Manchester Permaculture Network
Minutes of Meeting, 23/02/09

Kelda and Jane’s House, Chorlton
 
Present: Adele Myers, Rob Squires, Kelda Platt, Jane, Luke, Helen Fulcher, Fraser How, Jane Morris, Sev, Zoe, Jules, Agata Alcaniz, Chris.
 
Futuresonic festival May 2010, Manchester. Anybody want to contribute then talk to Zoe.
 
Events planning

March: El Salvador + Unicorn at Unicorn (Jane + Zoe) Wine making .. film making .. as fallback options. Adele help with film if this is the case.

April: Tom and Jed’s Excellent adventure. Fraser

May: Last Monday is bank holiday. Visit Offshoots Sat May 30th (Kelda)
18th El Salvador + Unicorn or Burnley Offshoots

June solstice: Sunday 21st, herbal event, Birchfields (Jane, Adele)
Jasper the herbalist. Tim the herbalist. Adele the herb draweralist

July: July films (Adele) + trip to Middlewood (Jane to contact Rod Everett),

August: festivals, Birchfields, permaculture education (Jane, Fraser, Kelda, Agata)

Jane C: Mar 22nd Auyurdevedic herbalism talk here.
Jane M can get Hulme Hall if needed, maybe useful for March.
 

Feedback from Feast
Thank you to Adele, Kelda, Simon. Films on blip.tv, thanks to Hulme Hippy (probably Mick?)

Adele: expressed concerns about people bringing food to share + setting up stalls. Agata expressed concerns that event planning was closed. Situation arose because of communication confusions at previous meetings.

Bands etc were excellent. Thanks to them as well.
Adele + Kelda would like to do another, maybe at harvest supper.
£40 to put to web site. £24 owed for domain. £16 for a rainy day.
Talks were in the dark, which could have been better. Af-e-we supplied for half price (£70), would be happy for us to do it again.

Decission: Thank all contributors on web site, including Af-e-we.

Constitution
General discussion about 2 ‘model’ constitutions from Treesponsibility and Hulme Alliance, and the content that should go in a good constitution. Jane M not into consensus. Feels establishing aims is important. Discussion about whether:

-         we should have a constitution;
-         we should have any money at all;
-         whether people should get paid to do stuff for the Network;
-         we have the capacity to run a constituted group;

It would be very useful to focus on clarifying aims of Network.

Action: RS to look into changing name of bank account.

Blue sky discussion - if we had money .. we could have free courses, cover costs of visits .. build urbine wind tubine out of recycled materials, bee keeping, compost toilets etc. What is the niche for MPN. Can it be more creative? A focus on urban solutions? Apply people care.

Decision: delay decision to a planning meeting Monday June 29th, about aims and purpose.
Action: Agata to organise venue and agenda.

Web Site
Now 19 people registered, but there is a lack of content provision and we need a plan. plan.

More workshop stuff would be useful so that people can learn about content provision, and how to use the web site.

Content or editorial roles needs to be described.
Discussion about what kind of content do we want?

Action: Agata to organise a Sunday workshop on 29th March.

Discussion about editorial issues.

Action: Fraser to create a discussion forum for people to talk about how to use and develop the site.
Action: RS to put up minutes on site.
Decission: People who organise events, to put up content for it.
Decission: Rob + Fraser to assume an editorial role, to be reviewed in six months time.
Action: Rob to email Kelda about old content to put up.
Action: Fraser to look into putting a link to the web site on the yahoo group emails.

 
Thanks to Kelda and housemates for hospitality. Special thanks to Luke for homemade pizza.