Green Vision met at Ben’s Cafe on 13th October. Becky’s minutes from the meeting follow.
The Future
We discussed what the best way forward was from here having had a couple of meetings which were not very well attended. It was pointed out that we have lots of support still but everyone meeting on a specific day is difficult with so many different schedules. Also noted that people come out in force for project events so we need to focus on what projects we are doing next.
Mimi, Fin, Tom, Sid, Jamie and Katy of Green Vision met in Jika Jika Café today to discuss taking forwards the projects we still have on the go.
Vision Space
We have decided to pursue the idea of creating a community space designed for young people, and having looked at property prices, decided trying it in a house would be much more practical than in a shop. The purpose agreed last time resonated with us all: “young people sharing ideas, affecting positive change and bringing people together”. The word indicates towards this and as such the term ‘Vision Space’ or ‘Vision House’ is a possibility for what we come up with.
The potential of the proposed vision space to play host to the community food project is also exciting to us. A house would have a kitchen, making it easy to cook in, and would be a space we could develop creatively for our own purposes and to be of use to young people.
Rachael is to begin writing a proposal for this project and we will meet up to agree further elements of it soon.
Community Food
To initiate this project properly we have agreed to run an event at the end of August, proposed dates being Saturday 27th August and Sunday 28th August. This event would see us using a city centre kitchen - Jamie is to investigate using the Age Concern centre - and serving hot food both on site and off site in the city centre.
At the weekend Tom spent time working with The People’s Kitchen at a festival, a very similar project that usually runs in Hackney. He learned from the experience that having someone that knows how to cook in charge of the kitchen was key. Subsequently we are going to contact Ben of Ben’s Café, Walcot St, who cooked at the Youth Climate Summit.
This event may have a few legal limitations in Health & Safety and in serving food in public. We will have to investigate this in the next week.
We are also going to investigate small grants available to get the project going on a regular basis. The grant money would pay for equipment, a small fee to pay to the head chef and a small donation to the venue playing host to us.
Organisational Structure
We’ve decided to aim to make our meetings more exciting, having less ‘talking shop’ meetings and making activities part of our regular meetings. The proposal is that we have a talking meeting the first Thursday of each month then ensure to be active at each other meeting. The activities could include guerrilla gardening, cooking a meal or showing a film. This does not mean these activities could not take place at another time.
We also furthered discussions as to whether Green Vision should be formalised as an organisation. Jamie advised us to become a charity - it makes getting funding much easier, you can have trustees under 18 and simply being registered inspires trust and respect. It also makes holding property easier, if and when we are to further the ‘vision space’ project. Those present thought it was a good recommendation.
Our next meeting is due to take place on Thursday 18th August. We are planning to meet by our guerrilla garden at Calton Gardens and make lemon-balm tea with the crop that has appeared there!
by Mimi Trevelyan-Davis
Green Vision met today to discuss the possibility of the ownership of a space to use as not only a meeting area (rather than relying on filling our beloved Jika-Jika or venues such as the Manvers Street Baptist Church) for Green Vision its self, but also for other groups of young people looking to meet and discuss ideas with like minded individuals.
We finalised our purpose: “Young people sharing ideas, affecting positive change and bringing people together, under the name Vision.” We decided that it should be multi-purpose, not only for Green Vision, but for other societies and groups looking to meet outside of Schools, Colleges and other establishments and to utilise the space.
We discussed various different spaces, including shops, houses, flats and offices, and decided that although a shop may be the most practical, it would not be the most cost effective (being very expensive) and it would be easier to run a house or a flat for these purposes.
Finally, we discussed various ways to fundraise such a venture, including charitable donations, trusts/foundations and utilising PTFA (Parent Teacher Friends Associations) or their equivalents in Schools.
Rachael will be writing a proposal shortly to outline all of the discussed ideas and more in more depth.
by Rachael Hayman
Green Vision met today at Manvers Street Baptist Church. We were very grateful that the generous Lucia, from Manvers Street Baptist Church was able to offer us a room free-of-charge. The venue was great; a spacious room with plenty of chairs to facilitate our growing team. We are now looking into the possibility of using this venue for our forthcoming meetings, or at least until we are able to obtain a space of our own.
We chose to postpone the planned ‘Open Space’ discussion, as holidays and other commitments meant that many of the group were unable to make it. Instead, we discussed our mission and future projects.
Mission
As Green Vision continues to expand, we are becoming involved in more and more exciting projects, especially various campaigns such as our recent Guerrilla Gardening stunt. Our current mission declares that we aim to be a ‘positive movement, raising awareness and taking action against climate change.’ We also felt that a general theme to our actions was to ‘provide the alternative, rather than complain about it.’ Whilst recent discussions of our possible campaigns on bus and train fares in Bath do not exactly fit this mold, that does not mean we don’t want to get involved, we just feel that it may damage respectful relationships between Green Vision and the Bath Community. Therefore, we discussed the option of only using the Green Vision name when we are providing the alternative, and perhaps using an alternative symbol for our other slightly more rebellious forms of activism!
Projects
The Climate Summit has taken place (and what a success it was!) and we now have two ongoing projects:
Business Survey
Tom has had his business survey ready for months, but we’ve been so busy arranging the Climate Summit that we haven’t given it to local businesses yet. Jamie has a list of all the independent businesses in Bath, so all we need to do is take around 10 businesses each to email, and hopefully meet in person to conduct the business survey.
Action needed:
Community Food Project
Over recent months we’ve been looking into the possibility of a Food Project; distributing surplus food in the form of a free, tasty meal in the city centre. We have spoken to groups such as Fareshare and Foodcycle, as well as Simon who was looking to start a similar project at Bath Spa University. Whilst we have decided that it is slightly outside the objectives of Green Vision we hope to arrange arrange a meeting to network all these subgroups that we have found to have a similar aim to enable them to work together to create this project.
NEW! Community Space
As much as Green Vision are Jika Jika loyalists, we really feel that it would be great to have a space of our own; it’s about time we had a Green Vision ‘home!’ Having seen so many empty shops around Bath, we think that it is a great opportunity to create our own space in the town centre. We would use this space to hold our weekly meetings, but also to address an important issue important issue raised at the Climate Summit; the lack of space for young people to hang around in town. Therefore, it would be utilised as a Green Vision meeting location on a Thursday evening, and as a general Community Space at the weekends, allow young people to discuss and share ideas with like minded people. In the long term, we hope to have the Space open every day, allowing other Community groups to use the venue free-of-charge.
Action needed:
Communication
Times/Dates of Meetings
We felt that there was often some uncertainty about the dates of Green Vision Meetings due to the alternating Tuesday/Thursday system and decided that we would always have meetings on a Thursday to avoid conclusion.
As this can be a big time commitment, we discussed giving each week an objective, ie: meeting as a whole group on the first Thursday of the month, and allocating the other weeks to particular projects to allow members to attend the meetings that interested them the most. We would then regroup on the first Thursday of the next month so that we could catch up on developments across all projects. We will discuss this again following the Open Space when we have gauged levels of interest across particular projects.
We recognised the issue of some members being unable to leave school in time for the meetings, and decided on a drop in session between 4 and 7 once the School year recommences. As this spans over meal times for most families, we have decided that food will be included (at a particular time?)
Flyers/Posters
We also discussed the possibility that the parents and guardians of some of our younger members may be wary of allowing their children out in the evenings on a school night. We hope this will not be a problem, but will make sure that our flyers are available for Green Vision members to show their parents (so that they know we are a legitimate meeting!)
We would also like to produce posters to raise awareness of our meetings, and intend to do this before term restarts so that prospective Green Vision members don’t sign up to other activities that would clash with the meetings.
Next Meetings:
Thursday 4th August 2.30-5.30
Thursday 11th August 2.30-5.30
Thursday 18th August 2.30-5.30
Thursday 25th August 2.30-5.30
Thursday 1st September 2.30-5.30
Thursday 8th September 4.00-7.00
Minutes by Rachael Hayman
Green Vision met again on the 9th to discuss the Community Food Project. Since the previous meeting on the 12th April, Foodcycle have expressed an interest in starting a hub in Bath, and were looking towards working with us. We have decided that this is a good opportunity; offering the tools and experience to allow us to take this project forwards.
We have revised a few aspects of the project. We are now considering Saturday in place of Sunday, as Genesis offer a £1 roast on a Sunday. The volunteers who run the kitchen and provide table service will be over 16, to overcome problems regarding handling of food and employment. We are also looking to include some more mature members to form part of the ‘core team’ required by Foodcycle, as we feel that students may not be able to commit the full 10 hours per week all year round.
However, whilst this may take some time to forge this partnership with Foodcycle and as we are very keen to give as much time as possible whilst we do not have a lot of school work, we decided that we would like to run a ‘trial’ event without the support of Foodcycle, to be held during July to grasp how the project will work. It would start at 12pm and last around 4-5 hours. Volunteers would be needed 2 hours before to prepare the food, as well as adult assistance in collecting the food the previous day.
From this, we drew up a list of action points which were as follows:
Today was Green Vision’s best attended meeting to date, with 15 young citizens packing out Jika Jika. This was a sign of our schools visits paying off - six attendees (from 3 different schools) had met us at one of the visits.
Top agenda item was the Youth Climate Summit, which is now only a month away. There are now 14 confirmed speakers on the first day, including the two keynote speakers: Mark Lynas and Rob Hopkins. The workshops on the second day are diverse and creative, the latest confirmation being from a company leading a workshop creative improvised climate change musical! The summit is now full, with 120 young people from 10 schools attending.
We also discussed facilitation training for existing members of Green Vision. This will be used on the first day of the summit. Although each speaker has a 50-minute slot, only 30 minutes of that will be occupied with speaking. The remainder will be ‘open space’ discussion time, designed to enable reflection on and brainstorming around the issues raised in the talk. Forty young people will be trained professionally in facilitation for this purpose.
We also discussed guerrilla gardening. Transition Bath have gained permission from the council to guerrilla garden a large, prominent plot in Hedgemead Park and Green Vision is going to help them out. The first event is tomorrow closely followed by one on Sunday. Everyone is welcome!
Three members of Green Vision are together applying to appear on Channel 4’s documentary series on youth campaigning, Battlefront. Camille, Mimi and Rachael made this awesome video as part of the application. Their proposed campaign is about guerrilla gardening and springs from the work Green Vision has been doing locally.
We’ve been trying to get our food-waste reuse project off the ground for a while now and we’re now making rapid progress! Tomorrow (1st June) we are meeting with Foodcycle, a national organisation that co-ordinates hubs around the country (such as the one we visited in Bristol) to discuss setting one up in Bath. Their expertise, financing streams and insurance would make the whole process a lot easier!
Although on hold due to exams, the pop-up cinema idea is still on the table. Just Do It is a soon-to-be-released film about the more rebellious side of the climate movement, following groups involved in civil disobedience; it’s one of our top choices of films to show. We’re going to investigate whether we could borrow solar panels and a large battery so we can power the showing from 100% renewable energy.
Phew, that’s a long update! I haven’t even mentioned our talk of a pop-up shop/arts centre and considering formalising Green Vision into a limited (not-for-profit) company. This is very exciting stuff but all still in early stages - expect more news soon.
If you’d like to get involved in anything mentioned here, or want more information, please contact tom@greenvisionmovement.org.uk or jamie@greenvisionmovement.org.uk. We look forward to hearing from you!
Green Vision met today in our favourite coffee house/second home, Jika Jika. Below is a summary of what we discussed. Don’t hesitate to contact us for more information or to get involved.
Visiting Schools
We have now visited Ralph Allen, Kingswood and King Edward’s Schools. We have appointments to visit Beechen Cliff and the Royal High. The visits have been very useful both for feedback on Green Vision’s work and to engage new people with the group. It is also highlighted the need for a link between sustainability activities in B&NES schools and that Green Vision could become this.
Food Meeting
We are meeting on April 10th to finalise details of our plans for a food waste reuse scheme, in which waste (but edible!) food is cooked and served. Rachael has contacted several local shops head offices and arrangements certainly look feasible, if on a small scale. Hygiene certificates will be a necessary bureaucracy. We’ll also need a bigger volunteer base so plan to contact the University of Bath and Bath College to get some of their students involved.
Pop-up Cinema
As well as Guerrilla Gardening we plan on running a ‘pop-up cinema’ event to engage with new people. This would feature ‘Beyond the Brink’, an acclaimed documentary about climate change, and feature an ‘open space’ discussion. We’re not sure on the venue, but as long as somewhere secure and suitably dark can be found, we’d like to do it outside on an early summer evening.
7 schools have now confirmed attendance and we are chasing up a few more. We’re also keen to attract interested and self-motivated individuals to attend, so will be doing some flyering and attempt to get an article in the Bath Chronicle. We’re visiting the facilities at the University of Bath on April 7th to get a better idea of what we’ll have available to us.
Business Survey
This is now ready to carry out, having been checked and commented on by a member of B&NES council’s economic development team. A date will be set and results should be in shortly!
Transition Talks
Transition Bath are running a series of talks at the moment which was thought to be of interest to Green Vision members. The next ones are on April 2nd (communication and climate change) and April 16th (growing food locally).
Frome Sustainability Conference
Tom, Mimi, Jamie and possibly Rachael will be running a workshop and pop-up cinema at Frome Sustainability Conference on Friday as members of Green Vision.
Green Vision met today, here are the minutes, in brief.
We initially discussing our plans for cooking and distributing edible food waste from shops and supermarkets. Foodcycle do not have the resources to help us open a hub under their supervision at this time, so we are going to pursue it on our own. Just under a month ago we visited Foodcycle’s Bristol Hub and will hopefully seek their advice. We now have to pursue the tough administrative side of this task - i.e. finding premises and getting health & safety training.
We continued planning B&NES Youth Climate Summit, as ever. We now have Mark Lynas, Rob Hopkins, Kirsty Schneeberger and the Oxfam Youth Board, among others, confirmed. We are now aiming to get a few more local speakers and some sustainable transport pioneers.
Over the past few weeks Green Vision has also been visiting schools in Bath & North East Somerset. So far we have visited Ralph Allen, King Edward’s and Kingswood and we now have appointments to visit Beechen Cliff and Chew Valley schools. We are aiming to visit all schools in the county and are in contact with at least half of them. At these visits we have talked about the Youth Climate Summit, Green Vision’s activities, how people can get involved with Green Vision and how Green Vision can boost activities within schools.
Our business survey is now in final draft stages, with feedback being sought from people with the relevant expertise, such as the county council’s economic development team. We will hopefully carry out this survey in April.
We’ve got a lot on the go now, but it’s still all in planning stages. We’re all looking forward to realising some of these plans in the near future.
Green Vision met today to continue our discussions about this year’s B&NES Youth Climate Conference.
Our artist in residence, Rachel, has been designing some wonderful flyers and artwork to use on the day which will go out with the invite letter to schools very shortly. The structure of the two days has been agreed upon, with the first day focussing on the wider problem and its solutions and the second day looking how the students attending can begin to save the planet themselves.
This second day with not only involve specific guidance on environmental actions that can be taken, but mentoring on leadership, co-ordination and communication - things vital to all activism. I will not name any speakers for the first day as many are not yet 100% confirmed - but suffice to say the bill looks great so far!
We are also investigating the food situation for the two days - we will be providing local, sustainable lunched in a way no-one attending will quite expect!
In other news, a draft for our survey to be put to local businesses was created this week. This will be refined and distributed in the next couple of weeks, with results published and acted on soon after that.
Green Vision met last week in Green Park Station, with the main focus of the meeting being the annual B&NES climate conference which we are organising in June.
Jamie (our facilitator) is to visit schools in Bath in the next few weeks (with cake!) to discuss sustainability with members of staff. He will try and scope out interest for Green Vision as well as attendance of the conference.
The conference is to have a new, more exciting name, and is scheduled to take place at Bath Uni on 29th and 30th on June. It is to be aimed at year 8 & 9 pupils. It is to focus on the social and human impacts of climate change and environmental issues, and at the societal shift that is required in the next years. Speakers and workshop-leaders will most likely be younger this year and all attempts will be made to make it relevant and engaging. Green Vision will organise events in the weeks after the conference so that interested attendees can get involved right away.
Guerrilla Gardening is on hold for the moment, but will resume as soon as the weather improves with support from Lyn, a keen local Guerrilla gardener.
The survey we plan to take to the businesses of Bath city centre still has not been written, but we aim to get it completed very soon with a view to hitting the streets between 21st February and 5th March.
Jamie and Katy visited ‘Fareshare’ in Bristol, a group that take out-of-date food from supermarkets, cook it and give it to the local homeless population. We are going to visit ‘Foodcycle’ in Bristol, a similar but possibly more relevant group, before deciding whether to try out our own.
We also discussed whether we could run a stall at Bath Farmer’s Market in the near future.
Green Vision is to meet next on Tuesday 1st February. If you are interested in coming along, do not hesitate to contact us via the contact page.
Green Vision had a small meeting yesterday to discuss the course of action for the next few weeks, and to see how we could progress our currently active projects.
We have recently received a provisional offer from Wessex Water to use their headquarters for an event of some kind. Our present plan is to hold an event for up to 25 young people and 15 adults involved in local decision-making to highlight the issues, brainstorm solutions, and hopefully initiate some collaboration.
We have realised that while focusing on practical action in the last months we have no defined vision or mission - we have a mission statement from our original formation last year, but other than that we are fairly fluid. This is something we hope to address in the next week with a day of facilitated discussion and planning. If you are a young person local to Bath, e-mail tom@greenvisionmovement.org.uk if you are interested in getting involved.
Guerrilla Gardening projects have been put on hold until the weather warms up, but our food waste projects are starting to get going. We are planning to help initiate some sort of formal co-operation between food retailers and charities such as the Salvation Army or local homeless shelter, Julian House.
We are also discussing how we can get involved with those who are as yet relatively unexposed to the pro-active side of sustainability, in schools - but that is a discussion for another day.
Below are the minutes from the first meeting of the 2010/11 academic year. This year we are to have Jamie Colston, a successful local campaigner with Transition Bath, as facilitator to the group. We are very excited to develop a productive working relationship with him!
