19 march - general meeting

From The Star And Shadow Cinema Wiki

Minutes, 19th March 2007.

Present: Robbie, debbie, Bea, mat, ralph, hannah, barnaby, pineapple, ilana, christo, kirsty. Meeting ideas: consensus. Finish Time: 7.45pm absolute latest.

Bea – 2nd may provisional date. Questions: can we confirm a date. Hopefully do thurs 10th, and have a hip hop night afterwards. Cant do it on 10th.

Sonic Rites – Nothing too big/ grand. Putting together a electronic dance label. Looking for a venue, wanted to know limitations on putting on events here, how loud, etc. Maybe doing something lower key –

Concerns: Give people one offs rather than regulars. License until 12am Friday and Saturday. –

Plus points: Putting music on after films is always good.

Next step: Pick a date – very flexible, onus on star and shadow to programme? Send an email with dates – info@starandshadow.org.uk, Have a look at the wiki. Label your name if you use the wiki Remember the license is only until 12 – if you do something, you have to help tidy up the next day.

Masked Ball - £100 profit on the door, (lots of costs though). £1300 takings on the bar. Very successful. Succeeded in closing the bar by 3am. Organised by a lot of people who like being here. Terrific party. 8 people had taken on responsibility to do staffing, and even then it wasn’t enough. 10 people on new year’s eve. Brilliantly tidied – bench mark therefore spell out in draft programming contract – specific cleaning jobs – in person hours 15 to clean the whole place – 3 hours if 5 people do it. Was about doing a community event for people using the bar. Do another, but do it more word of mouth/ less lead time. Think about community social things NOT here.

Sketchy Munters – Potentially dangerously manic and drunken. Lots of volunteers are prepared from them and from us. Recreating a festival experience. Problems to watch out for – smoking/ drinking in the cinema. Putting music in the long space. Responsibility to go out and listen outside. Concern of becoming a party place when we built it to be a cinema. Once every two or three months for a late license party. Debbie – doesn’t want to do sketchy munters, because it is like having a house party and you.

Film Programming Concerns. A big question is how to promote film programming. Bea: as soon as you put s&s brochures in uni they go. Potentially everyone in the uni is on Facebook – good to get people that way? Highlighting films in the brochure might make a difference to the way we are seen. Mat: a case of pushing films a lot more too – e.g the brochure goes to a lot of people who became members at a gig – not cinephiles. Weekly email – needs a bit of reigning in – hard to navigate. Be worth putting that info into a piece of software to email out. Ideas about how we big up the film stuff – send it out on some lists. Programming team is quite a particular list – gig promoters arent involved in that.

Extra-mural activities. Alan suggests playhing football at the bottom of the back lane.

Beta SP player: Needs to get picked up.

Projectors/ Lens: Anamorphic lens – image on the film is squeezed, and a lens correccts that squeeze and makes it widescreen. Choice is: do we try to find one to borrow or should we buy one? Will it be compatible with other 35mm projectors. Mat has found same projectors as the Baltics one. Current projector is borrowed and they want it back in 2 months. We offered to buy it off them because they wont use it, but they wont have that. So we need to find a new set of projectors: get a pair of new projectors. Costs more to buy two of everything and do ‘changeovers’ (when you run the 2nd projector as projector 1 gets to the end of reel 1) but it saves on time – you don’t have to make films up and then break them down (which can be exhausting and demoralising when we show something once to 5 people!) Plan is to put in awards for all application – 5k for projector and 5k for 35mm. Room in the projection booth? Go ahead and buy the anamorphic lens for 35mm, continue the discussion for buying.

Office Rota:

Check: http://wiki.starandshadow.org.uk/index.php/Office_Worker

Increasingly necessary that there is somebody in every day. Post deliveries, phone ringing, etc. Be great if the 10 people who would be prepared to commit to a day a fortnight – could work for the cinema/ do own work. Their responsibility for answering door and phone, and also means others in the building can get on with their own thing. Debbie: Another responsibility is opening up for courrier collections (projectionists responsibility for having film ready – make notes in the diary). Projectionist could call the next morning too. Listing responsibilites for being in the office – e.g checking notes from the meeting. Communication strategy – we are guilty of not being that clear. Managing the office – if there are loads. System for signing up for rotas in the bar etc seems to work – could we set up one for the office. Have office rota on the wiki? We arent very good at communication, but also takes individual determination from a volunteer – Steve has come in 4 times now and has a project on the go. Debbie: good plan, but make sure we show people things properly. Ilana – we are learning as we go. Need to be able to be clear so others can get involved. Get information out of peoples heads into an open sphere. Need others to support it. Good that things are keeping relatively tidy. BUT lets develop a document on the wiki for being a responsible office person.

Cashin Up: Has been a bit scrappy so far. ESSENTIAL to bag up the money when you have cashed up, and instructions for Count the cash in the till BEFORE the night. At end, you count value of any receipts and the cash in the till, add them together and minus the cash in the till at the beginning = takings. Problem is till is being used as petty cash tin – there was a system which didn’t work out. E.g if you take £20 out, write on a petty cash slip ‘Float: £20 taken’ then when you come back, cross out ‘Float: £20 taken’ and instead put what you bought and how much it was and staple the receipt.

Participatory Budgeting: Used in local government so that people feel they understand and own the money that is spent on their behalf. Need a set of management accounts though too – perhaps in time for may, not in time for funding application budgets (which arent necessarily about real aspirations, but ‘tailored’) but about fiinding out genuine aspirations of the people involved – very good for finding out how much we can spend on things too. Add in a training session? We should say ‘this is the budget we have, this is the past, Very useful thing – anyone who has to spend money needs to know how much they are Ideally take no more than half a day and for it to be finished by the end of that day – for 30 people would need some sharp facillitating. Should be a focused, pragmatic event. Alan can draw up a draft format for how half a day would work. Need to have people at the cinema with high levels of experience to close the gap from people who are involved heavily and those not really involved. Diagram of how we have done it before – this is how much the cinema costs to run. For excess stuff, how do we find out how much we have for different things etc. Key way of sharing the load, and constant battle against cliqueiness. Striving to get ways of equalling out information is a number one priority.

Building – Easy to lose sight of the building – various commitments outstanding with licensing people – ticking clock of the floor – second coat to go on after 6 months etc – useful to find out. Other things to finish off. Current strategy is little and often – something or two a week. If more people were thinking that it would be great. Jobs list used to be big and public – good to make another one. Update and print out the wiki. Ken is being useful and Hewa. Email it out and ask people to sing up for jobs. If there are things we should have done, don’t put them on the public lists. Paint floor in august – Adrin to prepare it.

A.O.B:

Social Centre: A group over the last 2.5 years working to set up a resources centre and place to organise actions, share iniformation and provide an autonomous space in Newcastle. Many people are in different ways involved all ready. Considered whether they should continue on this quest to find a social centre, or should there be a conscious decision by SC folk to put their energies into the cinema, putting on or presenting what they would like to have seen in a social centre at the star and shadow. Some feel a little bit embarrassed that the SC didn’t happen and that something that has many of the qualities of a social centre is here, don’t want it to feel like a solid group of the SC is going to wade in and infiltrate and take over. Some things that people want to do cant happen here, but many of the things they want to do can happen here. Debbie – sad that the vision didn’t go the way they wanted it to, but excited too. Are people into really getting involved, e,.g making the cinema more child friendly/ open and accessible as a resource centre for different interested groups. Rosie said she would send out minutes from the discussion would be sent round. Social Centre is dead, long live STAR AND SHADOW. Do SC folk realise they can get involved as much as they want to? Might feel less inhibited now that the SC has been disbanded. Some might be interested in for exampple an office day, and would over time get into that responsibility. Whatever barrier has been, a building exists, lets all use it and benefit from it. Talking to Laura about separate phone line for different things. One idea = regular evening of autonomy – about taking (back?) control of your life, so having an evening of eating/ socialising/ watching/ playing/ organising actions etc. One question – how will star and shadow people feel about this – should there be a message of welcome, but without being too codescending? The question did exist though. Maybe doesn’t need to be a big heavy thing. Does feel more and more open –

6-7 meeting on Thursday about resisting the deportation of asylum seekers. 10-3pm Sunday banner making.

Notes from the last meeting and action points – someone to look through them and follow up. One thing on it – can we make sure minutes are emailed out.