Committee meeting 3rd September 2005
Neil, Gareth, Duncan, Chris (facilitator), Jane, Camille, Ryan and George(minutes), Kasia and Marcin, Robin, Magda, Nick.
Points:
1. Money: we haven’t got as much as we should. We spent 10 grand on beer over festival(last year 7.5) Something weird is going on…
Our beer is expensive, should look into profit margin of beer.
We need more money if we’re going to expand and alcohol is a good way to do this. Fraoch isn’t even organic?
Action we’ll investigate other beers…
2. Church hall: despite the lack of money we should aim to be running the building officially. We should be in charge of Hall bookings etc. Loud stuff up there is great. Must pay for itself so during day could have paying stuff (capoeira etc…) and at night have our cool free stuff of if someone wants to charge, we charge them-no way café can generate enough money to pay for upstairs as well.
As long as there’s no fire escape we can have no more than 60 people…eventually we’ll get it. The settlement will pay for building of fire escape, must be sure of long term certainty of plan. We would need a manager. We should also start planning for next festival upstairs-wise.
Action: will make an offer and try and negotiate price and arrange for festival
3. Promotion: We need to do that. More stuff like the ECA thing. Make flyers about what is forest. We could have business card type thing with a little forest description and a come volunteer motto or something. We’ll advertise for a promoter-organization and distribution
(Jane action)
4. Committee: Who are we? Who aren’t we?-what do we need: Politics, Library, Shop, Promotion.
Gareth says you should be doing something if on the committee.
Bikes-John is gone
Politics-as a charity it’s a sticky issue-should change name i.e.
campaigning.(political literature and films, political education, no agenda just everything)
Library: maybe get some free subscriptions. Basically no lending, just reference and just have someone to organize it.
Shop: it would be awesome. online shop?
Sound engineer…
5. Sound Engineer: We spend all this money for all these cool toys~(PAs etc), it’s really easy to put on events BUT there’s no sound engineer which makes it hard to put on a good night. We need one. It’s too much work for any one person to volunteer..
Sound engineering colleges could give credits to students for volunteering their sound engineering skills here. Otherwise just pay someone Could have a couple of workshops and thus create an army of forest sound engineers. Could bribe them with some studio time as well. Either way it would make a tremendous difference.
Action: Ryan’s on it.
6. Car: Marcin wants to take the car and go on holidays. for about a week. Mat is in charge of car. 3-4 days should be ok. Marcin will be asking Mat.
7. Shopping for Gallery : Soundsystem( 4 speakers)- we already have speakers in media room which they can use. Also we must have a cd player and a digital camera but if not they can get one.
8. Outdoor Happening: Lots of multimedia, just plain amazing arty happening. Do we ever say no to parties? Since we live in Scotland there would have to be some shelter. And of course this will cost us quite a few drachma. We could do it on Crammond Island. At this, someone(?) suggested buying a steamboat. Oh oh-we could have a boat party!
9. Garden: Blue wants money for the garden. Blue is amazing but the new staircase might destroy the garden. I’m not even putting the next bit in these minutes... Anyway, we decided we should still give him some money. £50 if he promises to ditch the compost.
10. Workshops. September is coming and we will hype them up. Ras is still the man. We should promote promote promote.
Should have a volunteer meeting. ? No just end of the month. Should be advertised with students and be more open, presentation
11. Recycling: What do we recycle and how? Because Bristo has been reorganised we separate into glass and everything recyclable which isn’t glass. LEEP take cardboards but they also take our money. We do not like this and intend to do something about it-volunteers is where it’s at.
12. Employment: Ryan is wondering what’s going on? He wants about 2 days a week in kitchen and will apply for anything that might possibly come up.
13. Manager: We need a manager for upstairs if we get it…Promotion can be part of it. But we must make enough money for that to work. Should advertise immediately. Should be part-time, mornings…? but we’ll discuss this another time.
14.Display fridge- We bought one for £1,200. Was it worth it? We should make it look lovely. Also could be prep surface.
15. Any other busy ness? - computer, video camera-we should have more than one computer in the office and we should get a………
That was more than enough business. the end.