COVID-19 Safety Plan and Resources documents
COVID-19 Safety Plan and Resources documents
Please refer to the links below to download two documents aimed at assisting the sector to deal with COVID-19 challenges, and particularly the issues faced as you work towards reopening.
Through the National Public Galleries Alliance our friends and colleagues at Museums and Galleries Queensland have been very generous in sharing their core document for GalleriesWest to adapt.
ART ON THE MOVE has made preparation and design of this WA material possible for which we are very grateful.
COVID-19 and beyond
As WA’s public galleries prepare for re-opening your experiences across the sector have been very varied. Many have been working from home, some have been able to stay at work subject to social distancing measures, some have had the resources needed to generate digital content and others have been stood down without access to their galleries or IT systems. Some people have been redeployed or required to take leave.
Apart from very real concerns about your own incomes and future prospects, and perhaps even the future of your gallery, many of you have seen your casual and volunteer teams cast adrift, good people who are the life blood of community galleries. Access to collections to ensure their care and security have also been a very real concern for some. Overall, it is fair to say that terrible uncertainty has been the greatest stressor.
Through all of this it has been clear that there is so much more to do to assert the importance of public galleries and the work that they do to keep our communities resilient and strong. A stronger voice for our sector is essential so that government at all levels understands, and better values, what we contribute.
GalleriesWest is a small committee of volunteers who work in the sector and have faced the same challenges as you all through this time and we realise that our organisation must grow stronger so that we can better support you. We are constantly looking for ways to gain secure funding to employ someone to work for you, and although funding prospects are looking lean, we will persist.
You can support us too by becoming members if you can, thinking about joining our committee when nominations are called and by sharing the resources that you have developed for your venues so we can share them with your colleagues in the sector. This experience has been hard for so many of us but it will make us stronger.