How to Host Meaningful and Safe Events with Speakers
Inviting an expert or author to speak to your audience can be a wonderful way to encourage your community to explore new ideas or consider a different perspective. Engaging with someone who is not a member of your audience’s dominant culture has tremendous benefits and may increase empathy. Yet, in an increasingly polarized country with hate crimes and organized intimidation tactics on the rise, it can be scary for both the event host and the speaker to consider an event highlighting a different identity or perspective, especially in a relatively homogenous community. This hesitation, however, is merely a sign you should pause and plan thoroughly rather than completely abandon all events featuring a different identity or perspective. If you are ready to plan your next program with a speaker or author, consider the steps below as you shape the event.
A Note from the Authors: For many years, the dominant culture in the United States has been white, heterosexual, able-bodied, neurotypical, and cisgender. The people within these groups as well as the powerful and wealthy have been the voices heard at events. PLM seeks to change this. We primarily support BIPOC and LGBTQ+ authors, so the following suggestions are based on our experience and geared toward helping event planners host meaningful and safe events with authors. The ideas and strategies shared may apply to other events, including planning to host speakers who will address a complex or contentious topic, but we created this guide as a tool to help event planners prepare to host BIPOC or LGBTQ+ authors.
Planning Tips
Know Your Audience
It can seem obvious. You may be tempted to skip this step, but when was the last time you sat down and mapped out who is in your audience? If it has been a minute since you did more than make a general assumption based on the majority you see every day, consider a deep dive into the statistics. If you do not know your audience, not only will it be difficult to plan a safe and meaningful event effectively, but you may also find it challenging to get your audience to turn out to the event you plan. Here are a few questions to consider when going over your community demographics:
Who is in your audience? Consider some of the core statistics the census typically reports on including age, socioeconomic status, household dynamics (individual, partnered, family, multifamily), race, and gender identity.
What values does your community uphold? How did they vote in the last election? What issues were important to them?
Has there been tension, conflict, or violence in your community recently?
What is the fastest-growing group in your audience?
Does your community have specific health concerns?
Which groups are currently underserved in your community?
Who does your community trust?
Engaging with a different perspective through an outside speaker or author can be challenging as it encourages your audience to reexamine their own identity or perspective. Sometimes this involves processing uncomfortable feelings or confronting long-held values systems. If trusted community leaders or organizations are involved in the event, it can make it easier to present the event as important and worthy of additional effort or potential discomfort.
It’s also important to note how your community receives and processes information. What are the trusted information sources? How does the community share what’s going on? You will likely want to use some of the same channels to get the word out about your event.
Which perspective would help your community grow the most?
We are all continually growing our understanding and our capacity for empathy. When considering bringing a speaker or author from outside the dominant culture to your community, it is important to spend time thinking about who could help your community grow in meaningful ways. Think back to the question about the fastest-growing group in your audience. This fast-growing group may be people who openly identify as LGBTQ+ or it may be Asian Americans or perhaps it is immigrants from the Latin diaspora. The fastest-growing group may be individuals who live alone under the poverty line. Choosing to partner with a speaker or author who is a part of the fastest-growing group outside of your dominant culture can help your community learn about something essential to your growing community.
It is important to consider what has happened recently in your community as traumatic events have long-lasting and far-reaching impacts. If your community is still processing a particular event, make sure the speaker or author you approach with your invitation knows what happened. You may also want to provide them with an overview of community demographics and dynamics. It may seem like a lot of additional effort to pull together these details, but you will want to make sure your chosen speaker knows this background as they prepare to engage with your community.
It is also pivotal to reflect on whether your community would benefit from hearing from a speaker or author with an identity or perspective outside of the dominant culture or if they need to hear from an ally within the dominant culture first. It is natural for people to trust what seems familiar to them. For certain groups, it makes sense to begin the grow your audience’s understanding of the chosen topic with an allied member of the dominant culture before hearing from an author or speaker who is not a part of the dominant culture. Working with an ally first allows you to identify areas of potential growth before partnering with a speaker or author who represents a different perspective.
Speaker Support
Make Sure They Don’t Feel Alone
Have you ever been in a space where you felt like the only person like you in the room? It can feel uncomfortable or scary, particularly if there are other factors like it being your first time in a new space. An author or speaker is a professional, but they are also human. Do everything you can to make sure that, even if they are visiting a relatively homogenous community that does not share their identity or perspective, your speaker or author partner does not feel alone in the room. See if there is a local ally or community leader who shares your guest’s identity or perspective. Invite this ally to act as a host or escort. Perhaps they would even make a great moderator for audience Q&A or they could serve as a fireside chat partner if you want your event to feature a more dynamic conversation as a part of your event.
Think About Safety
It’s difficult to anticipate potential safety risks, particularly when you work or live in the same community as your audience. However, asking someone to consider a new perspective can sometimes trigger an emotional response which may lead them to act irrationally. Think about potential vulnerabilities and create a plan to address them and share this plan with your speaker or author partner. Here are a few tips to consider:
Make sure your author or speaker is not alone unless they choose to be. Drive them to and from their hotel and invite them out to dinner with event organizers.
Educate all event volunteers or staff about potential areas of push-back. Make sure they also receive de-escalation training as sometimes potential incidents can be diffused before they start.
Establish a clear incident plan with specific instructions about who needs to be contacted if something happens and when something might require additional community support.
Know who will be in the room. A detailed registration and ticketing process, even if it is free for the participant, will often deter potential attendees from disruptive behavior.
Ask about the speaker or author’s concerns or preferences. Some speakers would feel comfortable with public safety officers helping with security at a public event and others may prefer a different approach.
Provide Opportunities to Engage and Discuss Beforehand
Don’t let the event be the first time your audience has heard of your partnered speaker or author and their work. If you have the capacity, provide opportunities to learn about the speaker ahead of time. You may even want to consider scheduling a few lead-up events or discussions focused on the author’s books or your chosen topic. If the speaker does not have a book, consider a series of related film screenings or educational talks from event partners and allies. Your speaker or author partner may even have a list of resources you can provide attendees leading up to the event. Whatever you do, make sure you communicate with the speaker or author the level of experience the majority of the audience will have with the topic. It may also be helpful to schedule a brief logistical meeting, often called a “prep call” with the speaker. The additional context is helpful and crucial to their preparation and the success of your event.
Event Hosting Tips
Know Who Will Be in the Room
Making sure you know who will be in the room and setting expectations early is a helpful strategy for keeping an event with a speaker or author who will share a new perspective with your group running smoothly. Requiring registration with tickets, even if the tickets are free, provides you with an opportunity to ask for a name and ask registered attendees to agree to a set of event expectations or a code of conduct. You can also share educational resources on the topic of focus at the time of registration. Requiring registration can be a bit of a hassle and may require additional staffing to check tickets at the door, but this process does make potential attendees think twice before causing a disruption or acting against the code of conduct they agreed to follow during registration.
Registration is also an excellent point to ask about any potential accommodation needs your audience may have so you can prepare ways to make the event accessible to all attendees.
Prepare for Potential Disruptions
If a potential attendee disagrees with the event or is having trouble processing their emotional reaction to reconsidering their perspective, they may choose to act out. In most cases, acting out will involve minor disruptions like trying to argue with the speaker or author during audience Q&A or posting vile things in an open livestream chat. There are ways to prepare for potential disruptions. When you have your event plan in place, have a couple of people pretend they want to disrupt the event and see what they suggest as potential weak points. Make adjustments as needed.
One consistent vulnerable point can be audience Q&A. Providing your audience with opportunities to ask questions is crucial for increased understanding and growth. However, it is also one of the most likely points of disruption when hosting a speaker or author presenting a new perspective to your audience. Consider strategies like asking for questions during registration and having a moderator ask them during Q&A instead of taking open questions. You could also assign the questions to various reliable community members or staff to ask. If you want to provide a more enhanced audience engagement experience, there are software programs available that allow attendees to suggest and vote on potential questions while also providing the host the opportunity to screen and delete anything deliberately hurtful. Regardless of the Q&A method, make sure the speaker or author is on board with the plan.
Provide Post-Event Support
Finally, in many cases, the carefully planned and executed event with a speaker or author from outside your community’s dominant culture is only the beginning of engaging with the topic of focus for many in your audience. Consider providing additional educational resources, community contacts, and programs or safe spaces to continue to learn and discuss what the speaker or author addressed. Pay close attention to folks in your community or audience who share the identity or perspective of the speaker because, if someone decides to push back or improperly process their feelings, they may direct their emotions toward a local representative. Remember to offer your support to these groups post-event.
It is important to take time to listen to your community too. Plan to collect feedback and consider it all. If you have the bandwidth, ask about new directions to explore for the next event. And remember, it is essential not to hold on to hate, but you may learn more about where your community is at and what topic would be helpful to explore next from the negative comments than you will from the positive ones.