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?

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…

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…

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/).

Monday 5th May 2008 Meeting at Llandoger Trow

Just to let you know that because of the Bank Holiday our usual pub for reflective sessions is closed. So we have decided to meet in the Llandoger Trow instead. Sorry for any confusion.

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…

are we happy with chosen pubs?

richard wrote: I haven’t made it to the Portwall Tavern yet so can’t comment on it as a venue. Was there a strong reason for not just meeting in the Llandoger Trow on Mondays as well as Sundays?

bea wrote: It was the balance between wanting nice beer and a nice venue – the LT is large and has lots of cubby holes suitable for meetings, but the beer is rubbish – PT has nice beer but is small…

jenny wrote: Perhaps we should swap over which pub we use for what? The PT is fine for a social and the LT would have more privacy for reflective sessions. We’ll meet at the PT tomorrow night though.

lindsey wrote: the current pubs don’t really work. I propose we try a different pub each time over the next 6 or so meetings. Then we can make a decision based on our experiences of warmth, accessibility, noise level, beer, space etc. As long as we give plenty of notice this shouldn’t matter. I propose the royal navy volunteer as the next venue. If there is consent (no-one objects) Jenny can send out details in a facebook event invitation nearer the time/Phil can e-mail. In the meantime lets keep thinking of alternatives.