10/03/2009

Walk'n'Talk - Govan to Glasgow City centre

Minutes...

The agenda for last weeks meeting was:
1 recap of meeting for those not there.
2 formal structure: discussion
3 property info...
4 bike workshop and flag making day, sat 28th march
5 may day
6 CEIS info
7 networking: Johnny asked: Who should he/we be networking with?

Recap:
At the previous meeting, we agreed we should try to start on time, always take minutes and have a facilitator, and email out those minutes promptly, as well as an agenda for the next meeting.

Bob told us about a fantastic poster he did for the talk on saturday, that perhaps could be used again in future for other events. ask him to explain it if youre interested. its something about history being 'medicine for the masses'.

Kate and Juliana formed a subgroup of the research group, to look into past and existing social centres to see how theyre structured and what we can learn from them.

2 formal structure:
I mentioned some of the info we got from meeting with CEIS, who offer advice for new social enterprises:
I suggested we need to become a constituted group, (ie have a formal constitution), and then think about moving forward with deciding on a structure: eg charity status, social enterprise, community interest company, etc....in order to get funding and premises and do business plan...

Johnny asked everyone to send profiles: ie name, email, phone number, (if youre comfortable doing that) and 2 sentences on what you would like to offer (ie workshops youd like to host/take part in) and what you would like to get out of a social centre (in concrete terms, ie what workshops youd like to attend or what youd like to learn about or do)

it was also suggested that this info could be made into a members list, (with whatever info people are happy to give/or omit) and we could keep a hard copy of this once we get a premises. (this info would NOT be online for anyone to see, and would basically be so we can contact each other about organising workshops, meetings etc.

We took another look at the roles that were suggested in an email Pearse sent around a few weeks ago.
WE agreed that we dont like the word 'president' , but that there was a need for people to take responsibility for ensuring certain things get done. We agreed that it would be good to have at least 2/3 people share certain roles: so that its not any one person's responsibility and the duties are shared...and that these roles could rotate every few months (eg. every 3 or 6 months)
Tentative descriptions of those roles are:

a 'chairperson' who would be at every meeting and provide a general overview and recap for others, act as contact person, occasional or fallback facilitator, and would try to do role of providing a general overview of how the group is getting on,as we check in with our consensus and facilitation and general process and progress every few months,

a treasurer to keep record of any money

a secretary to take responsibility for ensuring minutes are taken at each meeting, and emailed out after, WITh an agenda for next meeting... to be added to on email if people want.

(perhaps in future, we could look at PR people, to focus on promoting the centre and networking with other groups in glasgow)

Also would be good to have an 'ass kicker' to check everyone is doing what they say theyll do after each meeting, etc.

It was agreed we need to elaborate exactly what these roles entail, in reality, in the way we work, and what they would be on paper, for the purposes of 'business people' or potential funders, etc.

3: property/premises:
I checked with The Annexe, healthy living centre in Partick. rooms are rented per hour, and are very cheap for constituted groups £5 an hour. this is a good option if we want to plan events for now, until we get a venue. But the group would need to be constituted first. I would be up for holding things like knitting and creative meetings there, as a way of 'doing' what we want social centre to be, as well as 'talking' about it...

4 bike workshop and flag day
this would be a day to construct pedal powered stuff eg smoothie makers, laptops, etc... and to make trailers for bikes, flags to put on bikes, to use at demos, and 'basical bicycle maintenance' skillshare, etc.
It was agreed it would be good if 1 or 2 people took responsibility for organising different parts of the day:
denis will look into pedal power, anyone else want to chip in?
it was mentioned that regan has a leaflet or zine on how to convert a bike to pedal power stuff... is that right?
Juliana offered to do a sewing skillshare to prep for the flag making, hemming material, etc so flags are ready to be painted on the day...she will suggest times next week? she will also see if richard is up for doing a bike fixing skillshare. Johnny also has the number for Ben from Ben's bikes.

IF anyone has any materials that would be good.... we need to get materials. pale cloth for flags, paints, wood and metal for trailers, etc... streamers? decorations for bikes?...
I also suggested if anyone wants to take a trip to local recycling centres to see if we can get some stuff for free... let me know.

5 May Day
we agreed the flag making day would be a prep for may day, and we could do our own event as the social centr,e and tie in with other groups and hopefully use some great bike banners and flags to create visually eye catching images.

6 CEIS: I gave a quick update on what the guy from CEIS said. It was agreed that it would be good to type up the notes from the meeting and give a proper presentation about it to the group, or let them know where the research group is at.

7Johnny and Networking:
it was agreed that an address book, with a list of all the local groups in glasgow that we know about would be a great thing to do.
as well as the big giant map of glasgow that pearse is going to print out for us. we can stick pins in map for all the groups we know about, and find out about, and have names, phone numbers, addresses and emails for them all....to make it easier to network in futre, and to 'see' where a social centre might best be located.

it was also suggested that it would be a great idea to keep a copy of all posters we make, and have photos and footage of all events we hold, and make a archive of the process were going through.

KAte is going to notify property people about a councillor she met who knows a lot about buildings around glasgow that we could rent...

They are the minutes.

AGENDA
I thought we made up an agenda for next week, but i cant find it, so here is my
suggested Agenda for next week: Please amend as you like...

juliana: sewing skillshare dates to be suggested
talk about or look into getting 'constituted' as a group
people to talk about/clarify/volunteer for roles of secretary, chair, treasurer
property list: it came out last week, Can someone from property group let us know any news with it?
people to volunteer for bike and flag workshop to help organise it
Research group to update rest of group on progress/ceis meeting, or whatever else happening...
can someone bring the timeline and leave it at electron club? or bring it each week?
melissa proposal to work at glastonbury

I think thats it. See you at next meeting!

06/03/2009

Friday 27th/Minutes

Friday 27th Meeting Minutes

1.We talked excitedly about making fancy flags for the backs of bikes to
make brilliant colourful movingness and discussed the joys of bike
trailers filled with info and food!

-Could build up to doing some fun stuff on May Day.
-Could perhaps do some making as part of the bike extravaganza event at
the Pearce Institute.
Denis and Liam interested in joining Mark in organising this day event.
- Suggestion that it could happen sooner than April – date to be fixed
soon so we can publicise etc.

2.We also discussed briefly how we work as a group. We were only a small
group but we decided that we would try and use consensus to make decisions
but would come back to review this and look more thoroughly at how we work
in 2 months time.

We also decided to be better with meeting formalities – putting the agenda
out in advance(sorry!), taking minutes, having a facilitator decided in
advance etc.
See http://seedsforchange.org.uk/free/resources#grp for information on
Consensus Decision-Making and Facilitating Consensus. (If people are
interested in training in facilitating consensus email Beth off the list
(on cringeandvomit_at_riseup.net) and if there's interest i'll see about
arranging it)

3. The following working groups have been established to get things moving
more outside of meetings. Come along or email to hook up with people to
work on the stuff you're interested in.

Working Groups:

Funding:
Beth
Denis

Property Group:
Denis
Hannah
Jonny
Melissa
Stephen

Research:
Tilly
Kate
Liam
Bob

Networking:
Bob
Jonny

Publicity:
Pearse
Bob