This is a recorded session from the 2024 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo. Diversity, equity, inclusion, and access – these core values are central to museum standards of excellence yet are not always easy to uphold in an increasingly politicized climate that is often hostile to LGBTQIA+ communities. How can museums continue to safely offer queer-centric exhibitions and events? Join Drag Story Hour leadership and the AAM Task Force for Transgender Inclusion in a workshop exploring safety and security practices around LGBTQIA+ programming. This workshop will empower museum professionals to serve in their roles as cultural stewards and defenders of pluralist ideals with confidence!

Additional resources:

Shields Up! Safety, Security, and Inclusion for LGBTQ+ Programming slides

Transcript

Tony Pankuch: All right thank you all so much for coming out to our session Shields up inclusive Safety and Security for  LGBTQ+ programming. we’re going to start off with some introductions and then dive into the content. so to start, my name is Tony Pankuch oh I need to actually there we go…My name is Tony Pankuch. My pronouns are they/them. I am the education and outreach coordinator at the Cummings Center for the History of Psychology in Akron, Ohio. I also Co co-chair and have co-chaired for the past two and a half years, the AAM task force for transgender inclusion. We create resources to promote trans inclusion in museums and cultural heritage institutions. Most recently we published Interpreting Transgender Stories which is focused on sort of how to go about interpreting trans history in museums and other institutions. I have my masters in library and information science from Kent State University and in my spare time I am a cat parent, a very huge John Waters fan and a hiking enthusiast.

Samantha Evelyn Eisenberg: Hi everybody thank you so much for being here my name is Samantha Eisenberg I use the pronouns she/her and hers I’m the director of development at JQ International and I’ve been serving on the task force with Tony for about 2 and a half years. I was a museum professional for a long-time doing DEI work, fund development, community building… I also sit on the committee for the Circle One Archive History Festival in Los Angeles. I have my MA in social sciences from UC Irvine in 2018 and yeah, I’m a big Community organizer in Los Angeles. So, thank you so much for being here.

Regan Lopez-deVictoria: I have my own microphone. My name’s Regan Lopez-deVictoria she/her. I am the program coordinator and grant writer at Drag Story Hour. I’ve been with the org for about 2 years I am an MLIS degreed librarian, go Huskies. I guess. I come to this work from a little bit of a non-traditional place and that I of course started in the theater and yeah that’s right then I became a librarian because that sounds normal and then took some time off to raise some kids. So, I’m back working with Drag Story Hour which is the perfect place for me and yeah happy to be here presenting with my colleagues.

Jonathan Hamilt: Good morning everyone. I’m Jonathan he/him. I’m with Drag Story Hour. I’ve been with the org for nine years now. I’m also a drag queen Ona Louise. She did not come today. I co-founded our New York City chapter in 2016 and then I was the first executive director of Drag Story Hour National and now I’ve taken a break and I’m just communications director keeping it cute. Yeah, and I was the first drag queen to read at the Metropolitan Museum which is really cool so gay rights.

Samantha Evelyn Eisenberg: So, thank you all so much for being here just a little context setting why are we doing this session. I think a lot of people in the room are feeling the why but in April 2023 GLADD identified 161 incidents of anti- LGBTQ+ protests and threats targeting drag events since early 2022. That’s just like a couple years. Just this past January GLADD and the ADL recorded over 700 incidents of violence and threats targeting LGBT people in 2023 and anti- LGBT threats and protests target bookstores, libraries, community centers, and yes even museums, I know we’ve all seen it in the press. So here are some real-world examples. We’ve got Reverend Yolanda at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan showing how engaging and exciting and thrilling these events are and all of these horrible headlines about backlash and protest and controversy around that so that’s what we’re here to address today. We’ve also got this great picture, Cholula Lemon at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum just to highlight what we’re doing. And I did also want to mention…we passed out a few of these handouts earlier these really encompass a lot of the main points we’re talking about. But with the Trans inclusion committee we’ve been working on a guide to talk about a lot of the things that we’re going to address and we really encourage you to link up with us to get that full guide when it will be released in a couple months. So. I’m going to let Tony talk a little bit about our session format.

Tony Pankuch: Thank you, Samantha. So our session format is going to be broken up into a bit of a panel and then a workshop. We’re going to spend about 30 minutes talking about preventative measures, addressing backlash when it happens, and then just creating safer events. After that we’re going to have a workshop we’re going to the best of our ability with this room format break y’all up into groups and have you working through some hypothetical scenarios. And then we’ll have Q&A at the end. I do want to preface as well we’re this is as you probably are guessing already a heavy topic and a heavy session. We are going to be giving you a lot of advice and individual small things you can do. This advice is not meant to scare, intimidate, or dissuade you from carrying out  LGBTQ+ programming, exhibits or initiatives. As public facing institution you should be really for any program keeping all of these things in mind. There are a lot of controversies happening right now around inclusive history broadly even beyond the LGBTQ+ community. And we’re not saying you have to do all of this stuff for every event but we want to empower you all with a broad sort of swath of information and we hope that you’ll leave this session empowered to champion LGBTQ+ inclusion regardless of any anticipated backlash. And to have at least one sort of new actionable idea that you can use to improve the safety and security at your institution.

So, I’m going to jump back to Samantha here who’s going to talk about preventative measures in the internal landscape.

Samantha Evelyn Eisenberg: Thank you, Tony. So me and Tony you’re going to bounce back and forth a little bit talking about a lot of things that you can do to address this issue and then we have a great the great Shields Up model from our colleagues at drag queen Story Hour that we’re really going to dive into. But we’re just going to go back and forth and talk about some other things Beyond outside and within the moment itself the event itself. So, the first thing we want to talk about is just assessing the internal landscape of your institution. Look at your values understand your vulnerabilities review your policies and your practices. A lot of Institutions came out with DEI statements in the last several years. Look at stated and unstated values. Review mission statements what’s included, what isn’t. Get a pulse check from board, staff, volunteers. Some of your organizations have Affinity groups or ergs or things like that. How do people react. If you encounter discomfort or hesitation or outright opposition at any level of your team maybe you’ve tried to roll out pronouns or gender neutral bathrooms and that might be a good you know tap people with institutional knowledge ask them how that went. And connect with your DEI Mission values and Implement  LGBTQ+ inclusion trainings and workshops as a part of that process you can work with your HR team.

Also understand your vulnerabilities you can look at your donors and your funding sources. Do they have a history of anti- LGBT rhetoric has there been protests in the past can you do some Google searches around you know a corporation or a foundation that might show up on your website. What’s your backup plan if you alienate some donors? Talk to your development team. And do you know how you’re going to communicate if you get any questions or criticism of your programming. Again, like Tony said like we’re not trying to dissuade you here or anything but this is all just things that you can keep in your mind so that you know what’s coming and you can anticipate challenges. And then you know review your policies your institution should have basic security, safety emergency policies. AAM provides great resources on all of these things or how to develop them at your institution if you don’t have them between visitor behavior and norms things about large bags rude Behavior recording. Make sure they’re visible you know the authority of the sign. And everything and ensure that your front-facing staff are trained.

The next thing is to kind of look at your local climate in your in your area where you’re at. Assess the you know identify existing allies build new relationships. If you have press contacts reach out to them and just be friendly with them. Make sure that they’re on your side build relationships with LGBT organizations you can go on Google. Instagram is a you know the Instagram search bar is a great place to find local LGBT organizations in your area. The law enforcement, I know is a really challenging entity for a lot of us to interact with, there’s a lot of history of distrust with law enforcement. But sometimes they’ll have LGBTQ liaisons or something like that. They can warn you about hostile groups or upcoming events. Yeah and you know just monitor social media and keep an eye out for threats and things like that. Tony, am I missing anything.

Regan Lopez-deVictoria: Could I pop in and say. There’s a few great resources specific to supremacist groups and organized hate groups I would recommend taking a look at Southern Poverty Law center’s resources to determine they’ll really give you the ability to like zoom in right on your ZIP code. So, you can see the active hate groups that have been identified as such and are active in your area. That’s a super helpful place to start.

Tony Pankuch: And then the one other thing I would say is just you know use your best judgment especially when you’re thinking about sort of security in terms of are you going to work with law enforcement, are you going to hire a private security firm security firm. You know talk to the people in your community build those relationships understand what the relationship is between LGBTQ+ orgs in your community and local law enforcement. Maybe there a security firm that a lot of  LGBTQ+ orgs work with. That’s where having those existing relationships can be really beneficial to help you make those difficult decisions.

So, moving now to sort of the digital landscape of all this because when we talk about preventative measures a lot of this stuff really begins online now. I’m going to preface by saying I’m not an expert in digital security if you have a dedicated it department or specialist you want to keep them in the loop early when it comes to potential backlash and any safety or security concerns. If you don’t have a dedicated IT person or Department there are plenty of IT consulting firms and organizations that can help out with your institution’s individual needs. Tech soup for example provides discounted IT services for nonprofit organizations. There there’s also access now which is a bit more focused on sort of activist organizations but they have a lot of resources for digital security that are relevant to nonprofits. So that’s Accessnow all one word but regardless of your it resources there are some sort of broad suggestions that we want you to keep in mind.

So, consider for example reviewing your digital footprint look at your website are specific staff names and contact info posted on your website. And if you are anticipating or actively starting to experience backlash you might consider replacing that with departmental email addresses or sort of a boilerplate comment form that can help people sort of avoid getting that individualized targeting.

You also want to review your privacy settings on institutional accounts and make sure no one’s personal information is visible. I’ve worked with some institutions that have a habit of like tagging people’s personal accounts when they’re posting about their staff members don’t do that. Don’t tag the personal accounts of your team, that’s extremely unsafe if you’re in a situation where people are trying to target your institution. And also turn on Google alerts for your institution’s name address if there’s a common nickname for your institution like in Ohio we have the Wexner Center for the Arts better known as the Wex turn on those alerts and make sure you are aware of where your institution is popping up online. That can help you again to detect those threats ahead of time.

Also, event registration a lot of us use online registration for our events, particularly free events. Really requiring registration to get in the door of your event is a major barrier to kind of bad actors it’s a good way to keep your event safer right from the get-go. Again, very simple thing you can Implement and online registration is great particularly for free events. But that being said it does sometimes provide a level of anonymity anyone can go fill out that form you don’t really know who it is. If you are worried about Safety and Security your event. A simple barrier you can do is just require registration by phone or an in-person box office. That simple addition of human interaction is so useful to dissuade some bad actors like. That will keep people from making that step you know you can have that not quite a vetting process necessarily, but you can talk to someone on the phone and get more of an idea of kind of where they’re coming from for your event.

And of course, just managing your social media carefully you know we should all be having detailed social media management policies. You’re going to want to limit access to your institutional social media accounts to approved trusted and trained members of your team. Again, don’t tag personal accounts and you’re going to want to implement policies if you have an already governing tone and voice. When to respond to comments or messages and how to address criticism which we’re going to get into here on the next slide.

Oh no actually slide after this my bad so continuing to the digital landscape some of that data security stuff you know. Protecting your passwords nowadays just having a password is really not as safe as it used to be. You want to implement unique passwords in every institutional account that you have use a password manager Bit Warden is a great example of this to secure and encrypt your passwords. Two Factor authentication is now the standard for most things. If you have not implemented that for all of your institutional logins, you really should be doing that. That’s just a very basic data security minimum you might also consider downloading or installing a VPN or Virtual Private Network this is particularly important if your employees work remote in public spaces like for example coffee shops or convention centers. VPNs basically encrypt data and shield your IP address on whatever device you’re using allowing you to safely transmit data over public Wi-Fi networks. Not all VPN are the same like nordvpn is more of a sort of public consumer VPN but there are a lot of other organizations like tail scale or Cisco that are business scale vpns that can be implemented for your entire institution. They’re fairly reasonably priced for the most part and in lieu of a VPN you can also use you know secure and encrypted messaging services with your team online. Signal is a free communication app and also a lot of the apps that are actually all the apps that are baked into the Microsoft 365 suite are going to be encrypting your messages. So, make sure that your Communications are limited to those secure platforms.

And lastly just empower your team you know if you can provide data security training around issues like fishing password protection data storage and online privacy. Making sure you’re proactive in providing your team with access to that is really helpful. Vulnerable employees might be targeted if the institution itself is not targeted. So again, like protecting the individuals in your team and making sure they have the tools to protect themselves.

Accessnow has a great self-doxing guide. Doxing is the process of finding a person’s personal information online and they actually have a process that you can kind of do that for yourself and understand like where your information is online. So if you look up access now self-doxing guide you can explore that. And you might also provide access to employee identity monitoring services like delete me for example that can help to secure personal information online.

Moving forward once you do receive backlash, let’s say you’ve announced your event and comments are flowing in here are some tools to respond to that and deal with that. First off, you’re going to want to assess the actual threat Level of the messages. You know you need to be able to distinguish clearly between critical comments outright hate speech and threatening messages. Where precisely your institutional policy draws these lines is going to depend a little bit based on the institution. But in general you want to have policies in place for each type of message. So, for example criticism May warrant a response if it’s a constructive you know thoughtful critic criticism on a post. But you know always if you respond from an Institutional account be thoughtful do not escalate. Hate speech you know that’s more likely to be reported deleted to whatever social media Network you’re on. And if you’re receiving active threats to your institution’s safety the safety of your staff your volunteers that’s going to require a more serious response which I will get into in just a moment.

But as an overall thing when you’re managing online Communications engage in conversations but never arguments. Do not try and debate or humor hateful comments. Do not think that you’re going to like prove someone wrong with your snappy reply in the comments. It is really best to not engage with these messages and really kind of at most allow them to sit there or report or hide the messages. And make sure that these communication policies are accessible to everyone in your institution. And that they are followed consistently. If someone has access to your social media account, they need to be trained on what the tone the voice and the policies and behaviors of your social media is.

Regardless of the severity of any backlash you want to document, document, document. This can help you spot worrying Trends make inform decisions and understand your audience if you don’t already have a spreadsheet of like online messages and comments and interactions that your institution has. This is actually a really good practice not even just for backlash but for positive comments as well keep track of who your biggest supporters are on social media. Keep track of what’s working, what’s not working. And again do not escalate no matter how tempting it may be to try and educate someone in the comment section, generally speaking you should not be engaging with hateful comments. You should not be trying to debate or argue. And again consistently follow those policies so now I’m going to pass to oh actually I have one more slide my bad. So, when you oh that is you okay that’s you okay

Samantha Evelyn Eisenberg: Yeah. Thank you so much Tony for everything about the online security. And you named doxing is a real threat there are very real threats. And I know that that this feels like a lot of like you know VPN passwords but these are about monitoring the landscape and being aware of things before they happen so that you can come up with a plan and be ready to go. Documenting things are super important and they’re really going to help in the fall follow up.

So, when you are threatened you have your drag queen Story Hour. You post it online you have registrations. You’ve received hateful comments do not ignore the threats. I know it’s super kind of it can be scary to read that or to see that or to hear that and you kind of want to just go into this maybe they’re not serious or maybe that didn’t really happen, but it’s important to follow up. When comments cross the line to be threatening to your institution your staff your visitors anybody it’s important to take action. Report these to your team leaders report it up the line of management if you have systems for reporting this. I work in Jewish nonprofits and we have systems to report to the ADL, to law enforcement to Jewish federations. You know talk to your HR and your team about how to appropriately report that. Do not engage with threats as Tony said, document them in detail. We are really emphasize you know museums as civic civil institutions so don’t engage in those hateful comments don’t let the public see that you are going to get boiled down in that. You know take the high road there notify relevant staff and volunteers of all threats. It may be really tempting to keep it to yourself or Hush Hush with the leadership team. But it’s important that people are prepared and briefed and ready for their emotional well-being as well as their physical well-being.

Empower your team members to take action to protect themselves. A lot of the digital security stuff Tony just touched on these are measures that everybody can take about protecting their identities and their passwords and their social media Footprints. And collaborate with your team it’s ultimately up to you to…Oh sorry.

Yeah, always include your team in the decision-making process if the majority of your team don’t feel safe pulling off an event just be mindful of their wishes and what they have to say. And if people don’t feel safe you know empower them to take the day off. Empower them to do what they need to do a lot of times team members are passionate about their project and determined to see it happen, so work with your people.

As we go into this and I’m just going to kind of talk about this briefly because we’re really going to dive into it in the workshop but know your layout when you know you’ve received threats that’s when it’s time to come up with a plan. You should have these plans either way. Review your floor plan ensure their clean and secure paths from the parking lot to the event space. Plan and document evacuation routes if opposition arrives to protest to disrupt the event, where will they go how will you create space between attendees and oppositions. How will you secure enters and exits. Are there you know auditory barriers we’re going to talk about assigning roles in the Shields Up program. But think about entrances and exits, and as Tony touched on, track attendance you know get people’s information make sure that there’s like a screening protocol that really helps dissuade bad actors.

Yeah, and then the last thing is just securing your event. So, work with your security team if you have in-house folks if you have relationships with law enforcement or a private security team make sure everyone’s coordinated. Monitor your security cameras. You should have folks that are working on this but assign staff and volunteers to kind of like monitor. A lot of folks have walkie-talkie systems. It can be helpful to have codes just to communicate if there’s something funky or if you need backup or if somebody should come. And of course the last thing is to implement child Safeguard policies.

It’s always important regardless of your institution even if you’re not a children’s museum. Understand the needs of your families your underage visitors. And just stressing again museums is a s of civic and civil engagement and that we really don’t want to allow this kind of behavior or activity in the presence of our young visitors and our families. And that’s why we really emphasize de-escalation in these contexts.

So again we have deescalate, deescalate, deescalate again and again they’re going to talk about it so much. And just create a welcoming environment Tony will talk more about that. But as I mentioned on the handout we’re working on a guide with a lot more in-depth information about coming up with these plans and protocols so please take our contact information at the end to get all of that after.

Tony Pankuch: All right so that being said no one wants to cancel an event due to opposition, harassment, or threats but sometimes this does become necessary. For the safety of your team and for the safety of your visitors. So, if you do have to cancel your event notify registrant immediately and your, if your institution has been threatened in any way you need to allow registrant to create space between themselves and avoid walking into a potentially dangerous situation.

And really you need to be firm in your values you know it is understandable to cancel an event if you have received a bomb threat, if you’re fearing for the safety of that event, but that does not have to mean surrendering or giving into opposition. If you’re writing public communications which you should be if you cancel an event. Write those communications with your supporters in mind do not direct your messaging at the people that shut down your event. Focus on communicating to the people who wanted to be there who wanted to support you. And really focus on sort of asking yourself what can we do. Maybe this event didn’t work out maybe you cannot do the Drag Story Hour event that you wanted to do. But consider smaller events online events online exhibits private or invite only events, smaller and initiatives if you have to take baby steps that is okay. The important thing is that you stand by your values and you stand by LGBTQ+ people. If you can’t do this work with your team and figure out what you can do. Remain empowered in spite of opposition.

And then one more thing before we kind of get into the Shields Up program is just after an event or after cancelling an event. Regardless of whether it got cancelled went fantastically or had major issues debrief with your team debrief with all relevant members of your team. Frontline staff, organizers the partners that you worked with for the event and allow people to discuss what made them feel uncomfortable or unsafe. You know anonymous staff surveys might be helpful here in order to get that sort of open sharing. And really focus on supporting your team’s mental health. Especially for LGBTQ+ members of your team. Having an LGBTQ event threatened cancelled protested can be really traumatic. Have resources to sort of implement trauma informed care within your institution. Create spaces for private or group discussions and be flexible with time off and schedule changes in the aftermath of something like this.

And really ensure that your team, this goes for any institution, ensure that your team has access to mental health resources so for example you know making sure that your health insurance plans do cover mental health care. Providing resources lists of inclusive counseling or therapy services in your area that you can share with your team. If this is not something that you necessarily think of as being in your budget we actually talked to one organization that was able to successfully fund raise specifically for mental health resources for their team after a few of these they counted a few protests. So really consider this as a priority and really kind of put your money where your mouth is in terms of supporting your team. And lastly just continue to learn, adapt and again keep up the work it’s important and no matter how much opposition you face LGBTQ+ inclusion is the right thing to do period. I can say that AAM has said that in numerous policies. If you’re here that should be a pretty Universal belief I think. So, keep up with the good work and on that note I’m actually going to pass it over to Regan and Jonathan who are going to talk a little bit more about the Shields Up program.

Regan Lopez-deVictoria: I’m actually going to come out front cuz I can’t see all y’all cute and oh yeah there’s my there’s my slide so hi Regan from Drag Story Hour. Right Drag Story Hour it is just what it sounds like it’s drag storytellers coming out to do a storytime event. Which is a classic format that’s been around documented in public libraries since the early 1900s. So, story time is a wonderful format that has we’ve seen in schools and libraries and all sorts of wonderful variations firefighter story hour. Veterinarian Story Hour. And we have Drag story hour and it’s really important and I could talk about four hours about that so you know catch me outside. But I wanted to give a little context to what drag story actually is before I dive into what Shields Up is.

So, Shields Up is our organizational response to a rapid escalation in not just the number of occurrences of opposition groups gathering outside of Drag Story Hour events but escalation also in terms of technique and hostility and what we really see as it can be a bit of a hot bed for potential violent acts. So, trying to get ahead of this work outside with a positive more organized way to address what’s happening outside of our events in the name of safety for our storytellers and our audiences. So oh I think these might be old slides but that’s okay.

There’s a safety ecosystem that I’m hoping my really pretty slides later will illustrate for you but essentially what we noticed the need was there’s a lot, right, there’s like a lot. Like thinking about security for an event, is a lot. And we wanted to make it easier to digest. We wanted to make it really personable. We want people to really embrace the roles that they have while they’re thinking about safety. And obviously we wanted to make it really cute. So that Shields Up in a nutshell, and oh thanks Jonathan, here are the guiding principles of shields up the first one is the big one deescalation, deescalation, deescalation, deescalation. What’s that mean? It means that when we have Shields Up outside of an event we do not engage with opposition. We don’t talk to them. We don’t look at them. We don’t shout at them. We do not counter them. We create distance between our storytellers and our audience members and the opposition. That is our job it Shields Up. We’re just creating a path so our storytellers and audiences can come in and out of the bubble safely and we create a shield to maintain that distance. So, this is not the opportunity to engage the opposition. This is an opportunity to focus on our event programming and keeping it fun, joyful, and sweet.

I mentioned the ecosystem and I hope I could just show that to you in a second, but it essentially just creates a handful of roles that work in a handful of environments and that all flows together. It’s deliberate. If you’re thinking about safety in reaction to some angry letters to the editor or in reaction to a couple of comments that you got online it’s a little late in the process ideally a full Shields Up activation begins a month or two months before the event. Really being deliberate and thoughtful and there because there are a handful of roles you have to think about who best to recruit. So, it it can be a bit of a long game right it’s never too late to Implement some safety techniques and practices but the ideal Shield Up activation is very deliberate. Is scalable so for a lot of our folks at Story Hour there are our chapters out there they’re already doing this work right. It’s taken us two years to develop this framework and in the meantime our chapters have created their own systems which is just like fantastic. And so, in those scenarios Shields Up exists as hey how’s what what you’re doing is over here Shield Up up like how do they interact how do they play what works what doesn’t like take what works and you know throw out the rest. And for folks who are just beginning to host Drag Story hour programming this is a great opportunity to take the framework in whole and try to execute it that way. It is very flexible it’s also not mandatory through our chapters they it’s a series of recommendations and we really want people to make it work for them. So, if you’ve got something already going on or you have nothing this is still gonna work for you.

And that kind of leads into if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Please don’t do that. The another the last guiding principle protects the most marginalized protect the most. Our storytellers that are out there doing the sacred work of performing a storytelling act they are the ones at risk of the most bodily harm okay. And I think that runs a little bit counter to what we might think of in any sort of child program setting where of course we also want to think about the vulnerability of our young patrons and our audience members. But what Story Hour would ask you to consider is that the Storyteller is at the center and if we protect the Storyteller they create a bubble of safety around them. And all the folks close to them are contained in that. If you have a Storyteller and they don’t feel safe that too spreads out.

So, we want to take care and Center our marginalized folks our storytellers and we’ll be taking care of our adorable audiences when we do that work too.

So, we’re going to kind of skip through here because I already talked about it there some things Shields up is not, but it is not one size fits all. Also, I do want to kind of mention that a lot of the techniques, the roles these are all adaptations of work that have that has been progress for decades and decades over you know street organizing and community organizing and actions. There is a rich history to organizing around safety in a public event. And so, the concepts are not they’re it’s not these aren’t like we didn’t reinvent the wheel. We might we created like a it we just made it cute for us. And it’s the structure that’s unique.

Okay so here’s my environment they I’m doing that because there’s a beautiful illustration and it shows you our lovely environments. But the three environments that we have are our bubble, we have a path oh okay here we go all right…We have the bubble, the path, and the shield. Inside the bubble is where the event takes place. So, I think that sometimes when we were first talking about this work we’re talking about internal/external but that doesn’t always work so well many times we have story hours outside right like in a courtyard. So, we wanted to create some terminology that really worked well for a variety of situations, and so the bubble is that is that place that bubble of safety where our storytellers inside working with our audiences with our handful of other roles to that that that’s where the program’s happening.

The path is where our audiences and storytellers access the bubble they can in and out with ease. It is a fun environment we have bubbles; we have chalk, we have music maybe. We are really invested in creating that safe fun path behind the shield because Behind The Shield is where we might see our opposition groups and they’re just over there they’re just over there doing their thing behind the shield. So, we’re creating distance. So those are my environments.

Now we have roles. This is the safety team of Shields Up so we have a captain we have Guardians which collectively are known as the royal guard. We have our Storyteller of course. And we have an organizer these roles will interact with other folks in the community and for a lot of you all that role might be venue contact. So that’s the person clearly representing the venue and able to work with the team to address some decision-making models, you know, working with the team to communicate the institutional behavioral policies and other policies that might be in play they will work directly with the in-house security team that’s your Venue contact.

And then we have our Ally groups so cute that llama with the headset, oh stop I can’t. Our Ally groups are so so vital to this work we have I’m just going to name a few off the top of my head. We have the sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. We have Paras Patrol of course let’s see. Free Mom Hugs there are so many and of course those are the more nationally known ones. But your community will probably have an ally group that already exists and they may want to come in support. You might be able to invite them to join your Royal Guard but it is really important that they understand this is a de-escalatory space right. So we want to really be working with our Ally groups just to make sure that we’re on the same page and to ensure that they understand that on the day of they’re going to be working in cooperation with the royal guard and they’re all talking to and looking towards the captain for those critical in the- moment decisions right.

Yeah, let’s here we have the model in in action it’s the full model. Inside the bubble you see our Storyteller doing their good work and being able to focus on the audience and their experience. We have our venue contact who’s able to monitor the audience take care of their needs, monitor any sort of technical considerations. And we have the organizer the organizer is sort of like the stage manager or the company manager for the Storyteller. They take care of. They’re maybe they’re holding books they have water they’re holding a feather boa they are making sure that the Storyteller has everything they need to do their work in the event of an emergency. The Storyteller will work with the organizer to perhaps exit safely the organizer works with the venue to take care of all those imminent communication needs so that they can give the Storyteller the space and the piece of mind to do their work. Outside we have a captain who is directing The Shield, and The Shield is created with the Guardians the royal guard. And our Ally groups. And they are all working in cooperation to maintain that safe pathway and keep the shield up.

That is like a such a teeny tiny little nutshell, and I want to give just a little tiny bit of timeline and then we’ll move right along into our Workshop. But Shields up as a program is available to Drag Story Hour Affiliates. Classically speaking our Affiliates were chapters we would have a chapter director and a bunch of different volunteers and these are very like you know hyper local groups right. We are shifting our model a little bit we will be announcing a way for institutions like libraries and museums to become Affiliates so you would be a Drag Story Hour affiliate. You have access to the full Suite of materials. We have some materials that we’re happy to share out that has a getting started guide with all these cute roles and the environments. Really gives a nice overview but we will be releasing. There’s a best practices manual that’s like 25 pages of very dry academic work all around how these roles work together. We have a very extensive resource appendix we will have a safety planning packet with a bunch of checklists and worksheets and ways to help folks get started. And we are really excited to announce that we’ll have a captain training module. It’s an online training module that will di do a deep dive into de-escalation not just as a word we say but as a set of techniques that folks can use in the moment to help keep things cute outside and calm. In addition to active shooter training Communications training and a whole other Suite of skills that we want to see our captains have out there. So, Drag Story Hour is really thinking about how we can create a legacy of creating teams across the country that are in the business of helping folks just like you keep queer events safe. So, thank you.

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This recording is generously supported by The Wallace Foundation.