Around the world, lockdown measures to confront the Covid-19 pandemic have resulted in organisations moving their activities online.
Delivering work using digital tools, live streaming events, and providing online workshops all require additional consideration for best practice, processes and policies, especially in relation to child protection and working with vulnerable adults.
In part two of our series on safeguarding online practices, we speak to Karen Anderson of Indepen-dance.
Tell us about what you've been up to with your virtual activity
(Pictured: an Indepen-dance online class timetable)
We responded immediately to this crisis by sending a live message via our social media channels to all our members explaining that our service as they knew it was closed and we would try our best to do what we could to get our service online.
We also made phone calls to all our members before closing the office on 19 March. We used the following day to record a series of dance films to use on on YouTube - these were short instructional dance videos made in my flat with a couple of our creative team with limited resources. I didn't have the tech savvy to turn the camera landscape, so as a result they aren't great quality but we have released one each week to our members and the wider public via our YouTube channel.
Since the 25 March we moved our dance sessions online using the platform Zoom. The very first session had to be aborted due to a "Zoom bombing" incident. We reported this to the authorities and sought to make our online sessions more secure to prevent this from happening again.
We now have eight weekly inclusive dance sessions - we added more each week as the demand grew. We have a variety of inclusive dance classes for disabled children, young people and adults - many of them have their families joining in too. We have a session specifically for people with complex and profound learning disabilities and have introduced seated/chair yoga followed by a cuppa and a catch up.
We have run one live dance event called #Proudmary which had over 150 people participating from around the world. We used YouTube and Facebook as the social media platforms. We used this event as a way to raise awareness of our organisation, but at the same time celebrate the hard work and dedication of NHS staff and key workers.
We have set up WhatsApp groups for our youth dance company and are in the process of setting one up for our adult performance company. We have set up WhatsApp groups for our PAYE furloughed staff, and another one which has both freelance and PAYE staff in it. We have weekly wellbeing catch up calls with our staff who are furloughed using Zoom.
We have had regular contact with our board who met fortnightly originally and now are meeting monthly to ensure we have their support.
We created a contact spreadsheet and have contacted every single person who attends our classes via phone. This enabled us to pass information on about the service we were providing online, and we also offered families regular wellbeing calls if they so wished.
What have you put in place to ensure online safeguarding for those you are working with?
We have created a film which gives clear step-by-step instructions to follow before taking part in our class. We used YDance's film as a basis to make our own, we also wrote an easy read version for our learning disabled members - both are available on our website and we are happy for these to be shared.
Gail Sneddon from Dance North has set up a working group to look at safeguarding and we are part of this group to feed in our knowledge and experiences.
As previously mentioned we made our online Zoom sessions more secure by changing the codes for each session and adding passwords. The important message is that Zoom codes should not be shared publicly. We also take a register of who wants to attend the sessions, and therefore we can control who we let into the sessions, as we have created a virtual waiting room.
What have the challenges been and what have you learnt?
Aside from the challenges already mentioned we are still trying to work out how to make the sound quality better for the Zoom dance sessions.
What is working well about working online? Are there any surprising benefits?
(Pictured: an Indepen-dance Zoom dance class in action)
I want to point out that for our members, the majority of whom have a learning disability, the Zoom sessions have worked incredibly well. It's to do with the human contact in the virtual sense and the human interaction.
This compared to people watching something online makes a huge difference - the people we deliver our service for are often already isolated in their community, so we know how important the human interaction has been by the response we are getting and the feedback.
We have created polls for people to complete at the end of the Zoom sessions and will be gathering this feedback to collate it and create a report that gathers all this feedback in one place.
How are participants benefiting from taking part in arts activity at this difficult time?
As previously mentioned we have had really good feedback from our participants saying how much they enjoy the online sessions. We get feedback from parents and carers telling us how important the weekly online programme is to their child. Often they do not have anything else to join in with that is suited to their needs, or at least not very much.
What tips would you give to other creatives moving to working with participants online?
Do it! Move your work online, connect with your members/participants - it makes a world of difference to the wellbeing of the individuals taking part.
Visit the Indepen-dance website to find out more about their work