Oxford Meeting 2010-05-03

Minutes

Action Points

  • Beccy to talk to Hannah Lewis about doing ‘radical climate action’ workshop and making the most of outreach opportunity (e.g. offering TVCA marquee, catering, etc) – send round summary to the list
  • Brad to find out about last years workshop from Jonathan Stevenson and circulate
  • All check if your free that weekend and contact list if you want to attend/ contribute

  • All who volunteered to research local campaign ideas to prepare one A4 sheet for discussion on Saturday
  • All phone (at least) one of your friends and encourage them to come along
  • Graham and Beccy to plan an informal process for encouraging and capturing discussion of campaigns at the Picnic
  • Graham to coordinate discussion process at the Picnic
  • All to come and bring food, drink and something to BBQ
  • Ellie and Carl to be outward facing/ meet and greet people during picnic
  • Bard to research local campaigns against Didcot power station
  • Carl to advertise Party at the Pumps and coordinate meeting point for TVCA people going
  • Carl to create some guidelines for writing minutes on Crabgrass

    Key decisions
  • Set loose timetable for local campaigns Picnic (Beccy will circulate)
  • Informal discussion process needed to enable and capture discussion at the Picnic, more in-depth discussion and decision-making to follow at TVCA monday meetings over the next two weeks
  • Not to do a Tar Sands action in the morning of Picnic due to lack of capacity but to use picnic as recruitment and planning opportunity
  • Action points to be at the top of the minutes
  • Actions points to be reviewed at the start of each meeting
  • People to let the group know if they are unable to complete there action points so someone else can pick them up and the group to understanding and accepting of this
  • Create some written guideline to help standardise minutes which will act as a point of reference for explaining whats required to first time minute takers

Peace News Summer Camp, 23-27 July, Oxfordshire

  • Hannah offered to do workshop but suggested we need someone more involved in TVCA
  • Great community engagement opportunity could have bigger presence e.g. offer marquee, catering – needs some planning/ investigation
  • Deadline for confirming workshop 7 May

Picnic/ Action, Saturday 8 May, South Park (Meet at OARC 1pm)

  • Proposal to do a tar sands action in the morning – theatrical caravan touring targets central to east Oxford
  • Lack of capacity to organise another week could be preferable, picnic could be used to recruit/ plan for action
  • Local campaigns being investigated: aviation, incinerators, fuel poverty, possibly Cowley Pool. Any other ideas? Didcott.
  • It could be useful for researchers to prepare a short brief on what they have found
  • Personal contact (phone, email) best way we can ensure people come along – pref to mass emails
  • To ensure we get good discussion and its captured for decision-making in TVCA meetings we may need a discussion process and someone to coordinate it
  • Need to keep it informal there is no set aim for the day just informal info sharing and feed-in.
  • Decided previously that in-depth discussion and decision-making would take place in TVCA meetings over two weeks
  • Need to have a discussion/facilitation process for monday
  • To make it accessible and welcoming to all need some ‘meet and greet’ people who can be there all day
  • Possible fundraising opportunity – bring bucket to shake and ‘meet and greeters’ can think more about this.
  • Lots of energy for making it a BBQ – need to remind everyone to bring (barbecue-able) food

Party at the Pumps: Action Saturday 15 May, Oxford Circus

  • Been asked if TVCA want to contribute to this action – not much energy/capacity for this
  • Some TVCAers will probably go we should organise a meeting point and travel together to encourage linking up and get more people to come.

Reviewing action points and minutes

  • Issue with action points not getting done because people take on too much – need to create a supportive environment where people can tell the group if they are unable to complete them
  • Meetings could be more task-focused with group regularly checking tasks being achieved status
  • Need to make more use of action points – start meeting reviewing them and make sure they are realistic, put them both in the minutes and on Crabgrass
  • Difficult for newcomers to TVCA to take on tasks like minutes as we have no guidelines for how to do it

PROPOSAL

  • restructure minutes to begin with action points and key decisions, encourage minute taker to get at least these out within two days
  • begin each meeting with review of action points
  • have an understanding as a group that we are accepting and supportive of those who cannot complete action points as long as they inform the group in time
  • create some guidelines for how to produce minutes
  • Discussion about weather guidelines would be a good idea and whether they would make it more accessible or more dominating
  • Friendly amendment: guidelines should not take the place of give people guidance in person but act as a reference point to make sure minutes follow standard format
    CONSENSUS

Announcements

  • Community Engagement meeting, Thursday 7pm
  • Emails – delay in setting up new low traffic list. If your getting to many emails from TVCA email oxford [at] climatecamp.org.uk and we’ll sort it out
  • Skint Fund-raiser, Tuesday 15 May, The Cellar. Save the date more info on the way.

Agenda

Peace News Summer Camp

From the TVCA inbox …

My name is Beth and I am currently helping to organise the second ever Peace News Summer Camp 23rd to 27th of July in Oxfordshire – for info on Peace News see www.peacenews.info and for info and reports from last years camp see peacenewscamp.wordpress.com

Last year Jonathon Stevenson did a workshop on Radical Climate Activism – and when we contacted him about doing a similar workshop he recommended you .One of the things we want from this camp is to build links outside the traditional peace movement. Would anyone be interested in doing this workshop?

I am hoping for a workshop on radical climate change activism and another workshop on Samba – the request for this list was for radical climate change activism, but there might be cross-over between this and the local samba group.

One reply from when this went out on the list …

I’d be interested in this…I’m hardly involved in TVCA though (at the moment im doing more national stuff) so maybe it should go to someone more rooted in local stuff?

Deadline to reply to Beth is Friday 7 May

Announcements

PARTY AT THE PUMPS PART 2… THIS TIME IT’S SHELL!

MASS ACTION CALL OUT

When: Saturday, 15th May
Meet: 1PM at Oxford Circus
Bring: a zone 1-2 tube pass, noisemakers, your friends & family and your dancing shoes
Oxford Circus meeting point map: tinyurl.com/OCnw-SVmap

Shutting down a petrol station for 5 hours on a sunny Saturday afternoon was so much fun we’re going to do it again. Shell’s Hell – in the tar sands and beyond – is next in the firing line.

Party 1 had Samba, twin sound systems, a live Ceilidh band, face-painting, free cakes and 200 people. Party 2 will be bigger and better, with activists joining us from Brighton, Oxford and beyond. See here for a video of Party at the Pumps Part 1:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=An6-tdxd12M

And for all you cyclists out there, there will be a special Party at the Pumps Critical Mass making its way to the party. Meet 1PM at Marble Arch (under the arch).

Get ready for sunshine, music, and dancing on the forecourt!

Update on newsletter / announce / low volume email list

From riseup …

For the past year or so, we have been unable to activate any new lists, as we were upgrading the software and hardware to add new capacity. The end is in sight though, and we hope to be able to start activating new lists within the next few weeks. However, I cannot promise exactly how long it will take, as we have close to a thousand pending lists. So if you urgently need a list immediately, we suggest you try our friends at activix.org or resist.ca. But if you are able to wait a bit longer, we should be able start adding lists soon!

(Oh, and when we are back on track and adding lists, it generally takes one to two weeks to approve a list.)

In the meantime people can join send requests to get the newsletter by emailing oxford [at] climatecamp.org.uk (no need if you’re going to stay on the oxford-cca list – the newsletter goes to that list as well.)

Community engagement meeting THIS WEEK

Community engagement meeting this Thursday in OARC at 7pm. We’ll be discussing what we mean by (and want from) community engagement, and looking at how we can move forward.