Events for Everyone! Ensuring Equity in Your Events

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- Non-Members - $50
- Members - $35
- Premier Members - $35
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Ever wonder why your favorite concert series always takes place at the same park on the other side of town from you? Do you choose to attend or not attend a festival or event due to access, cost, redundancy, location or beliefs? Oftentimes, event planners stick with safe locations, themes, partners and costs due to what's worked in the past and what they know without taking an event inventory of their offerings through the equity lens. As event planners in the public service profession, ensuring that our services and events take place in all parts of our communities, making sure they are relevant to all citizens of these communities, and reducing known barriers to participation are crucial to building communities. This session will help you plan your events with an equity lens from pre-planning to implementation to your post-event evaluation.

Learning Objectives:

Identify potential gaps in equity of provided events by creating a categorized event portfolio with a provided template.
Generate ideas on how to address gaps in equity and work toward enhancing event offerings to communities served.
Understand the steps needed to begin building equitable events.

David Mitchell (he/him)

Event Manager

Baltimore City Recreation & Parks

David Mitchell has a wealth of experiences providing events incorporating arts, theatre and athletics which are relevant to the communities he serves and the current trends in entertainment. He has worked for various event organizations but has been with Baltimore City for 2.5 years. This is David's first time presenting at conference.

Cortney Weinstock (she/her)

Division Chief

Baltimore City Recreation and Parks

Cortney Weinstock is the Division Chief of Events, Permits Rangers for the City of Baltimore. She holds her CPRP, is a CAPRA visitor and has a MS in Education Policy Design. She has a passion for building community through events and activating park programs through creative engagement. Cortney has been a speaker at NRPA in 2020, as well as haven spoken at various state conferences. Cortney was a born event planner. From planning extravagant family birthday parties, to randomly themed events (national donut day needs a party, am I right?), to ultimately finding professional roles in the recreation field building community through engaging events in parks. She has planned concert and movie nights, to holiday community festivals, to ticketed events and all the way to national festivals attracting nearly 200,000 attendees over 2 days. There is a magic to bringing community together to celebrate (for any reason!) and our parks provide amazing spaces to create these moments.