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!
