If you are considering running an event, you may find some of the information below useful. Could you also please check the details on the web pages and report any necessary changes to the events coordinator.

Click here for a checklist of some of the things to organise for each type of event.

These notes are intended to assist Event Providers in holding safe, effective and successful events but are not exhaustive. The Organising Partnership exists to facilitate the promotion of the Events only and it is the Event Provider who/which is exclusively responsible for, among other things, the booking, timing, conduct and content of the Event and the health and safety of the attendees (both members of the public and staff volunteers or others involved).

Guided Walks

If you're leading a guided walk, you should consider the following:
Tides
 
If your walk is coastal, make sure that the tides won't cut you off on the walk there or on the way back. Over estimate the time it will take to do the walk (in case you have participants who are slower than you expect them to be).

Permission

Ensure that you have permission to access the site from the landowner. Also, there are many sites that are geologically, ecologically, or biologically sensitive; this MAY mean avoiding an area all together. If you're in any doubt about the suitability of a site, contact the SNH area office.

Hammering

DON'T allow your group to hammer exposures excessively, and if the area is geologically sensitive, don't allow them to hammer AT ALL. In some cases, loose material can be removed, e.g. fossils on the beach, but should not be taken from in-situ. If you're in any doubt about the sensitivity of the area, contact the SNH area office. To show examples of the material that can be seen on the walk, take some with you or show them before you start! don't hammer as you go as this can set a bad example.

Numbers

Don't overcrowd your walk. Think about the route that you'll be taking and then decide how many people you can safely accommodate. For example, how wide are the paths, are there many fences to cross, or how many people will be able to group together to hear you speak? As leader, it is your responsibility to either turn people away or arrange another walk if you think the numbers are too large to be safe.

Leaders

Ensure that you have enough leaders for the number of people that you are expecting. Even for a small group, it's advisable to have at least two leaders! so that you have someone to follow at the rear and/or take a member of the group back if they fall ill or have to leave early. At least one leader should carry a first aid kit and preferably a mobile phone too.

Clothing & food

Ensure - either through your publicity or through your booking system - that your visitors know what outdoor clothing they will need, e.g. will trainers be okay, or will they need walking boots. They'll also need to know if they need to bring refreshments, e.g. for a full day trip.

Disabled Access

Unfortunately, certain walks won't be accessible to everybody, especially if the paths are rough or non-existent. Take this into consideration when planning your route, so that you'll be able to offer realistic advice to anybody that inquires about access to your event.

Health & Safety

It's crucial that you carry out a risk assessment when planning a walk. This should be written down, just in case problems do arise and you need to prove what considerations you've made and precautions you've taken. Considerations might include: potential risks from tripping on rocks, slipping on wet grass, falling rocks from cliffs, or being charged at by the local bull! Precautions might include: carrying a first aid kit and mobile phone, having enough leaders and giving the group a brief safety talk before beginning the walk.

Insurance

As an event provider, you or your organisation may already have public liability insurance, but if not, you should think about taking out third party insurance in case of any unfortunate accident or incident. For one-off events, Event Insurance Services can offer cover for outdoor events (of up to 100 people) at a minimum premium of £55.

Handouts

This is something that you may or may not want to give out. An advantage of handouts is that you can be sure that the participants are given the information that you want to give them — to be used either on the walk, or to take away with them. However, if you do give handouts on the walk, don’t rely on them too much as your group is there primarily to listen to you and to look at the geology.

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Talks or Lectures

If you're giving a talk or lecture, or are inviting a guest speaker to do so, you should consider the following:

Disabled Access

If you've hired a venue, find out whether it has facilities such as wheelchair access or an induction loop for hearing aid users and publicise these in your leaflets or posters. If possible, have specimens to handle - these are greatly appreciated by those who are visually impaired.

Guest speakers

Make sure that you are agreed on exactly what facilities, e.g. slide projector, are available and needed. If the speaker wants to run a computer generated presentation, e.g. PowerPoint, and you need them to bring their own laptop and peripherals, make sure that they know this - otherwise they may just turn up with a floppy disk or zip disk. If there are no Zip or CD-Rom drives available, let the speaker know.

Handouts

This is something that you may or may not want to give out. An advantage of handouts is that you can be sure that your audience is given the information that you want to give them.

Associated display

If the audience is likely to be ‘hanging around’ before or after the talk, you could put up a small display associated with the talk. If the display is staffed, it gives members of the audience a focal point if they are enthusiastic and want to know more (you may have people who would prefer to speak individually to someone as opposed to asking questions in front of the audience). Also try to have more general information available, e.g. leaflets for a local geological/natural history society, or upcoming events.

Questions

Allow some time for questions at the end of the talk but if you've a guest speaker, check with them first that they're happy with this. Finally, give the speaker a 'vote of thanks' for coming along.

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Exhibitions and Displays

If you're putting on an exhibition or display, you should consider the following:

Accessibility

The display should be accessible to as many people as possible. 'Access' doesn't mean just access for wheelchair users, but also means access for people with visual and hearing impairments and learning difficulties.

Consider where the objects are displayed. For example, can they be seen clearly by wheelchair users and children? For labels and posters, the text should be preferably typed and printed, and of a large enough size to be easily read from a realistic distance from the display — a font size of 18-36pt for object labels and 48pt for graphic panels is recommended. There should be a strong contrast in colour between the text and the background. Colour blindness can mean a difficulty distinguishing red/green/brown/grey/purple, so try to avoid putting these colours together, e.g. red text on a grey background. Also try to avoid overprinting text on photographs as this can make the text much more difficult to read. Any AV displays should have sub-titles or, at least the script in printed form. Keep jargon to a minimum and keep explanations simple.

If you'd like to know more about making writing accessible, The Basic Skills Agency has a free leaflet on 'Making Reading Easier' leaflets.

Information

When writing text, think carefully about the probable knowledge of your target audience. For a poster or panel, keep it to below 250 words. Keep things simple and interesting, and you're more likely to hold the attention of your audience.
You could consider multi-level labeling, where the main point or fact is in large bold lettering, followed by more information in a slightly smaller font below. You could have up to three levels — but still keep to below 250 words in total. This way, you can cater for the people that want to quickly read the information, and also for those that are very interested in the subject.

Cleaning objects

You can generally clean rocks, minerals and fossils with water and a soft brush, then pat them dry with a paper towel, or leave them to dry naturally. For sturdy specimens, stubborn organic stains, e.g. lichen, can sometimes be removed by soaking them in a weak bleach solution. But if you’re in any doubt about how to clean your specimens, contact a local museum for advice. Take care when using any potentially hazardous substances such as bleach.

Handling objects

A good way to let people explore rocks, fossils and minerals is to let them handle them. If you're able to do this, make sure that the objects are solid enough, have no sharp edges and aren't too heavy.

Activities

As children love activity, bring something interactive into your exhibit. This could include looking down microscopes, digging in sand for fossils, using a computer, dressing up, e.g. armbands and goggles to go swimming in the warm Jurassic seas, or making fossil plaster casts. And with a bit of encouragement, adults love to get involved too! For experiments and ideas on how to bring geology to life, the Dorling Kindersley book 'How the Earth Works' by John Farndon, is full of ideas.

Health & Safety

Ensure that substances used in activities are non-toxic. Check up to date information as some substances that were once commonly used in experiments, e.g. crystal growing with copper sulphate, are now considered harmful. You can find H&S information about chemicals or other substances on the web - look under 'MSDS' or 'material safety data sheets'. COSHH assessments should be carried out for processes/activities involving substances hazardous to health (even substances which are only potential mild irritants). Risk assessments should also be carried out for the venue. Risk assessments are aimed at identifying potential hazards (e.g. tripping over cables running across the floor) and their likelihood of occurrence, so that they can be addressed before the event. For some guidance on risk assessments, view the HSE’s online Five Steps to Risk Assessment.

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Checklist for event providers

Publicity

Posters & Leaflets

Keep posters and leaflets simple. Clearly state the title and, if it's not clear from the title, the nature of the event, e.g. guided walk. Give the location, time, cost (even if it’s free) and contact number/e-mail address for further information. To get people intrigued, add an unexpected statement or question as part of the main heading, e.g. Skye - Born from Volcanoes!

Use bright, bold colours and add an image or other graphic to make it more attractive. Be aware that colour blindness can mean a difficulty distinguishing red/green/brown/grey/ purple, so try to avoid putting these colours together, e.g. red text on a grey background.
You'll receive Scottish Geology Festival posters to help with your publicity. These will have a blank space on it so that you can add your event details.

Writing a Press Release

Every day, newspapers, radio stations and TV programmes have pages of space and hours of airtime to fill. Like organisations everywhere, staff cuts mean there is less time for journalists to get out and get stories. A well written press release makes life easy for busy news editors and is likely to be used, particularly by smaller, local weekly papers. Equally, a badly written release will very quickly be filed in the bin.

FAO

News releases should be sent for the attention of the Newsdesk, while a brief synopsis of the event(s) should be sent to the Diary Editor of your local paper.

Contents

Press releases should answer five basic questions: who, what, why, where and when? If there's money involved don't forget to answer the, "How much?" question. The more the merrier!

The introduction should convey the essence of the story and the following paragraphs should flesh out the bare bones. Develop the story in terms of its interest and importance. A news editor will tend to edit a press release paragraph by paragraph from the bottom up so put the important stuff in first!

Press releases must be interesting and newsworthy. They should feature some sort of benefit and a WOW factor. Always think about the people angle. People make the news. The theatre dictum, "Never work with children or animals," doesn’t apply to newspapers or TV. They love them.
WRONG:? The City of Edinburgh Council's Housing Department is due to install new central heating in 3,000 homes in Muirhouse.

RIGHT: Some 3,000 people in Muirhouse are set to benefit from warmer homes and lower fuel bills, thanks to a new £3million programme to fit central heating in their City of Edinburgh Council homes.
Be positive and exciting. What is the most dramatic claim you can make? But beware here and make sure you can back up your claims.

Use Words of Power! Research shows adverts which contain words like new, sale and… chocolate generate the highest response rate. Innovative, latest development, biggest, highest, longest and record-breaking are all good Words of Power.

Quotes

Include a punchy quote in the release, saying who it’s from, with their job title and organisation. Sarah Roe, National Press & PR Officer with Scottish Natural Heritage, said, "If you're including quite a long quote in the press release, break it up by creating new paragraphs.

" Each paragraph should be opened with quotation marks but only the last one should be closed with them. The closing quotation marks should always come after the full stop."

Layout & language

If you don't have specific headed note paper for releases, make sure that whatever you do send out says Press Release somewhere, big and bold.
It's very important to try and use a newspaper style of writing. Releases are for news editors. If the release is written the way they do, then there is less chance for the message to be lost in the editing process. As far as possible, releases should be no more than one side of paper and about 250 words long. Two pages is the absolute limit. Print your press release on one side of the paper only. People often don't think to turn a sheet over and it's easier to fax a single sided release.

If you're doing a two-page release write More at the foot of the fist page and repeat the press release title at the start of the second page, e.g.Making the news2.

The release should be typed or word-processed using 1.5 line spacing with about an inch margin on either side. This gives editors room to make notes. Keep sentences and paragraphs fairly short - 25 words is the maximum for sentences, and paragraphs should be about five sentences. Leave a blank line between paragraphs. Try and avoid jargon and explain specialist terms. If you're going to use abbreviations spell them out in full the first time, e.g. Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH).

Something like one in ten people have reading difficulties in this country. It's no coincidence that The Sun pitches its articles at a reading age of 12 years old and is Britain's best selling newspaper (4 million copies a day).
Don't mix stories on the same press release. And when you get to the end of your release, let the news editor know by writing Ends.

Always put a contact name and phone number at the end of the release so that the journalist has someone they can get in touch with if they have more questions. If the release is going to radio or TV stations, bear in mind that they may want to interview someone at short notice.

Deadlines

If your release arrives after a paper’s deadline then there's not much chance that they'll use it. Something that happened recently isn't very newsworthy.

Many weekly papers are published on a Thursday so the very last day that they can usually accept material is Wednesday. This means if your event or activity is happening early in the week, you need to try and place your story in an earlier edition.

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For a template press release click here.