Meeting Minutes: February 18, 2018

Many thanks to our secretary Mark for putting these minutes together. 🙂

Pagan Collective of Victoria

Meeting Minutes 18/02/2018

Present: Josie, Nickole, Dorian, Elkie, Alex, Sarah, Mark, Ryan

Apologies: Seamus, Ang, Shaz, Dean

Meeting Location: The Last Jar, Melbourne

Meeting Open: 12.38 

1. President’s Report –

We are now back into things again after the Christmas break. The committee dinner was a great opportunity to get to know each other better and we will try and do these a few times a year to help strengthen our bond as a team. Patreon is up and posting more to come later in the meeting.

2. Secretary’s Report –

There isn’t a lot of new news on this front at present, we are overhauling the membership sign-up process and database to make things more efficient.

3. Treasurer’s Report –

We currently have about $17 in the account, the first of the Patreon payments won’t come through until the start of the next month.

4. Meet-up Reports
   Hills

The Hills ritual went really well and they are hoping to be able to do something like this again in the future. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

CBD
The numbers continue to go well for the city meetup, with a good regular attendance, there is going to be a slight change to the discussion format as it moves forward this year. They are contemplating doing a Facebook live at a future event.
Ballarat
Ballarat meet-ups are still in discussion with the possibility of running four a year on the table at present.
Frankston
These meet-ups are still continuing on and are going well with some regular faces as well as new faces turning up each meeting.

 

Swinburn

The first Swinburn pagan event will be coming up soon, it is very exciting.

5. Morris Report
The side is still continuing on in 2018, working on getting the skills up ready to be performance ready. They are attending English Ale in May. They have begun learning a second dance (Dilwyn) and are practicing processionals.

6. Patreon

Patreon is now live and posting. Thank-you to everyone that has supported, contributed to and worked on getting it live. Also a big thank-you to everyone that has become a backer, or been helping share it around.

7. Website
The overhaul is well underway and now blog posts immediately post to the Facebook as well. The site is getting anywhere from 50 – 200 hits a day. That is frankly amazing.

 

8. Facebook
   The stats are up really well, so please continue to share and interact with it to help keep this up.
9. Membership
   We are updating the form so that when a member signs up it sends it straight to our database (which is being overhauled) We will be contacting members to confirm their details and to ensure they know their membership number.
10. Community Safety Month

Have a lot of articles lined up ready to go throughout March so that our social media will be posting something every day designed to provide the community with access to information that will educate and inform in a variety of aspects of safe community.

 

11. Spiral Dance
    Yes they are still coming to Melbourne, no we don’t have the date yet but will be posting more about it when we do. This will be branded as a PCV presents event.

    12. Pagan Pride Day
    The date has been selected as April 7^th.
    Sarah will be drawing up a list of speakers and presenters for the various traditions and paths in Victoria as well as the various groups currently running events open to the public.

It has been proposed that we have a Druids v Witches Kubb game on the day, it will be a light-hearted thing, designed to be entertaining.

13. Seasonal Celebrations
Yule – this was to be organised by Dean? We will need to clarify

Autumn Equinox – we currently don’t have someone running the equinox now that Pagan Pride Day is in April.

14. Instagram
    We now have an Instagram that is being run by Dorian at present. It can be found by looking for pagancollectivevic.
15. Workshops
    It would be great if we can start announcing some of the dates for workshops, so could the committee members who have volunteered to run workshops please start trying to work out the dates for their workshop. These will probably be 1 – 2 hours in length and $10 – $15 for non-Patreon backers.

    16. Chat Bots
    Ryan is investigating chat bots with involves direct engagement content with users. He is currently learning about how to use them and will run it when this gets off the ground.

 

17. Inclusive Language

It was raised that we should consider changing some of the language on our website and social media to make it more inclusive. It can sometimes come across as slightly Wicca or eclectic witchcraft centric and it would be a shame if that made people from other paths feel left out.

Meeting End: 1.50 PM

 

The PCV is Now on Patreon!

Help support us for as little as $1 (US) per month and get rewards such as patron-only content, priority sale to ticketed events and free entry to our workshops.

Membership to the PCV is free, and we want to keep it that way. We don’t believe access to one’s local community and the potential support network and friends therein should be put behind a paywall and limited to those who can afford it.

With that said, as the Collective has grown in popularity so too have our costs. When we first started out, costs were covered by a small group of founding members. Now that we have grown much larger, we’re hoping that our community can help us out with some of these costs via a small monthly contribution, and maybe help to fund some exciting future projects, too!

Meeting Minutes: August 2017

Pagan Collective of Victoria

 

Meeting Minutes 20/8/2017

 

Present: Josie, Ryan, Carrie, Nickole, Geoff, Elkie, Dean, Alex, Fran, Mark, Dorian, Lucas, Sarah, Seamus

 

Apologies: Shaz, Ang

 

Meeting Location: The Last Jar, Melbourne

Meeting Open: 1.05 PM

 

 

1. President’s Report –

It’s been another great year, the meetups have really flourished and grown, the calendar is our most visited page on the website and the feedback has been really positive overall. We are now moving into our fourth year as a successful not-for-profit and it is exciting to see it continue to grow and flourish.

 

2. Vice-Presidents Report

It has been an exciting year full of challenges. We have faced them head on, made hard decisions and come out stronger and better off for having dealt with these challenges head on. Very happy to see the PCV continuing on to new and better things.

 

3. Secretary’s Report –

Memberships have continued to climb in a fairly even fashion over the year, we now have over 340 registered members out there and over a thousand Facebook likes. Pretty exciting, some of the members are even from other states and countries.

 

4. Presentation of Accounts (Treasurer) –

Apart from the Spiral Dance/Kc Guy concert there was not really any financial activity, at least on the income front. We still have the usual costs of website, annual fees to consumer affairs etc. which are covered by donation from committee members (Josie and Ryan). Currently we have $142.70 in the bank.

 

5. Meet-up Reports

It is worth noting that the PCV has done around 100 free events (just PCV and affiliates alone) in the last 12 months. In addition to this we advertise even more events on our calendar (paid and free) from non-affiliates.
We have had a lot of interest in how we do things in The Pagan Collective of Victoria from across the globe, apparently we run a model that other people think works really well.

Hills

The Hills as usual continues to grow, amaze and flourish. It has a really warm open atmosphere that encourages people of all walks to attend. It is currently a victim of it’s own success. For the colder months advertising of the event has had to stop because more attendee’s than the venue can handle are turning up. In the warmer months they will be able to expand out into the front garden and comfortably accommodate the numbers they have been getting.
The possibility of having a new Hills event that takes place mid-week has been raised and will be explored further if there is sufficient interest to attend/run it.

CBD
There are a lot of people attending every month, the venue is dealing well with the numbers (on average 14 – 20). This meet continues to follow the same model it has of general chatter, then once all anticipated attendees are there a discussion topic is presented and everyone has a chance to have their say. This continues to run for 11 months of the year.

Creswick
Continuing to have attendees that haven’t come before attend them, it seems to be growing quietly, still on a quarterly basis. It has been heartening to meet so many different pagans from around Central Victoria.

Frankston
These meets continue on with some growing interest, Dorian is happy to keep hosting these events quarterly.

6. Redbubble

Redbubble has been discussed previously as a potential place to sell merchandise for the PCV and it’s meet-ups.
Sarah has kindly offered to design merchandise and is in the process of adapting the logo etc. for use on the Redbubble account once it is set up.
For the new members – the reason the Redbubble was suggested over another form of merch was that there is little to no outlay that would have to come out of donations from the committee and people are able to just order what they want from our store.
Dorian is also offering up some of his artwork for use on items in the Redbubble.
The aim is for January next year to the time that we go live with the Redbubble store, allowing time to set everything up correctly so it runs smoothly.

7. Mount Franklin

It would be great to have a display this year at the Gathering with flyers etc. advertising the groups, probably similar to the one from Pagan Pride Day. Also to have the PAN community safety flyers.

The PCV has been asked to run the children’s May Pole this year, our intrepid committee member Alex has offered his services for this job.

A core group from the Hills are running the ritual this year and may need some assistance at some points prior to the Gathering which we will happily provide.

8. Midsummer

This event is going to be a family friendly event held at Fairy Park in Anakie, attendees will need to buy a ticket from Fairy Park to get in, however apart from that it is running as a free event.
The event is on FaceBook already with details on there for people interested.
According to the staff at Fairy Park the venue is accessible for people with mobility issues but they may need some assistance.
The event will be BYO own food and drinks (non-alchoholic only!)
The date is the 25^th of November

9. Witches of Oz Movie Night

The proposed venue at present is the Tin Shed in Belgrave, however this event still needs more research which Fran has kindly offered to do. The proposed movie is Practical Magic.

10. Patreon

It has been suggested that the PCV run a Patreon as a way to cover some of the costs that it incurs annually, without having to become a organisation that charges its members fees every year.
To this end the proposal at this point is that we consider starting a Patreon that only has a $1 reward (this doesn’t stop people from donating more). It is of course completely voluntary for our members to support us or not as they chose.
Some reward needs to be offered for supporters, after all everything we do now is free anyway, to this end it is suggested that some backer content be made, proposed ideas are a free workshop for backers and some live video etc. content only available to backers.

Action – Josie will put together and present a proposed Patreon, and appropriate rewards etc. at the next committee meeting and this can be voted on then.

11. Trivia Night

This could be a really fun way to get a variety of members and non-members together for an evening of fun and games. It could be a great night.

Action – Nickole to come up with a plan, possible date, venue and other details to be presented at the next meeting.

12. Ostara

Will be held on Sunday the 24^th of September under the Silver Birch Grove banner. It is going to have a Heathen tone and will be organised via FB.

13. 2018 Planning

Next meeting will be the meeting to set a great deal of the dates for next year so please bring your dates, diaries etc. so we can get the plans rolling.

14. Blog/Social Media

People are welcome to help with both of these things. Read that as please help committee!

15. Other Business

Swinburn Uni Student Pagans Group – contact has been made with Swinburn by Alex and discussion is ongoing with the possibility that they will get some club funding/space to run their gatherings etc in.

A history of Druidry project is underway, Elkie has been sending out questionnaires etc. to people and is compiling a history of Druidry in Australia with some assistance. We may be able to help in some small way as and when is needed.
Closing Remarks

Thank-you all and welcome to the new committee!

 

Meeting End: 1.45 PM

 

Meeting Minutes, November 2016

Thankyou to our intrepid secretary Mark for putting these together!

PCV Committee Meeting 26^th November 2016

Meeting Start: 1.32

Attending: Ryan, Nickole, Josie, Seamus, Dean, Alex, Mark, Shaz, Ang, Lucas and Fran Apologies: River, Fi, Dorian
Absent:

President’s Report
The PCV has put on over 30 events this year, which is a lot, 25 – 26 of these were coffee and pub meetups. In addition to this we had some public rituals as well as pagans in the park. There is a heap of stuff cooking up for next year which is really exciting.

Secretary’s Report
Memberships keep rolling in, up to about 209 membership now as well as over 900 likes on Facebook.

Treasurer’s Report
Nothing new to report, money in the bank is the same as the last few meetings, the PCV has not been running events that make money.

Meet-Ups
CBD Moot
This moot is getting really busy, with 2-3 new people pretty much every time that have not been met before, it is exciting to see lots of new faces. The moot is changing venues to the Last Jar for next year to accommodate the fact that we need more seats for the events. Should be slightly more disability friendly with a bathroom on the same floor, however there are still the steps at the front and a narrow door. For 2017 the moots will be running monthly but taking a break for September.

Central Vic
The Central Victoria Pagans in the Café had four meets this year, with an average of 4 – 8 attendees at them. For 2017 the Pagans in the Café and the Central Vic Heathens will be combining the coffee meets and aiming for quarterly coffee meets.

Central Vic Heathens
The Central Vic Heathens in addition to combining with the Pagans in the Café are looking at trying to run some different events next year beyond coffee meets. More to be announced as they come.

Hills Meets
These meets are going from strength to strength, running in a lovely new venue (Earthly Pleasures), getting about 10+ attendees at each meet, people attending are happy with the format, these meets will be running monthly for 2017.
Two other meet ups in the works – Hamilton, which is trying to get up and running with some support from us and will hopefully start running next year. Also Frankston which Dorian has kindly volunteered to get going next year, at this stage it will probably be bi-monthly in the Frankston area. More will be confirmed as it is organised. 
ACTION: Need to get a start date sorted with Dorian for 2017
ACTION: Need to make sure that the meets that are near each other don’t conflict with each other, PCV or otherwise so as to not make it too hard for attendees to choose what to go to.

Memberships
Seven new memberships have been received since last meeting, no objections to the members were raised, so all new people were approved.

Dates for 2017

Committee Meetings	CBD Meet-Ups	Hills Meet-Ups	Sabbats	Other
	15th January	8th January
26th Feb (attach to Druid Coffee, Northcote)	19th February	5th February	5th February Lughnassa (Silver Birch)
	19th March	5th March	25th March Mabon (Wiccans)	Pagan Pride Day 18th March Pagan Concert 18th March
8th April (Central Victoria)	16th April (needs to be changed)	2nd April
	21st May	7th May	Samhain (May date TBC)
4th June (attach to Hills Meetup, Belgrave)	18th June	4th June	Yule Dinner 24th June
	16th July	2nd July
20th August AGM (attach to CBD meet-up)	20th August	6th Aug
	17th September (needs to be changed)	3rd Sept	24th September Ostara (Silver Birch/Heathens)
14th October (Central Victoria)	15th October	1st October
	19th November	5th November
3rd December (attach to Hills Meet-Up, Belgrave)		3rd December
PCV Hiatus 24th Dec – 7th Jan

Imbolc – *stare at Reclaiming and Lucas*

Pagans in the Park/Pagan Pride Day
18^th of March is the proposed date for the event. Some of the concepts discussed were – having stalls, a festival feel and less picnic feel, showcase for traditions (someone gets up and talks about each tradition and talks about what they do and who is good to talk to if you want to go further) Need to get the ideas, for location, format etc. then scale back.

ACTION: Shaz will talk to her contacts/arch-druid to get some ideas for running it and what resources are available, possibly Fitzroy/Treasury gardens for the location, if so we need to make sure to follow all the protocols with paperwork etc. for running in such a public location
ACTION: The working group need to have a meeting for this, a date will be set.

Yule Dinner
Going to run as the same format as the 2014 one, it was ritzy, nice and well catered, Ryan is hoping to get the prices down to about $35 – 40
ACTION: Ryan is going to look for a venue and nut out a menu in the next few weeks. Going to see about getting Casey over for it again to do the entertainment.

PCV Businesses/Relationships
Is it possible to get us thinking about our kind of relationships with the businesses, loyalty programs, advertising, think of a way to have a financial exchange, perhaps have a charge for being listed on the website?, or the donation of raffle prizes for things like Yule dinner in exchange for a write-up for them in the newsletter, listings for actual health practitioners for pagan friendly businesses (mental health, physical health etc.), hire a pagan (pagan friendly employers) [Get Witch Quick]
ACTION: receipt book

Newsletter
Due to a number of issues the newsletter has become untenable; a lot of work, hard to get content in and on time from contributors and the amount of time needed to format all the content.
As part of the overhaul we would like to move to a more online format, have it set with schedule of posts hosted on a blog, still have articles and stuff that come on, keep it accessible, drive traffic up more, part of making our resources even more accessible and easy to find.
Action: Josie – make a schedule of posts etc. to try and get the format roughly laid out. Volunteers for articles and content will be organised by the committee.

Calendar
Josie has made a master document for the calendar, if you give Jo an e-mail to sign up, you can then go in and add your events and change them as need be to help with keeping our calendar as current and accurate as possible.

Julie Brett’s Book Tour
Action – Start a conversation on the PCV committee page for locations etc. for the book tour, Sooki Lounge – Hills, Norcote – Druid Coffee, Central Vic/Ballarat as well as seeing if people would be willing to play host to her while she is over to assist in making it a successful venture for her.

Samhain 2017
Seline has asked if she can run it again in 2017 – don’t have a date yet, hopefully not actual Samhain, more will be released as it is known.

PCV Concert
Spiral Dance and Kacey Guy concert at bar 303 on the evening of Pagan Pride day $25 normal entry or $20 concession. Ryan is setting up an Eventbrite, and we are thinking of running a tin around at events prior to get donations to help get this to happen (it will cover essentials for the performers such as fuel/flights, accommodation, etc.) Adrienne is making poster designs, the posters should hopefully be available for January

PCV Morris Side
We now have a Morris Side, who are planning to do their first thing at Mt Franklin, dancing the sun up at Mt Franklin on the Sunday. Any committee members wanting to join let Josie, Sarah or Mark know so they can be added to the planning group.
ACTION: Alex has now joined the Morris Side

New Committee Members
ACTION: Alex, Dean and Lucas are now committee members for the current period.

Working with Children Checks
Action – Can committee members please send copies of your WWC to us so we can make sure that we have a database of proof for legal reasons. They can be e-mailed to the official Collective Gmail account, all details will be kept confidential. Other Business Fundraising – sell the tickets prior to spiral dance and then do the draw and give out at the concert, advertise it well and it will help raise funds for the PCV, potential idea is a pagan hamper with items donated (shirt from Silver Birch and Mt Franklin) items made by committee members etc.

Grants – are there grants that we can get access to as the PCV? Fran is going to look into the grants situation as a friend of the PCV (non-committee member)

Meeting Closed: 3.02

Meeting Minutes – July 2016

Thankyou to our intrepid secretary Mark for preparing these minutes. 🙂

 

Pagan Collective of Victoria

 

Meeting Minutes 23/07/2016

 

Present: Sarah, Josie, Ryan, Nikole, Dorian, and Mark

 

Apologies: Shaz, River, Fiona, Ang, and Lucas

 

Absent: Belinda, Mei, Ben, Ceilidh, Luca, Buck, Cossette, Ceilidh

 

Meeting Location: The Wesley Anne, Northcote

Meeting Open: 12.31PM

Minutes of previous meeting read and accepted

1. Presidents Report – The meetups have run well on their own, people have come to rely on them and expect them to run like clockwork. The PCV is three years old and hopefully is now out of the honeymoon period. Its been great to see how popular the calendar has been, it is now the most visited page on the website.

 

2. Secretary’s Report – Memberships have continued to come in and be added to the database. We are now sitting over 200 registered members, it was pretty exciting to see.

 

3. Treasurer’s Report – We haven’t been raising new funds, our current balance is $310. Ryan needs to be added to the bank account at some point to bring us up to 3 signatories. Also needs to transfer the money from Paypal across to the account.

 

4. Meetups – The CBD meetups are going to move from every second month to monthly to accommodate the wishes of the attendees, the organizers are going to shop around for a possible new venue. The meetup organizers for the CBD are now Ryan, Sarah and Nikole to help with any issues of running the event monthly now.

 

Sarah motioned that as part of the inclusiveness we need to start finding out a lot more about accessibility of venues that host meetups and events so people know what to expect regarding things like wheel chair access, toilets etc. Seconded by Jo and passed unanimously this will start to be phased in as soon as possible.

 

Central Victorian meetups are continuing on a bi-monthly system, they have been growing slowly and we have seen some new faces as well as familiar ones at the meetups.

 

Ballarat PitP is still running along, although it is now being run by Evelyn who lets us know the dates for the calendar.

 

The Frankston area meetup is starting to get steam and will be keeping us up to date as things are worked out.

 

Central Vic Heathens, like the Central Vic meetups are slowly gaining traction and interest.

 

The Hills meetups have been running great at the new venue with a great turnout

 

5. Membership’s – All new memberships were approved unanimously.

 

6. 2016 & 17 Dates –

 

Jo motioned for a change to the regularity of committee meetings, that committee meetings are now going to be every two months and that the additional meetings be tacked on to days that meetups are happening so the committee can gather early have a meeting and then enjoy the meetup. Mark seconded the motion and it passed unanimously.

 

The remaining meetings for the committee in 2016 will be on the 26^th of November (Hills location) and 10^th of September (Country location, possibly Castlemaine)

 

The CBD meets for the start of next year will be (future meet dates for 2017 TBC):

15^th of January (First committee meeting of the year)

19^th of February

19^th of March

16^th of April

2^nd of May

 

7. Samhain 2016 – The ritual was an amazing success, as always Seline hosted an easily accessible ritual that fostered a great atmosphere. It was nice to see new faces, some of which were people that had never attended any public ritual before. It looks like Seline wants to host next year’s Samhain too. Unanimously agreed that if Seline wants to host 2017 Samhain then it is hers to run with again.

 

8. Pagans in the Park/Pagan Pride Day – Continuing on from previous discussions the idea of Pagan Pride day was raised again. A small working group was assembled (Nikole, Sarah, Shaz and Dorian) to start getting the ball rolling for a possible February date.

 

 

9. Yule Dinner 2016 – Unfortunately due to circumstances beyond our control (including the sale of the planned venue) the Yule Dinner this year didn’t happen. However we are keen to have another one next year, new venues to be explored and the possibility of a lower price (whether that means only a 2 course meal this time or other options to be explored futher)

 

10. PCV Crafts – A new A4 or A5 handout is to be designed (by Mark) and bunting is to be attached so we can start pushing this project. It would be great to have the first section ready for Pagan Pride Day in 2017.

 

11. Workshops – There is still a call for workshops that are cheap/free and accessible. We need to approach workshop people and try and see if we can get some of them on board to help with this. We will need to explore what avenues are available for free venues. There could be themes like divination day. Sarah had offered to be co-ordinator for this.

 

12. Policy Finalisation – Policies were accepted unanimously as the date for proposed changes had been and gone.

 

13. Any Other Business – Dorian has offered to write regular pieces for the newsletter about a different local animal each month.

 

We are going to trial a What Are You Reading segment in the newsletter, get reviews of what is being read.

 

The suggested reading page needs an overhaul with some content to be cut and other areas to be expanded, this will happen gradually over the next few months.

 

Calendar – If a venue or date for an event changes Jo needs to know about it so that she can change it on the calendar so that it is correct. We also need to consider a ban list for people or groups that keep cancelling at the last moment and no longer advertise their events. The calendar gets a lot of hits and we don’t want people getting bad info.

Jo proposed an action that we review the policy for calendar by next meeting, we need to consider redefining what suits the calendar for paganism and have parameters or a policy to cover it. Some of the events being sent for the calendar don’t seem to fit under the pagan umbrella.

 

MFPG – It would be great if the PCV could supply a person again to run the kids maypole (or a few people)

 

Sabbats – it would be great if we could run more sabbats, if we could run an event on each of the big sabbats that would be great.

 

Moons – it was discussed whether we need to offer moon or dark moon rituals, the committee already runs a lot though. The conclusion was that we run a half page ad for the newsletter and see if there are groups interested in running an accessible moon/dark moon ritual preferably in a city location.

 

A proposed change of wording to PCV friendly businesses so that the policy now reads that when possible a donation would be appreciated.

 

Meeting End: 2.10PM

 

March 2016 Meeting Minutes

These minutes were prepared by our hardworking Secretary, Mark. Thanks, Mark! 🙂

Pagan Collective of Victoria

Meeting Minutes 21/2/2015

 

Present: Cosette, Sarah, Josie, Ryan, Nickole, Dorian, Ang and Mark H

Apologies: Shaz, River, Fiona, Al, Ceilidh, Lucas

Absent: Mei, Ben, Buck, Belinda, Mark L

 

Meeting Location: The Wesley Anne

Meeting Open: 2.17PM

Minutes of previous meeting read and accepted

FB policy read and acknowledged

1. President’s Report – The collective has kept rolling quite nicely in the absence of meetings, with coffee meet ups, rituals and other events continuing on.

2. Secretary’s Report – Nothing new to report, memberships have continued to come in and be added to the database.

3. Treasurer’s Report – We haven’t been raising new funds, our current balance is $310 (TBC). Ryan needs to be added to the bank account at some point to bring us up to 3 signatories.

4. Announcements – All

– Deepest sympathies to Melbourne Reclaiming, who lost one of their own in tragic circumstances recently

– Meeting quorum policy

– Other Policies

– WWC Cards

– PCV Committee Facebook Group

5. Memberships – As the PCV isn’t really where we want it yet, due to delays caused by lack of meetings, it is moved that we do not charge for memberships yet and continue to have free memberships. All existing memberships to be rolled over until they contact us to be removed from our memberships. Due to the costs of making membership packs there will no longer be mailed out packs.

Movement was accepted unanimously.

6. 2016 Dates –

Confirmed Dates:

Sat, 19/3 – Mabon Ritual

Sun, 20/3 – CBD Pub Moot

Sun, 27/3 – PitP Ballarat

Sun, 24/4 – PitP Ballarat

Sun, 15/5 – CBD Pub Moot

Sat, 28/5 – Pagans in the café Central Vic

Sun, 17/7 – CBD Pub Moot

Sat, 6/8 – Pagans in the café Central Vic

Sun, 18/9 – CBD Pub Moot

Sat, 19/11 – Pagans in the café Central Vic

Sun, 20/11 – CBD Pub Moot

 

Proposed/tentative dates:

Pagans in the Park – Sun, 23/4 (approved)

Yule Dinner – Sat, 18/6 (approved)

Meeting Dates – Sat, 23/7 (inc. AGM) city; Sat, 10/9 country; Sat 26/11 city. (Approved)

6. Mabon Ritual 2016 – The ritual will be a ritual of abundance with a share and swap of produce. The venue charges a $60 hire fee and a $200 deposit. A small entry fee of $5 will be charged to help cover the hire fee.

7. Samhain Ritual 2016 – The venue to be confirmed on this one, we want to start advertising soon for it. The date is hopefully going to be the 30^th of April. Price to be confirmed.

8. Pagans in the Park 2016 – Labyrinth at Merri Creek is the proposed venue. As a fun activity it is proposed that a spiral dance or maypole will be taking place at the event. The idea of the event is that it will be a picnic – bring food etc to share and run it like a community picnic.

9. Yule Dinner 2016 – Once again it is proposed that a sub-committee forms to help run this and report back to the committee. Nickole, Ryan, Josie and Mark put their names forward to be on the sub-committee. A concern raised was accessibility for wheel chairs, it will be looked at this time around. Price will be worked out once venue is confirmed. The general feeling was satisfaction at the previous venue from those that attended.

10. PCV Crafts – There is not much movement here, no bunting has been returned yet. It is proposed we set up a craft station at the picnic for people to make some.

11. Pagan Expo 2016 – There is not much to say on this front yet, the PCV is very happy to promote when and if it gets off the ground.

12. Any Other Business – A proposal that on the contacts page we can have some kind of way to contact willing groups that don’t do public rituals etc. so people that are looking for mentors and teachers have an extra avenue to explore. In addition it is proposed that we link an article from Magickly about the warning signs to look for when becoming involved in private groups.

The Google Calendar has been deleted because it was too unwieldy to use, we will continue to have the calendar in the newsletter and on the website. It is proposed that we consider re-visiting the site and calendar, and perhaps use a calendar plug-in.

It was suggested that due to the success and interest in the Incense Workshop run by Ryan that we consider trying to have some kind of workshop run once a quarter.

A proposal for a Pagan Pride Day/Pagan Job Fair was put forward. It was decided that Nickole, Sarah, Cosette and Dorian would put together a proposal to be put forward at the next meeting.

Meeting End: 3.15PM

Meeting Minutes – May 2015

Pagan Collective of Victoria

Meeting Minutes 9/5/2015

 

Present: Ryan, Josie, Mei, Mark, Ben, Lucas, Seline

Apologies: Cosette, Hawthorn, Nickole, Sarah, Seumas

Absent: Rosanne, Allison, River, Bret, Brett

Meeting Location: Portland Hotel, Melbourne CBD

Meeting Open: 1.15PM

1. President’s Report – The coffee meetups have continued to go strong and is still experiencing new members turning up.
   The first Ballarat meetup/Pagans in the Pub is scheduled to happen and there has been some interest which is exciting.
   The Collective now has a bank account with the Bendigo Bank, more in the Treasurer’s report.
   The Yule Dinner is approaching and the ticket sales are now live.

2. Secretary’s Report – Currently we are approaching businesses to ask about being PCV friendly and those that are for website friendly graphics so that we can get them up on the website.

3. Treasurer’s Report – The new Bendigo Bank account has been set up with Josie and Mark being the current signatories. Bendigo is happy to add more signatories as needed with appropriate minuting provided by us. They also offer the use of the community EFTPOS machine for events.
   Tickets for the Yule Dinner are now selling, to avoid too many transaction fees the money will stay in PayPal for now.

4. Memberships – 15 new memberships approved this meeting, this decrease is probably due to the fact that we are pushing events both for the Collective and other groups more than memberships at the moment.

5. Newsletter – Samhain Newsletter is late due to articles being slow to be submitted. Will be out soon.
   It is possibly worth looking at either getting a newsletter person in the future or more people sharing the job.
   It is proposed that we consider doing a series of intro articles, introducing readers to different pagan paths.

6. Coffee Meet Ups – The Upwey meetup is still getting bigger and seeing a lot of new faces.
   The CBD meetup still needs a venue for the meetup to take place but the potential first date will be June 3^rd, to be confirmed once a venue is found.
   Ballarat is having its first meetup up at Irish Murphey’s in Ballarat, which is the location meetups used to happen in Ballarat. Hopefully using the same location will make it easier. There has been some interested parties in the meetup, which will be held quarterly. The meetup will be on the 23^rd at 12.30.

7. Yule Dinner 2015 – The ticket sales shut off will be the 1^st June, we are self-imposing a minimum of 30 ticket sales to make it worthwhile for the venue. If we don’t get the numbers by the 1^st we will have to consider calling off the event.
   To help make sure we do well on ticket sales we need to share the event as much as possible not just on the PCV page but on other pages as well as our personal walls. All help to share it will be appreciated. Mei kindly made a flyer for the event, with the digital file being available on the Committee page, feel free to share it around.
   Prizes are being sorted for the awards as well as the raffle. It should hopefully make for a good addition to the night.

8. Members Survey – The questions are all ready and Mark will e-mail them to Mei so that the Survey Monkey can be set up with the Members Survey. Hopefully this will produce some interesting results for the Collective and its members.

9. AGM – The AGM is going to be held at Stuzzi in Northcote with nominations for it closing two weeks before the AGM both for named positions and the General Committee positions.

10. 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.
    The proposed fees that the Collective move to will be:

– $15 Student/Concession

– $25 General

– $40 Family (3 – 4 adults all residing at the same address is a family for the purposes of membership fees.)

11. Insurance – So after some hunting around the estimates for Insurance for the PCV is looking to be somewhere between $1,200 – $1,500. Josie is going to hunt around a little more and see if there is a better policy/deal to be had.

12. Imbolc Ritual 2015 – We cannot really discuss the Imbolc Ritual without the organisers present, more details will be shared as it becomes available.

13. Annual Ball – We cannot really discuss the Annual Ball without the organisers present, more details will be shared as it becomes available.

14. Skill Sharing Across the Pagan Community – Nothing new to discuss yet for this.

15. PCV Crafts – The pennants/bunting idea is still being considered and the materials to start making the blanks for members to decorate will be acquired soon.

16. The PCV at Mount Franklin – We should consider doing a $5 off membership drive at Mount Franklin to help kick off the paid memberships for the first year.

Misc. – The next meetings that have been set are:

– The AGM on the 18^th of July to be held at Stuzzi in Northcote followed by a normal meeting at the same location

– 12^th of September and is marked down as a rural meet-up to be held at a rural location that will be advised closer to the date

– 12^th of December and is set to be a Upwey event at the Magpie Café

The website needs a change to fix a broken link, the Consumer Affairs have changed the model rules and as a result the link to them on our website is not working at present.

It is probably worth considering that committee members have or acquire a Working with Children Check for the purposes of ensuring that we are not open to problems at public events that we run/help out with.

As a matter of courtesy to everyone it would be really appreciated if you cannot make it to a meeting that you try to give 48 hours notice. Some of the members travel a long way and it would be terrible for them to do that and we do not have the numbers for quorum. It is also a kindness to the other members who could change their plans if the meeting is cancelled.

Pagan Expo
Seline pitched the idea of running a two day expo that has an evening maskerade ball that we could invite Spiral Dance to attend. The proposed time would be October 2016 to allow all the necessary preparation time. Seline would need a dedicated sub-committee to help her make this a success, they would be needed especially in the intense three month period prior to the event. If the PCV has insurance that can cover it by then we will lend that to the expo as well as any help that we can. Seline has a venue in mind, that will be included in a later information update.

 

Meeting End: 2.51 PM

A second February 2015 update!

Another quick post to update all you PCV folk about a few developments. 🙂

• Our new shipment of stickers has arrived, so more membership packs have been posted out this week (thanks Ryan, Mark, Mei and Josie!). We are hoping to clear the backlog of packs by the end of March. New members, keep an eye on your letterboxes!
  
• We’ve tweaked our calendar! Check it out to stay up to date with all sorts of Pagan events taking place in Victoria in 2015! Please let us know if you’d like your event or gathering added to the list.
•  Minutes from the latest committee meeting are all done (thanks Mark!), and can be found over here. We have a lot of very exciting ventures coming up!
  
• We have a new, centralised Facebook page for our Hills Coffee Meetups (thanks, Sarah!), along with a page here on the website. Be sure to like this page to stay up to date.
• The date has been set for our Annual General Meeting. Nominations for President, Secretary, Treasurer and Vice President (a new role) will open shortly, once position descriptions are released. We will also be seeking nominations for general committee members. All PCV members are eligible to nominate before the meeting and are invited to attend the meeting to vote.

More membership packs getting mailed out! Photo courtesy of Ryan M.

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

100 Members!

Minutes from yesterday’s meeting will be released shortly, but in the meantime…

Yesterday’s committee meeting was a time for celebration! In less than twelve months, the Pagan Collective of Victoria has hit 100 members – pagans from all walks of life and from many different spiritual paths coming together to Connect, Share and Celebrate! Thank you to everybody who has supported us so far, and to our friends at the Magpie Cafe in Upwey for the delicious celebratory cake! 🙂

Not a member yet? Memberships to the PCV are free in 2015. Click here for details.