Minutes of TWiG meeting 14/7/16 at Blaydon Burn Farm

Twig Minutes

14th July 2016

Meeting minutes

 

Present

Steph, Lesley, Gwen, Garry, Nick

Apologies

Di, Laura, Mick, Gweno

 

Food Festival Feedback

• Copy and paste feedback from Di

• Parking was OK despite lack of field due to mud

• Good to have music and bar and children’s activities as these allowed people to stay a bit longer

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Learning

• Steph may need a hand in the week leading up to the day to prepare as she was busy much of the week preparing

• The bar/music and children’s activities are essential

• We need a few more volunteers on the gates

• Gwen needed the help that she had. Really need minimum two but perhaps three people to help with children’s activities.

• Need one person for plants and one for tea (different people)

• Perhaps we can liaise directly with High Spen Community Group or Greenside Group or Crawcrook environment Group. We could offer to help them and we could help them.

• Should we protect entry to the house better to prevent people wondering in

• Should we have more gazebos?

• Having a list the day before of things that need to be done would be helpful

• Order organic milk in advance

• Can we amalgamate children’s drinks from Hop Garden with our tea stall?

• Coalies was going to bring two big parasols but did not. They should be asked to do so next year.

• Charge minimum 10%  to stall holders next time and advertise this in advance

• Maybe increase the charge to £1 adults 50p children

• Have donation boxes in strategic places such as the children’s activity tent

• We MUST do a risk assessment before the event

• We must also have first aid available – could we invite a St John’s ambulance person or a free alternative

• Should we post more info about disability access?

• We could fit in two or three more stalls. We had 15 stalls in total (including TWiG, children’s activities, tea stall, tombola and recycling)

• Get “clickers” to count numbers

• We could accommodate up to 500 people rather than the 300 who came

• The high viz jackets were important to people on the gates

 

Organisational finance

• We have £682.35 as free money.

 

Hugh’s film

Hugh would like us to see the film and we would like to see it. Lesley to arrange this

 

Food Map

Gweno has worked hard to set this up.  Congratulations and thanks to Gweno. Mick has been given log in to add things to see if it works. We are keen to get this public. What criteria should we use to sift between food producers/sellers that we would allow on the site and the ones that we would not? E.g

• Local food producers and sellers (veg/meat/cooked products/etc)

• Local businesses SME businesses only (not local branches of national companies)

• Organic producers but not exclusively so

• West Gateshead codes plus adjacent postcodes

We need to agree who will police this possibly via a questionnaire.

 

LEAF REPORT

Lesley has done this.

 

Insurance

Cheque sent

 

Bank Account

£682 cash after our debts. Di, Lesley and Mick need to log on again. If we do not log in for 6 months, we have to ring the bank to get set up again. Nick would like at least one other person to check bank account soon to verify that the report is accurate.

 

23rd July Last Shift Community Picnic at Greenside

Garry and maybe others to do this. Arrange to pick up materials from Steph. Event is from 1pm to 5pm.

 

How do we engage more people with TWiG aspirations?

Discussed doing a Transition Street in Greenside possibly around the Folly area of Greenside.  Discuss further next time and broach this at Greenside Last Shift festival.

 

Solar Array

No update yet available

 

Car Sharing: Discuss next time.

Green Festival: Waiting to hear back from them.

Next Meeting : 8th Sept White Swan 7.30 – 9.30