please comment on leaflet

i’m drafting a leaflet for our publicity. it’s more or less all copied from previously agreed wording, to try to avoid a long consensus process!  i’m thinking we can use it for greenbelt, but it’s not specifically designed for this.

what do you think? http://thresholdbristol.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/threshold-leaflet-v4.docx (b&w version most likely to be used) or this colour version http://thresholdbristol.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/threshold-leaflet-v2.docx (I’ve always thought we’d print in black and white so haven’t paid too much attention to colour).

it maybe be better to separate comments on design and content. btw, i’ve not been able to print it myself yet and expect to need to change font sizes etc. it would be good if you could do a trial print to have a look.

jenny

cancel august?

can anyone make the august reflective? i know lindsey and I are away and bea and phil are unlikely to make it. last year we cancelled august because of holidays etc. we could always meet up at greenbelt as a side order.

let me know by next saturday if you want to go ahead with an august reflective…

also, i’m drafting a leaflet to print for greenbelt (just info as we’re not doing anything for greenbelt now). i’ll send this round to everyone for comment.

jenny

Statement of consensus

1. Our current pattern of meeting twice monthly, one reflective and one social, is not our best option, so we should change it to something preferential.

2. Our reflectives are our most valued part of threshold and we like them just as they are so they should remain once monthly, however we need to make them more parent friendly.

3. In an attempt to make them parent friendly we are going to move them to a parent friendly time at a child friendly location.

4. We will start trialling new child friendly venues at a weekend day-time slot, and stop as soon as we have consensus. Our priority for our trial is that the venue has something to entertain children requiring little or no parental supervision, then we will consider other preferences such as: centrality and/or transport links, ambiance, drink selections etc. Hopefully we will find a venue that ticks all of these boxes, but compromises may have to be made. We will start with the Watershed/Cinekids. Hopefully this will work and consensus agreed. If not we will then try the Kensington Arms in Redland which next meets most of our preferences. If consensus still isn’t reached we will try (in order until consensus is reached): the Annex Inn off Gloucester Rd Bishopston, St Werburghs City Farm, Avon Packet Coronation Road, The Velindra Redcliffe and finally, if we have the stamina, Spring Gardens Hotwells.

5. Our socials are not working for us. This is for a variety of reasons, some find they don’t have the capacity, others dislike the inflexibility of having to hold them even when we would sensibly cancel them because they are advertised on the webpage, others think the fixed and formal nature makes a weird dynamic for a social.

6. The best way to meet the needs of people who want to meet socially without putting extra obligation on those who don’t is to make socials ‘side orders’, meaning they are not equal to the central reflective meeting and are completely voluntary, ad hoc, individually initiated events.

7. It is important they remain one-offs in character so that they do not become part of the threshold staple diet. For example an ‘every third Thursday film group’ would not be an appropriate side order because it’s regular and fixed nature could make it a staple, but a one-off visit to the cinema to see a film that seemed particularly pertinent to threshold followed by a threshold discussion could be a side order. Side orders should, therefore, be individually initiated as ad-hoc, one off events where no-one need turn up (and the individual who initiated it should be prepared for no-one to turn up with out holding it against anyone).

8. Side orders would ideally meet on the alternative weekend at the same time and place as the reflective. For example if we reflected at 13.00 at the watershed on the third Saturday of the month, a side order should consider the first Saturday of the month at 13.00 at the watershed as a possibility for the side order. However, this alternative weekend side order slot is by default cancelled unless someone organises something. Also, to counter side orders seeming too formal, this is just a slot for consideration, Side orders can be held at different times and locations, even more than one a month in theory (although the built in self regulating mechanism of us having to plan them and people having to voluntarily turn up makes this unlikely), and at people’s homes if that is appropriate and would make them parent friendly.

9. Because side orders are not a central part of threshold they are not meetings where people can make first contact with threshold. If anyone e-mails threshold or joins the facebook group and wants to make contact, first contact should always be through the reflective, reinforcing it as the central meeting. However, the google calendar and a ‘side orders page’ on the website and the e-mail list (all 3 should be used to avoid exclusion) should be used to initiate a one off side order so that perspective members can see the type of things we do if they visit our website. The title of the side order, date and time and person initiating it should be advertised, but no more, so that thresholders can contact the person organising it to get more details, such as location, any costs incurred etc. e.g. Sat 5th August, Film and post-film discussion with drinks. Film entrance £7/£5 concessions. Contact Lindsey if interested.

10. We need to change our website to show these changes. Under core principles, Meetings, we will put: ‘threshold meets once a month on the 3rd Saturday of the month for a reflective. members of threshold are also interested in meeting to discuss books or films, play games, or do creative stuff on an ad hoc, as and when basis. We call these extra activities ‘side orders’. we recommend coming along to a reflective if you are interested in finding out more about threshold.’

11. We also need an extra title under core principles: “Accessibility: Threshold strives to be parent friendly. parents are welcome to bring their children to the reflectives and we have chosen a location that is child friendly, but please note that threshold does not offer anything itself for children. We also try to choose venues with good wheelchair access. Please contact us if you have any access needs and we can advise you on how appropriate the venues are and if we can accommodate your needs.”

12. Our description will be:“threshold is a post-certainty community from bristol exploring religion without Religion. We approach this through reflectives which don’t assume a shared concept of god. join us as we inhabit a place related to other places, with no place of its own. expect a low-key, non-slick reflective that you’d cheerfully do in a pub with friends.”

13. Finally, we also need to update the Spirited exchanges site. We are no longer a new group, and it says we meet twice a month, which we don’t anymore. Seeing as it links to our webpage this doesn’t need to be an arduous task, just taking the relevant paragraphs from our website and keeping the webpagelink.

 

Can we agree?

Hopefully we will all be able to agree to this summary of the very long thread’ decisions to be made’, or agree to it with a few amendments. I have numbered the statements to make it easier to comment. Remember that no comment is consent for decision making purposes, so if there’s something in here you don’t consent to then please post below, identifying the paragraph you would like to change by its number.

We are hoping to make a consensus by June 21st, so please comment before then.

threshold reflective – decisions to be made

some of our discussion touched on practical decisions which need to be made, rather than philosophical questions which may never be answered. the main issues like this were:

• dropping our official social. people felt that it was artificial to have a fixed social, and it was an unneccesary drain on capacity (someone having to turn up in case a new person came even if everyone else was away etc). opinion seemed to be mixed about what we should do instead: just have one meeting a month/ have a book group/ have an unofficial/unfixed social time at least once a month.
• making the group more parent friendly. this is becoming an increasing issue and is also likely to be an issue for newcomers.

could these two issues be resolved by having our reflective once a month on a sunday afternoon for three hours (instead of meeting twice for 2 hour sessions)? we should pick somewhere central and child friendly (whilst also taking into account our many other preferences such as real ale, nice wine, proper gingerbeer and some food).

if we go with this idea, should we also resolve to meet up as friends inbetween? or should we have some type of philosophy/book group which could feed ideas into our reflectives?

greenbelt offering – spaces inbetween?

the other pressing decision is about greenbelt. the garden have very kindly invited us to do something in their venue (a meditative ambient art installation / performance space). they need to let greenbelt know what’s going on in their venue by the end of the month.

in our discussion last week we decided (?) that since lindsey and i were going to be there, time would be much better spent preparing for a 1 hr slot in the programme rather than creating games to be used (or not used) throughout the whole weekend. we seemed to agree that our theme should be thresholds.

there was justifiably some concern about being an authentic expression of threshold at greenbelt, and whether this was possible… we don’t want to betray our values by stressing to produce a performance. i’ve been thinking about this in the past week and i think we could achieve this by setting some quite strict boundaries on resources (such as only paper, pens, crisps and ale) so that we don’t get carried away by our ideas. the strength should be in the exploration of the ideas themselves, and to some extent we’ve done this work already. in fact i wondered whether the structure of the gb hour could be around our group’s journey exploring the concept of threshold (a great excuse to use activities from previous reflectives!)?

imagining this in gb wording the description of this concept would be something like:

“threshold

threshold is a post-something community from bristol exploring spirituality without Religion. their only concept of heresy is defining heresy. [is this us?!]

spaces in-between

experience the journey of standing still on the threshold. enjoy the place related to other place, with no place of its own. non-dogmatic uncertainty has never felt so fulfilling.”

i’m imagining activities to do with: entry/exit; changing state (threshold as melting point); sitting on the fence; being neither/nor and beyond (building on negative theology in terms of a/theism and other aspects of personal identity such as gender and sexuality); janus; twilight spirituality.

please comment as this is a starting point rather than a finishing point! what did you have in mind?

threshold reflective – up in the air

as well as agreeing some points there were other issues which needed further thought and discussion. there may never be a clear answer to these dilemnas:

• is threshold post-christian or post-secular? how does this question effect the content of our reflectives? is there a value in always assuming that someone from a different religious culture will be present? how do we react emotionally to references to scripture? is it best to assume diversity even if we seem similar? we would like to include people from any religion (or none), but so far we have all been post/christian, is it more realistic to ask guest speakers from other perspectives?
• initially we conceptualised threshold as a point of exit or entry in terms of organised religion, but we all seem to be standing on the threshold for a long time! we now feel that there is much to explore in this state of being.
• threshold meets in public, but the nature of english pub culture means that people will never join in with what we’re doing (unless our reflective was officially recognised by the venue). we talked about the difference between meeting in public and meeting for the public. at some point we would like to do something which engages more people, but this also seemed to raise some anxiety in terms of capacity issues. we also talked about trying to become a recognised event in a venue’s publicity (e.g. like start the bus or cafe kino).

threshold reflective – consensus reached?

we talked about a lot of different topics in our may 2009 reflective and so i’m going to use a few posts to summarise the discussion so far and to enable further online discussion.

this post is to cover points on which we seemed to have consensus:

• we like the imperfect creativeness of our reflectives and wouldn’t want to lose this aspect of threshold.
• we all like the outlook of a group which doesn’t require commitment and we want to keep this, even though we are actually committed to the group.
• we agreed that there was a difference between the emotive use of the word ‘commitment’ and a more pragmatic understanding of our capacity to do things. all of us are committed to the group but our capacity to contribute may be limited by various things (childcare, geography, work pressures, health issues etc).
• we thought that there are two ways to respond to limited capacity: attract new people to increase capacity or do less so we are functioning within our capacity (which leads to discussion about our meetings, for a separate post, as well as:)
• revisiting the dilemna of non-evangelism vs sign-posting. it seemed to be agreed that we needed to do more effective sign-posting and that we weren’t in danger of becoming evangelical about threshold! we decided to try to improve the website, update our description on spirited exchanges and explore opportunities for targetted advertising (such as facebook advertising vouchers). we gave each other permission to use our initiative in terms of promoting the group as long as we clearly wrote from our own perspective or using standard text. we discussed designing a new poster/flier that could be understood outside of a greenbelt context.
• we agreed to keep the decision making structure of consensus and no leadership, but this didn’t mean that we couldn’t take leadership in an initiative sense (suggesting new ideas, doing some publicity for the group).

reflection on threshold

I’ve been wondering about what it means to be part of a fluid, non-institutionalised group or community. When we started thinking about threshold roughly a year and a half ago we had lots of ideas about what being part of such a group might be, and lots of aspirations. We had lots of good ideas such as no commitment, no leaders, consensus, and numbers should not be a measure of success. However at that point I don’t think any of us had been in such a fragmented or de-centred group before, but now we have.

So I’d like to use my reflective as a reflection on Threshold itself. For example, I’ve been wondering if maybe always being under threat of collapse is inherently part of the nature of a non-institutionalised group? Are our difficulties also our strengths, or can we eliminate difficulties without losing our positive points?

It would be great if you could bring your questions and thoughts on Monday. If you can’t make it, add your comments here:

Lindsey

is threshold accessible?

we’ve recently been chatting about how to make threshold meetings more accessible to different types of people. we’d particularly like to hear your views if you’re interested in threshold but haven’t been able to come to our meetings for various reasons. what changes would mean that you could realistically attend?

making the group ‘parent friendly’ is something that has been particularly up for discussion. we don’t feel that we have the resources to cater for children yet, but there maybe things we can do to help parents attend more regulalry. do you have any suggestions?

one of the main things that was valued when threshold started was that we would meet publicly so that anyone could come along. there are also lots of benefits from meeting in a pub (including alcohol!). however, we don’t want to stay the same for the sake of it, so any ideas welcome…

reflective comments

if you have any feedback on our reflectives please comment here:

reflectives theme?

lindsey and jenny asked whether we would like to do reflectives on a theme, which we could then turn into an art installation/exhibit to engage other people/let people know what threshold is.

what do you think? if you like the idea, do you have any suggestions for possible themes?

we could have a really loose theme, like ‘thresholds’. richard suggested ‘twilight spirituality’. it could be a spiritually or culturally relevant theme (e.g. community/isolation could be cultural and spiritual).

technical help – show/hide

i think it would help our reflectives page if we could show/hide resources or instructions. does anyone know how to do this? i think it’s probably quite simple html but i don’t know it. does anyone else have any ideas about improving the site (not involving heavy time commitment)?

pub locations

our reflectives are nearly always at the cornubia (unless there’s a specific reason to go somewhere else). the socials have mainly been at the commerical rooms, on corn street. last time we had the social at the cornubia too (new management: now open on sundays). this seemed to work well.

the cornubia is our default pub for the reflectives. do we also want to make it our default pub for social meetings? if not, do we want to revert back to the commerical rooms, or somewhere else? remember the criteria is: open sunday 5-7pm (reliably), BS1, real ale, decent wine, no loud music…

spirited exchanges newsletter

jenny mcintosh is producing a regular spirited exchanges newsletter (just delivered to my inbox). the current issue has an article by frank schaeffer and a review of pete rollin’s fidelity of betrayal. if you’d like to receive these yourself, contact jenny via their website.

does anyone want to offer up anything for the next issue? or would we like to share a description of one of our reflectives?

jenny l

greenbelt flier update

sunday 3rd august: finished (?) flier design:

if this isn’t working properly look at: http://flickr.com/photos/lindseyandjenny/2727962501/

back:

what do you think? this needs to be moreorless the final design due to time constraints. small ammendments can be made though, so constructive criticism sought. it would be great if someone could bring a printed copy tomorrow.

 july 18th:

we had a chat today about various things to do with greenbelt. we made a few provisional decisions, with the proviso that everyone had 10 days to comment or object (seeing as we operate by consensus). those of us there tonight agreed that:

• we will print A6, double sided postcards. the front will be a better version of the above (so long as it isn’t perfect!). the back will look like an actual postcard, so that people can post it to someone who maybe interested in joining threshold. we will also include some more info on the postcard side, such as the first paragraph on the front page of this website (bea to email jenny).
• next time (august’s reflective on the 4th) we will bring whatever contribution we want to put towards printing in an envelope. people can also email (threshold@infinitarian.com) to leave an iou, if they can’t make the 4th. there is no pressure to contribute anything, and if you do feel pressurised bring an empty envelope! whatever money is contributed will effect the number and quality/ recycledness of the fliers we produce (with a sensible limit if much money is contributed…).
• our august social is cancelled, but we will replace it with a meeting at greenbelt. our greenbelt get-together will be on Sunday at 7:30pm in the organic beer tent. we agreed to provide an optional reflective activity based on the jigsaw session. people will do this in their own time, while we chat to those who want to find out more. at the end we will construct a big jigsaw. we will need jigsaw templates, instructions, pens and scissors. those on table saving duty will cut out jigsaw shapes, so that they are not drunk by the time people arrive…

please comment:

leaflets/fliers

18th july

this is the most recent low-res draft of the flier (ignore venue info details). this should obviously be at the bottom of this discussion, but you can’t post images as comments:

what do you think?

15th June:

a while ago we had talked about the compexities of getting leaflets printed – and it was surprising how many issues there were. leafleting was seen as a good way of letting people who might be looking for us find us, especially those not on-line, but there as a fine line between sign posting and ‘evangelising’. if we decided to do something at greenbelt we would need leaflets too. but how would we fund them? we have tried to run at no real cost to memebers and don’t want to gpo down the route of bank accounts or threshold ‘owning’ anything.

i have an idea for a leaflet, and I’m sure others do, and I’ve had an idea about paying for them. i thought we could have a ‘buy a pint’ box at meetings. then individuals who wished to could ‘buy a pint’ for the leaflets by contributing the price in the box when they were buying drinks. how many pint you wished to buy, if any, would be entirely up to the individual. over several meeting we might get enough money to pay for the printing, and any extra could be used to buy a round at the next threshold meeting. i think this would give everyone the chance to contribute, but to their own means and preference, in an easygoing, non-coercive way.

my idea for the leaflet is a medley of photographs and text boxes. the photos would be of different ‘thresholds’, and each text box contain one of our core principles. i’m imagining a green filter over top, the colour of the international fire exit signs, so the photos are ‘green and white’ (akin to black and white) and the texts are in a white font on a green background. on the back of the leaflet we could have the description of the group from the website/spirited exchanges profile: threshold is a bristolian community….  and contact and website details. I think we could add labels to this basic design for different purposes, e.g. we could print labels about times and date for greenbelt beer tent reflective and stick them onto the leaflet.

i know everypone will have lots of different ideas, and as a creative group we’ll end up with loads of options (both how to pay and designs). I just wanted to get the ball rolling on a discussion, and seeing as this is a ‘agenda’ it didn’t feel right to bring it up in the social, and it’s not reflective, although a session on designing the leaflet does have potential to be. so i thought this was the best place to have this discusion.

lindsey kh

greenbelt get-togethers

We have been having discussions about doing something informal at Greenbelt (Christian arts festival on the August Bank Holiday). Our ‘event’ won’t be in the programme and will probably involve sitting around a table in the organic beer tent.

Greenbelt also coincides with the date for our 3rd Sunday of the month social. I think it would be quite nice to stick to our normal time and make the beer tent the venue for August’s Social (this would be 5-7pm on the Sunday evening). What do other people think?

Also, if we decide to keep the normal time for the social, do we also want to do a quick reflective at another time/ at the same time/ not at all? If we wanted the reflective at a different time, I think Saturday would work (and then interested people could join our social on the Sunday). How many of us are likely to be at Greenbelt? Will  anyone not going to Greenbelt be miffed if we move the social to Cheltenham?!

Once we’ve discussed these questions, we’ll set a provisional time. I’ll then liaise with Gayle to find out if the time clashes with anything we may want to go to (or things other threshold-potentials may go to). If you have anything to add to the list of things we don’t want to clash with let me know! The list I have in mind is: anything by other Bristol groups, The Garden Brighton, Ikon/Pete Rollins. This link may help you add to the list: http://www.greenbelt.org.uk/lineup/. 

At some point we need to design and print some type of flier. This has already been debated online and in person so I won’t add to that discussion here (see http://thresholdbristol.wordpress.com/2008/06/15/leafletsfliers/).

social, reflective … and discussion?

One of the things that I enjoyed about the cool wall game was that it engendered discussion about what various aspects of God-stuff meant to us. Reflecting on that, I wonder whether we should try to increase our discussion quotient a bit. The social meetings have been good to get to know each other a little better and the the reflective sessions have been good for acting reflectively in a public setting (indeed a public house). But I wonder if there is also space for an occasional deeper discussion about some aspect of religious belief or practice, such as prayer or the kingdom or inter-faith commonalities/conflicts or omnipotence/weakness or … whatever. Maybe we could try something like that in the second half of the social meeting?

Richard

where and when to meet

We’ve just come back from the Cornubia for a social. This was a good pub according to most of our criteria, but they shut at 6pm on Sunday. They seem open to staying open slightly later for us, but at the moment we’re really too small to ask such a big favour. However, they did say that Mondays there are quite quiet. Is this somewhere we’d like to go for our reflective sessions? Also, should we be thinking about having our social session on a Monday too? It seems to be really difficult to find a city centre pub that’s suitable and open on a Sunday. An argument for this is that everything could be simpler if we end up meeting in the same place, on the same day of the week. I’m sure there are reasons against this, so please comment.

We did commit to exploring different pubs for a few sessions. Please suggest where we should go for the next reflective session. This will need to be a relatively quiet pub, in the city centre, with real ale! This is the minimum requirement…

greenbelt

do we want to ask to do something at greenbelt this year? it would be something light like a pub meeting or low key installation. points to consider: is everyone going? we’re a young group? what would we do?

discussion

we have now set up a website/blog and this discussion page is intended to take over from the facebook discussion forum. this is so that anyone can access the information, without needing to join facebook. to keep you up to speed i will copy in discussions previously on facebook.