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?

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/).