling me January 2021 at the earliest.   And even then, I suspect not to a full house and definitely with some social distancing and OHS processes in place.  So that may prove to be an interesting challenge.  

Hope you are all doing well!  Can't wait to share ideas - especially from a uniquely Canadian perspective! 

Kristine

Hi All! Thanks for this group! It's nice to be able to connect with all fellow Canadians! Here at Stratford, we've been working at home since March 16th. The majority of our staff were laid off at that time, with some having been brought back since. We only cancelled April & May at first, but just announced this week that we are suspending our entire 2020 season which was to have been a big one for us. We were supposed to open our brand new state of the art 600 seat Tom Patterson Theatre (named after our founder) on what would have been his 100th birthday. To say that our entire organization is saddened is putting it mildly.

However, we've pivoted and thankfully have leadership that decided many years ago to begin filming our Shakespeare productions so we've created a 12-week Film Festival that started last week with King Lear and Colm Feore. It was met with great success and our patrons are loving it! Our Artistic Director has created a theme for each 3 week group that plays into what we're going through currently. I welcome you to check it out at www.stratfordfestival.ca/athome.

I can't wait to have some time to check out your organization links below! Stay safe, friends!

Michele

Stratford Festival