170809

Minutes of Hub Meeting Mon 17th August 2009 at Polish Club, Ecclesall Rd

Present: Dave Sorsby (PV, facilitator), Gordon Ferguson (PV), Craig Barnett (HM), Jenni (CW), Heather Rostron (PV), Susannah Diamond (BG), Jenny Patient (NES, minutes), Chris Croome (HM, arrived later)

Apologies: Heather Hunt, Ronin Barkshire, Steve Lewis.

Training for Transition

Craig had investigated what was on offer from the Transition Network - details of the content and logistics were circulated (see [1])

It was agreed that running training a week after Scarborough was not an issue, as it is so far away, and we would hope to fill a course mainly with Sheffield people plus some from smaller local initiatives such as Chesterfield, Hope Valley. However, the proposed cost of £100 per person was seen as too much to enable wide participation open to all, which is what we want to offer. Therefore we would seek grant funding to subsidise some or all places on the course - getting funding could take 3 months.

We would apply to eaga/SYCF (Jenny chasing) and Council Small Grants (? chasing). David to draft an email for Sheffield circulation to publicise training and assess demand, Susannah to review/adapt to send to other local initiatives & compile contact list for them. We would ask Transition Training whether the training is/can be tailored to city initiatives.

Post-meeting note from Jenny - SYCF advise having a bank account before getting funding, for which we will need to be a constituted group.

Food Conference Jenny reported that Ronin had spoken to Gareth Roberts and Vanessa Senger (Grow Sheffield) about the proposed conference. It would now take place in February 2010. Heather also wants to be involved and has feedback from a food conference in Nottingham.

Shared events with Grow Sheffield We agreed it would be good to contribute/be present at Allotment Soup (26th Sept?) Jenny to ask Vanessa how we can be involved, and also to further offer support with email lists to Grow Sheffield, as they have had problems with their email publicity recently.

Local Group reports

Nether Edge and Sharrow - had held several bring and share suppers, followed by Open Space style workshop to develop projects - food growing, transport, beekeeping, chickens. Hoping that these projects will start to meet separately. Burngreave - permaculture intro did not happen but will try again in term time. Published reports in Burngreave Messenger. Crookes and Walkley - meet at their community garden (although nothing grows there yet!) Planning to show films in Oct-Nov. Mark will be doing Eat the Change (eat locally challenge). Heeley and Meersbrook - The CSA steering group has met and is registering as an IPS - they need a business plan and to raise money by the spring to buy the land. The local steering group has been quiet, but are planning an autumn ceilidh, and found open gardens/allotment tour work well) Porter Valley - they have been leafletting for SYEC on home energy reduction, and SYEC will give a talk on 30th Oct. Also aiming to show a film on 2nd Nov at the Lescar pub, maybe Age of Stupid. THey had an awareness-raising evening at Amyan's and are involed witha communal allotment at Nether Green. There will be a Hunters Bar farmers market on 11th Oct.

Communication Jenni has created a list of Transition books on the wiki - Craig will send an email to publicise this. Dave had started a Climate Change thread on Sheffield Forum which he encouraged people to have a look at. People can add themselves to the local email lists via the web site, but Dave observed it is proving hard to communicate with the Hub group that way. Chris will make proposals about purchasing security certificates and/or setting up an open-id server, so that non-techies can discuss this and agree improvements.

Possible changes to how the Hub Group works Craig raised the question 'does it work?' and it was agreed that there were some issues with our current arrangements:

• people enjoy hearing about news from local groups, and it would be good to have a wider audience for this, but it can take up quite a lot of time in a business-focused meeting
• the Hub Group tend to generate more work than they can actually get through! As we are all active in local groups/projects too, there is a risk of guilt and burnout.

A couple of suggestions to address these:

• hold a less frequent meeting, open to all, say quarterly, rotating round local group areas, which hears short report-backs from local groups and allows socialising across the city.
• move the 'Hub' business to small task-and-finish groups that can involve a wider base of people and get more done, then stop meeting.
• Rely on the wiki/emails to co-ordinate the task groups
• have a contact list of 'mentors' for new group support

City-wide initiatives/other business Jenny reported on the City Council's Sustainable Travel City bid and a climate change event from Healthy Sheffield network, which she will feed back on. There will also be a new Environment strategy over the next year, which Jenny can link Transition to. We discussed the Community Assemblies' Climate Change funds, which are available for installing renewable energy and possibly other 'capital' projects such as tree-planting - Jenny will email local groups with contact details re their Assemblies, and how to feed into their area Plans.

Next Meeting On Mon 21st Oct at 7pm, at the Grapevine Centre, Northcote Road, next to Heeley Green Post Office.