Blog

January is supposed to be the month is which we look backward and forward simultaneously, like the two-faced god Janus. March is actually more to that point for the CAC and docent community. We mark Lynn Osmond’s presentation of the Annual Report to summarize 2018 and then look ahead at the first class for our 2019 docents.

The transition to the CAC thoroughly transformed the organization and established it as a major destination.

• Opening festivities drew over 5,400 attendees (including 2,000 members) who saw the CAC’s Chicago Gallery, Building Tall and the temporary exhibit From Me to We: Imagining the City of 2050.
• During 2018 over 3,000 volunteers and docents gave 56,600 volunteer hours in support of our mission.
• CAC offered 41 adult programs that served 3,282 attendees and directly engaged 83 designers and community leaders as featured speakers and/or panelists. That is about one event per week, accounting for holidays and interruptions because of the move.
• The eighth annual Open House Chicago attracted 100,000 attendees who had 366,000 visits to 279 sites in 29 Chicago neighborhoods plus Evanston and Oak Park. Staff estimates that OHC is the second-most widely attended event of its kind in the world.
• Membership has increased by about 10%, the capital campaign Meet Your City achieved its goals, and renting our space for non-CAC events has proven to be an unexpectedly robust source of revenue.

Our work as docents in 2019 will focus on continuing to bring new life to our tours by thoughtful re-working of continuing favorites and judicious additions of compelling new tours. Lessons learned from Project Fresh – the high value of engaging your audience, using stories to convey information, treating people on your tour as you would treat a guest – continue to resonate and have become an integral part of not only the new docent curriculum but also act as the tent poles by which we measure achievements and DPRP reviews.

As a body we greet over 400,000 people every year – often as a visitor’s first “close up and personal” Chicagoan. The stakes are formidable. We numbered almost 400 active, tour-giving docents last year; about 275 of us took the “Engaging Your Audience” training as part of our recertification proves. That leaves about 125 people who have not had this opportunity, and I am delighted to say that as of this writing, almost 40 people have signed up for the special “Make Up Classes” we are offering this spring and summer. More sessions may well be in the works to accommodate this interest.

Just a few days ago, I had the opportunity meet 39 new docent candidates. They were bright and engaged – though since it was well into the afternoon, I think they were also relieved when I told them not to take notes, just to listen; the sound of pens going down was deafening. My mission was to introduce them to docent governance and our defined role within the larger organization. Of course, I could not let this moment go by without talking about what it means to be a docent, how we live and breathe that strange elixir called docent culture. We are independent; we are contrary. We are modest; we are proud. We are open-minded and flexible; we are determined and dedicated. Most of all, we are very bonded to one another – having come through the crucible of training together, then parading our passion for architecture and the city every day. These are bonds that may strain but will never break.

Don’t forget to RSVP to DAN!

Constance