Happy autumn, everyone. October brings lots of changes, and not just in the weather. This particular October marks about one month in the new Center, and the beginning of life as usual, our new normal. Lynn Osmond reports that: The CAC hosted almost 11,000 people in our spaces to see our exhibits. 5,000 were guests who specifically paid to see the exhibits, 3,000 were tour guests that also visited the center exhibits, and 2,700 were members who receive the Center experience for free as part of the their membership benefits. This membership visitation rate is about 23% of our member base
Hallmarks of our yearly docent calendar resuming are Open House Chicago – about to happen when this letter appears – and the annual Docent Day Annual Meeting on Saturday, November 10th. Bios and videos of candidates running for 2019 Docent Council will be going up soon as well. Although more people are at DAN, the annual Docent Day marks the largest yearly gathering of docents under one roof.
On the tour front, our fall schedule kicks in, with frequency of tours scaled back, many neighborhood tours in retirement until next year and only about one month to go for River Cruises. Many of you who retrained – 350 re-certifications with many yet to go – are starting to find your comfort zones giving the revised and refreshed versions. We’ll spend these winter months gathering data that will build the 2019 schedule, tweaking the tours we already give and drafting manuals for the tours that will debut next year.
The most involved winter work will be starting up and building the process to train a new docent class in 2019. Please watch The Bridge on a regular basis. There will be constant updates because our collective labors to train a new class will be much in demand: interviewers, sponsors, readers, certifiers. It will be exciting to return to this exercise and we need everyone to help. Assuming we have enough interest, there will also be a training class for the River Cruise, for all docents now certified for any other tours.
Please remember to vote in November: November 6 in the local/state/national elections and prior to (or ending) November 10th for Docent Council.
Constance
To read the September 2018 Docent Council meeting minutes, CLICK HERE.