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Following the clearing of toilet rolls across the nation, an employee at the National Gallery found herself unable to find any. Thankfully, her line manager was able to help her in a moment of crisis.

Over the past few weeks, she had refused to give into stock piling and as a result it meant that she was unable to buy toilet roll for more than a week. During a regular video call team catch-up, the event manager mentioned her difficulty in locating necessary supplies, to find her line manager get straight in his car and deliver (from a safe distance) the supplies to her door.

The National Gallery team is pulling together in difficult times to deliver small acts of kindness to help out wherever possible.

To find out more about the National Gallery, visit https://www.venues-london.co.uk/venues/the-national-gallery/

On Friday 27 March, Church House Westminster hosted an interactive virtual chat for event professionals with speakers, Bernadette Palombo and Chris Pinner.

The online one-hour session assessed the current situation faced by many event organisers working from home and managing remote teams, explored various challenges and opportunities during this unprecedented time, and recommended useful solutions for staying well, both physically and mentally.

Chris, founder of Innerfit, specialises in sharing practical tips to help people feel and work well.  Chris shared that “Well-being has never been so important. If you want more structure, movement, and motivation in your working day, whilst working from home, we are here to help!”, Chris noted in the lead up to the online event.

Bernadette, founder of the Event Professionals Journal, commented, prior to the webinar, “During a time of difficulty and challenges, I would like to share with you my top tips to help you maintain positive mental health so that you can continue to put your well-being first”.

The virtual event was set up remotely and managed by the in-house audio-visual team of Church House Westminster, utilising innovative event technology to facilitate online events and virtual conferences.

Sign up here to watch the On-Demand version of the webcast. 

For more information on Church House Westminster, visit https://www.venues-london.co.uk/venues/church-house-westminster/.

Due to the lack of personal protective equipment available for frontline NHS staff, the team at QEII Taste has donated all their hand sanitiser gels and gloves to the key workers at St Thomas’s Hospital in Westminster.

QEII Taste were supported by Compass Group colleagues in the initiative to arrange the safe collection and delivery of the essential resources.

The team at the QEII Centre is encouraging other venues and businesses that are temporarily closed and may have left over supplies to join in with the campaign to donate and aid the wonderful staff of the NHS wherever they possibly can.

To find out more about the QEII Centre, please see https://www.venues-london.co.uk/venues/the-qeii-centre/

Since The Royal Society provisionally closed its doors to the public, work has continued internally to offer support where possible.

Fellows of the Royal Society and people that it funds are contributing to the UK and global effort to tackle Coronavirus COVID-19. They are working inside the UK government as well as providing independent support for national and international efforts.

The work includes research on the biology of the virus and therapies to combat it, longer term goals such as the development of vaccines, and reviewing evidence to inform policy making. Tackling such pandemics will require both basic and clinical research at every stage, and the scientific community is doing all it can to help fight this terrible disease and reduce its toll.

The Society has made openly accessible all research findings and data from its Journals that are relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/topic/special-collections/novel-coronavirus-outbreak.

With schools closed across the country, the Society has also drawn together a list of its resources, activities and videos that could be used to support home learning in science, technology, engineering and maths: https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/education-skills/teacher-resources-and-opportunities/science-at-home/.

By holding your event at the Royal Society, you are helping play an important part in supporting the registered charity and the UK’s National Academy of science.

For further information about the Royal Society, please see  https://www.venues-london.co.uk/venues/the-royal-society/

Rachel Azzopardi, chair of Westminster Venue Collection and head of catering and events at Regent’s Conferences & Events is leading by example as one of many event professionals to be officially accepted as a volunteer for the NHS.

An astounding 750,000 volunteers have responded to a call to join the NHS held fight Coronavirus, three times the target of 250,000, including many of our London-based event professionals.

Those who registered will be helping the health service perform ‘vital roles’ that will allow people to comply with strict government advice on self-isolation and social distancing. Community response volunteers will collect and deliver shopping, medication or ‘other essential supplies’ for people under isolation.

Other roles include transporting medically fit patients and ensuring they are settled safely back home, or ferrying equipment and medication between NHS services and sites. Volunteers may also assist with telephone support to those at risk of loneliness linked to self-isolation.