Meeting Minutes Feb 2017

Pagan Collective of Victoria
Meeting Minutes – 26/02/2017

 Location: Peacock Inn Hotel, Northcote                   Start Time: 11.42AM

Attending: Luca, Sarah, Shaz, Josie, Ryan, Nikole, Ange, Mark, Alex, Dorian

Apologies: Dean

 Presidents Report

The PCV has gotten off to a bumper year with a busy start, there have been a lot of new faces appearing at events, it seems that there is success in creating a safer community. We have already had a fantastic public Lughnasadh ritual. With Pagan Pride Day coming up there is a lot to be excited about at the moment as we continue on into the year.

Vice-Presidents Report

We have such an exciting month coming up in March with Community Safety Month being rolled out and Pagan Pride Day as well as the concert. The community continues to grow and come together and it is an exciting time for the Collective as well as to be a member of the community.

Treasurer

The accounts are currently sitting at $25.60 in the bank account and a further $18 in the PayPal account.

Ryan recently paid for our Annual Statement to Consumer Affairs, part of our ongoing obligations as a Not-For-Profit, which was about $55 and the cost is a donation from him.

We have about $300 odd in ticket sales in the Eventbrite at present from ticket sales for the Spiral Dance/Kacey Guy concert, tickets are selling very well at the moment and will continue to do so.

Secretary

There isn’t a lot new to report on this front, memberships continue to grow; we now have over 340 signed up members and over a thousand FaceBook followers.

Meetups

Hills

The meets keep getting bigger, newbies every time and there have been about 15 or so people at each one, always really positive attitudes and discussions. Everyone is happy with them and the café loves having them there.

CBD

These meets are now on average getting 20 – 30 people every month. The venue likes us, as they are quiet on Sundays so they are getting better business on the Sundays that we are there. There are some really good discussions going on, had a great community safety discussion at the last meeting with lots of input from the community which is fantastic and people are really positive in general.

Central

Due to having to cancel the first one there hasn’t been a meet-up in Central yet, the first one is happening in April. As a result there isn’t much to report here yet.

Frankston

We had the first one at Groove Train and there was at least one person Dorian didn’t know, the turnout was reasonably good and went well, looking forward to the next one and it looks like it will be quite a success.

Druid Coffee

Due to circumstances beyond control, the location for the meet-ups have had to change a number of times in recent months and this seems to have caused some disruption to the meet-up. It looks like it will be able to stay at the Peacock Inn, which will help to have a stable venue again. They would appreciate some assistance in advertising to help spread the word of the event to help get it back on stable footing. Mark has offered to ask Julie if it is ok to share the event in Druids Down Under and other such groups, in addition to the PCV sharing the event.

Morris Report

The Morris Side is now at the stage with the dance they are learning that they can start learning a second dance. They are looking forward to getting to the stage where they can dance with other groups, as well as being able to accept and train new members. They are also looking forward to their upcoming workshop with members of established Morris side, Hot For Joe. They are feeling more confident and are in the process of joining the Morris Ring and will get their first year free, which gives them insurance for things like injuries of the dancers or others such as audience. They have had semi-permanent loan of Morris Bells and Sticks to help them with getting off the ground. The source of the loan has also offered to give a workshop on Morris and loan a Obby ‘Oss. The Side has got a growing following within the community which seems to be somewhat interested in the antics of the Morris Dancers.

Pagan Pride Day

Edinburgh Gardens confirmed as the venue, with the list of participants and the ritual confirmed, and a timeline pencilled in. Speakers to be contacted to provide details for the flyer, and traditions who have not confirmed speakers to be followed up in the next couple of days for confirmation.
Confirmed that the PCV’s Mabon ritual will be run at this event, and that it will be a Wiccan-style ritual

Spiral Dance/KC Guy

Transport and accommodation costs for the musicians have already been covered; at this point in time the event will break even, but further promotion would definitely help. Posters have been delayed due to printing issues, but internet promotion is going well. Josie, Alex, and Nickole volunteered to assist with door staffing; Mark will be official event photographer.

Recent Public Statement

The PCV statement in response to the impending release of sex offender Robin Fletcher was released on the 10^th of February and received a flood of positive responses from the wider Pagan community, with 80 groups and prominent individuals co-signing the statement, and many more expressing support and appreciation for it and the PCV’s condemnation of child abuse, non-consensual sex, and violence.

Looking forward, we are collating educational resources as part of further community support; these will be distributed both on and offline, to promote awareness of safety at Pagan events. Statements from local groups are also in the process of being collated, and it was agreed that the convenors of the various meets, moots, and gatherings around Victoria should have a safety policy as part of their basic information. All group hosts present agreed.

As a knock-on effect of the statement, we have had more people coming to PCV events specifically because they have seen that community safety is a priority. This is incredibly heartening, and something we wish to work further towards.

It was suggested that the PCV website and Facebook be updated to reflect the diversity and commitment of the committee, as it is comprised of people from many different traditions, practices, and backgrounds, working towards a common goal of building a supportive, safe, and healthy community.

It was also proposed that with this in mind, a media liaison group for the PCV may be a good idea. This will be discussed further, as will further support structures for a safer community.

Review of Business Promoted

The community calendar has grown so much of late that it is now a herculean task currently maintained by only a couple of people. in order that our committee be able to maintain their jobs and relationships, it was unanimously voted in that we will no longer chase up events, and will rely instead on event organisers providing us with information. This may mean that some events are no longer advertised but on the plus side the committee will be able to spend time with their families.

In the light of our focus on safe spaces, this may also change our advertising policy but at present none of the events we advertise have been flagged as potentially problematic, so we will implement the new calendar policy as previously described.

Samhain

The public PCV Samhain ritual is being hosted by Seline and it is going to be on the 30^th of April. At the moment that is what is known, more will be put in the committee later and can then be spread on the event page and advertising later.

There is a slight clash of dates for committee members, Nikole is going in an official PCV capacity and possibly Luca.

Blog and WordPress Workshop Day

The blog is going on really well, we are scheduling items ahead of time so that we have stuff going up every week, on time, every time. We are getting a lot of hits on the articles, which would indicate that this new format seems to be working

We are happy to show other committee members how to use WordPress so that more people can use it. So if people are interested in this contact Mark and Josie and we will set up a date once we have an idea of numbers of people and can work out a venue.

Imbolc

When we had the last meeting we didn’t have anyone to run Imbolc, but the Reclaiming community has kindly volunteered to run it on the 5^th of August in the Darebin Parklands, Nikole will liaise with us and let us know what Reclaiming needs from us and any other details that come up so we can advertise and help in whatever way is needed.

WWCC

It has been a requirement for some time that all committee members hold current Working With Children Checks, and in light of our focus on community safety, it was agreed that copies of all committee members’ WWC cards be kept on file (which will not be made publicly available as the cards contain personal information), so that the PCV can rest assured that all members of the committee have passed a WWCC.

Working With Children Checks are a pre-requisite for being on the PCV committee, and all committee members’ cards will need to be on file before the next AGM. it was also suggested, with full committee agreement, that anyone running public rituals for the PCV be required to have a current WWCC. This refers to the main ritual organiser, though of course if others involved also have WWCC, that is an advantage.

This is a way of maintaining community safety in relation to minors in the community, and also to improve confidence in public ritual spaces in the eyes of the community.

Welcoming Events

An idea has been presented that we need a welcoming committee, at events have people that go out of their way to make sure new people feel welcome and safe and to answer any questions to help make sure that the community continues to encourage the open and safe nature of PCV events, it is an idea at present but there is no set way to do it yet. Possibly will include having an event once or twice a year, informal, new people are invited and we present information and have an informal dinner and chat sort of thing.

It was proposed that we could possibly have some dates that happen at meet-ups where we encourage new people to attend and run the event so that it helps them to feel welcome. We shall continue to discuss this on the FB group due to time constraints today.

Possibly we should consider having ‘Newvember’ and have a newbie month or perhaps ‘NeoVember’ where we make sure that we run stuff that is ultra-inclusive as part of this.

Yule Dinner

It looks like it might be at the Last Jar on the 24^th June, probably 2 courses to cut costs and make tickets more affordable.

A subcommittee shall be formed to help organize – Sub-committee – Ryan, Alex, Sarah, Josie, Mark (decorations), Ange (decorations) and shall liaise further to get this rolling.

The community expects more than sausage. They want custard or a Chikko Roll.

Meeting End: 12.49

June 2015 Update

Brrr! We hope you’re all keeping warm on these long, cold nights and frosty mornings! We’ve been in recovery mode after the Yule Dinner, but the CBD Pub Moot saw us swing into action once again. 🙂

CBD Pub Moot – We had a rocking good time at the Melbourne Central Lion Hotel yesterday, and the turnout of 20 was far more than we expected! It was lovely to share a drink and discuss our different paths with old friends and new in such a relaxed atmosphere! Thanks very much to everyone who came along!

The first CBD Pub Moot, June 2015. Photo courtesy of Mark.

AGM – There is less than one week left to nominate for the AGM. If you would like to join the committee (whether it’s as a general committee member or in an exec role), you will need to email us before midnight on the 3rd of July. This is a great way to get involved with community building across Victoria, and to have a say in the direction of the Collective. We have only four committee meetings a year, which is not a big face-to-face time commitment!
The AGM itself is taking place on the 18th of July at Stuzzi in Northcote. Click here for more information.

Imbolc – Our Imbolc Ritual will be hosted by Melbourne Reclaiming. A Facebook Event has been set up for it over here.

Hills Coffee Meetup – The next Hills Coffee Meetup is taking place on the 12th of July at the Magpie Cafe, Upwey. Newbies and any/all branches of Paganism are welcome – this is a friendly, inclusive meet-up, and a chance to connect and chat with other Pagan folk on a variety of paths. See the Facebook event page for more information.

Yule Dinner – The Yule Dinner was a fantastic success! We shared a sumptuous meal, laughed and enjoyed some stellar live music. Catching up with old friends and making new ones, we bid farewell to the longest night and looked forward to good things to come.
Congratulations again to the recipients of the 2015 PCV Awards:

Ben F – The Keen Bean Award (for a member under 25 who has made great contributions to the Collective).

Sarah M – The Most Active Member Award (in recognition of Sarah’s support of the PCV since the very beginning, and of her tireless work organising and facilitating the Hills Coffee Meetups).

Kacey – Most Distance Travelled (Kacey came from Adelaide just for us!)

Seline C – PCV Lifetime Membership Award (in recognition of Seline’s long-standing contributions to the Victorian Pagan community, and of her support of the PCV since its beginning).

 A huge thankyou to everyone who helped to make the Yule Dinner happen. This was the PCV’s first large-scale event, and its success is due to the many people who worked tirelessly behind the scenes.
Thankyou to Mark H and Belinda L-J for the beautiful photos! There will be even more up on the website shortly. Hugs, gratitude and wishes of safe travel to Kacey, who flew over from South Australia to share his wonderful music with us. Thanks also to Mei and Mark for the decorations and party favours! A big thankyou is also needed for River, Nickole and Sarah, who helped us promote the event to their wide networks of contacts. And finally, thank you to everyone who came along on the night! We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.
There have been a number of photos from the night published in the Yule newsletter. We will have a full set of photos here on the website in coming weeks. 🙂

Newsletter – The Yule newsletter is out now. As well as photos from the Yule Dinner, it includes a summary of the results of the members’ survey, and article about the Wildwood tradition and more. Members, please get in touch if you didn’t receive your copy. 🙂

Meeting Minutes, February 2015

Many thanks to Mark for preparing these minutes. 🙂

Pagan Collective of Victoria

Meeting Minutes 21/2/2015

 

Present: Ryan, Josie, Mei, Mark, Sarah, River, Nickole

Apologies: Cosette, Bret, Brett, Hawthorn, Lisa, Fiona, Seumas

Absent: Rosanne, Allison

Meeting Location: Magpie Cafe, Upwey

Meeting Open: 1.17PM

 

1. Presidents Report – The collective hit one hundred members this month, that’s really exciting given how long we’ve been running. The coffee meet ups have been going fantastically, with lots of new faces young and old.

 

2. Secretary’s Report – Due to some issues with the stickers for the membership packs the posting out of membership packs is slightly behind. The new stickers have now arrived and look great, so we can resume sending out membership packs to everyone again.

 

3. Treasurer’s Report – The incoming and outgoing for the collective has still been $0, everything has been donated by Josie and Ryan so far. The collective bank account hasn’t been set up yet, however with no immediate income expected there isn’t an urgent need. Josie and Ryan will set one up with the Bendigo as previously agreed, it will be a standard not for profit account.

 

4. Memberships – 47 new members have been approved for the Collective

 

5. Newsletter – As always we are looking for people to write new content for the newsletter, submissions will be the 14^th of March and hopeful send out will be the 21^st. Mark volunteered to look into writing an article.

 

6. Coffee Meet Ups – The coffee meet ups have been successful with good attendance, lots of diversity of attendees and amazing levels of enthusiasm.

The potential of a metro meet up was proposed with Sarah offering to help Ryan get it up and running and provide advice. The specifications/concerns people had were that the venue was not too loud/busy, that topics of discussion were provided each meet up and that it didn’t clash with the times Melbourne Pagans in the Pub meet up.

The action decided was that Ryan and Sarah would attempt to get one running before next meeting.

The possibility of a Central Vic meet up was raised with a few locations suggested – Hepburn Springs, Bunninyong and the Botanical Gardens in Ballarat.

The action on that was that Josie, Mark and Mei will look into setting up a meet up before next meeting.

Sarah raised the problem of exposure for the meetups, Facebook Pages and Groups struggle to make it into newsfeeds under the current format. The solution decided was that if people could try and like and share events to help everyone reach a decent audience it would be greatly appreciated and help ensure the success of the events having a good turnout.

 

7. Samhain Ritual 2015 – Selene is available again for Samhain Ritual, the dates will be discussed with her as well as what she requires (bring a plate?, materials, etc.).
8. Yule Dinner 2015 – The venue that looks best from the research Ryan did is called The Last Jar, it is located at the Carlton end of the CBD so is fairly accessible. It has an upstairs function room they would be willing to let us use. The food would allow for a vegetarian option that would also cover vegans.

Ideally the collective would need 30+ attendees to make it worth The Last Jar’s time.

The date for the dinner was tentatively set as the 13^th of June with the venue being The Last Jar.

Awards to be decided on for giving out at the dinner, examples – most distant member, most active, young persons award, daggiest witch etc.

River has offered to help promote the event.

A sub committee consisting of Ryan, Josie, Mei and Mark was formed to meet a few times before the dinner and continue working on the event. The first sub committee meeting was scheduled for March 14^th.

 

9. Members Survey – The survey for the collective was discussed with Mark presenting the brainstorming for questions ideas that occurred between meetings. People were happy with the proposed questions and added a few more to the list.

It was proposed that a breakdown of the survey information be published (all members details to be kept confidential of course) because there would likely be interest in how our community looks as a demographic.

The membership survey was approved and Mark and Mei will to set it up, a link to it will be sent out once it is up.

 

10. Changes to committee – Charlie T’s official resignation was given to the committee and accepted.

 

11. AGM – The collective needs to hold an AGM mid year, the date the committee decided was the 18^th of July at 1PM and the proposed venue (TBC) was Stuzzi. Nickole offered to book the venue.

The offices up for vote will be President, Vice-President, Treasurer and Secretary. Again general committee positions will be available.

 

12. Proposed Membership Fees for 2016 – So far the collective has run as a free organisation, however running the organisation has costs and these have been getting covered by Josie and Ryan. A comparison of other groups fee structure and services was looked at and the breakdown of predictable costs for the organisation were discussed. The categories of membership were proposed as singles, joint/family, Interstate and International. The exact costings will be decided after more research into the issue and cost of insurance.

 

13. Insurance – Josie needs to talk to a few more people about the possibilities and costs for insurance and present the findings to the committee.
14. Dates – Dates for the remainder of the 2015 meetings were discussed with the following outcome:

• Sat 9^th May 1PM (city, venue TBC)
• AGM Sat 13^th June 1PM (Stuzzi TBC)
• Sat 12^th September 1PM (rural, venue TBC)
• Sat 12^th December 1PM (Cafe Magpie, Upwey TBC)

 

15. Imbolc Ritual 2015 – The date for Imbolc is tentatively the 1^st with the venue proposed as the Darebin Parklands.
16. Annual Ball – Sarah proposed the idea of an annual ball, with the proposed first one being in 2016. The idea of it being at Samhain with a suitable theme was suggested as the tentative date.

The ball will be an adult oriented event with music, dressing up and drinks (licensed venue).

Sarah will check with Philippe and Selene to make sure they do not have an issue with a ball running at that time and to ensure no clashing with events they host.

 

17. Meeting Locations – The proposal that there be more CBD meetings was raised by River. Sarah volunteered to look for a suitable city venue for the next meeting, everyone agreed to let her know if they heard of anywhere suitable in the meantime.

 

18. Skill Sharing Across the Pagan Community – Nickole discussed the idea of skill sharing across the community and the possibility of workshops being organised (and better promoted). Possible workshop topics would be skills, ritual, spell and traditions. With the idea of making it more accessible for people to gain cross tradition knowledge and skills.

It was decided to wait until the survey results are in to see what sort of traditions members follow and if there were people willing to run workshops and share skills before more action is taken.

 

19. PCV Crafts – Mark proposed the idea that the PCV start to assemble bunting to have at events it was at, to give more exposure but also as a community exercise. It was decided that bunting will be made up, blank and taken to meetings, coffee meet ups and other events where members can grab one to decorate in a fashion that reflects them or their path, with the final product being returned to us and being attached to the community efforts. Hopefully this will be a nice reflection of the positive community that is in Victoria and will look fantastic at events such as Mount Franklin.

 

Misc. –

• It was proposed and accepted that the PCV logo should be made up into a digital pack that is available for use in a variety of formats -jpeg, gif, black and white/grayscale etc. This will make it easier for other people that want to promote the PCV.
• Earthsong will send a details pack to the PCV so they can receive advertising through the collective.
• To ensure the community (PCV is fine but if you feel ok with it sharing other groups too it would be fantastic) is getting decent exposure please make sure to like, comment and share events and posts that are advertising events and announcements.
• The idea that once paid memberships become a thing in 2016 that the PCV have membership giveaways on Facebook was proposed, to be looked at once its applicable.

 

Meeting End: 3.38PM