Inititating Group Minutes: 6 Jan 10

Transition Town Kensal to Kilburn

Minutes of Initiating Group – 06-01-2010

Present:  Careen Hertzog, Jane Edwards, Elaine Henderson, David Young, Clare Latham, George Latham

Newsflash!

Just after the New Year we received the exciting news that we have received a grant from Brent Neighbourhood Working Funds of £7,868.  This is great news and will help us to grow the project rapidly this year.

Initiating Group

We are welcoming David Young and Michael Stuart to the initiating group.  Michael is going to contribute to the initiating group for 6 months, before moving on to focus his energies on the apple project. This takes our number to 7 at the moment.

Organisational Structure

Now that we have a budget to spend we need a bank account and therefore to become a proper legal entity.

We intend to become an Unincorporated Association.  It’s one of the simpler structures to set up, is used by residents associations such as QPARA, and also by most Transition Towns.

David Young was ‘volunteered’ to be treasurer so he and Elaine Henderson will be setting up the Unincorporated Association.

We expect to receive the money in the next financial year, and have a fairly detailed budget as part of the grant application, which we will make available on the website.

Now that we have reached this stage the time is also right for us to apply to become recognised as an ‘official transition town’ by the Transition Network.  We have to fulfil a certain set of criteria to do this, and we think that we are ready.   Achieving official status will open us up to more support from the national transition organisation.

ttK2K Identity

This is also the time for us to create a more professional identity for ttK2K.  We sent out a message to those on the website this week asking for help from a graphic designer to create a logo and brand identity for the project.  We’ve received a great response and look forward to what comes out of it.

Website

We want to take a look at how effective and functional the website is.  We have several people within our number who have IT and website skills.  Jane Edwards is going to organise a web design/IT meeting to see what improvements we can make.  If you are able to help, please contact us.

Food/Gardening

We are very keen to push forward with some permaculture/ permablitz activity.  We are still looking for some expertise in the field to help us, but we have a number of active sites under consideration.

We want to make use of Martin Hughes seedlings supply, and Jane Edwards also has access to some.  We are considering a farmer’s market stall to distribute and promote.

We are planning to make a proposal to Queens Park that we should create a community garden in the park based on the St James’ Park allotment model.

Draft Busting

Aim to launch soon, David Young and Siobhan Cross organising.

Faith Walk

Inspired by the Tooting Earth Walk we are planning a multi-faith local walk taking in some of the different local places of worship. Careen Hertzog will be organising this and we are aiming for a date before the end of March.

Transition Handbook Bookclub

Aim to have the first meeting at the Library on Salusbury road during February, George Latham and Tania Spooner organising.

Film Nights

January’s film is ‘A crude awakening’.  This is the first film for which we are going to have to pay a licence fee to show, but the Lexi has kindly agreed to absorb this cost.  Those shown to date have been free for not-for-profit events. George Latham to discuss with other Transition Initiatives how to minimise licence costs.

We feel we need to introduce a bit more variety into the films we show – a number so far have been variations on a similar theme.  We might consider a Slow Food film festival, or a number of short films at future events.

Some might want to watch ‘transition’ films at home or in smaller groups.  Between us we are developing quite a collection of relevant films.  So why not share them? We’ll be setting up a ‘library’ facility to enable transitioners to borrow films such as The Age of Stupid/ the End of Suburbia etc.