Welcome to SpanThatWorld.com! The online home of the District Fellows Movement, the 16-20 age group of the cooperative children and young people's charity The Woodcraft Folk.
Videos
Louise Delmege on… Midlands Thing!
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This was my first Thing. I went to Midlands Thing partly to try and get more involved with the movement and mainly to refuel on DF energy, both of which I achieved with flying colours. it was fantastic to see loads of us again. Things are not just for committee, but are open to everybody in the movement to get involved. I’m not even from the Midlands and I still found Midlands Thing to be a really great experience for me.
There was a lot of business, but somehow we managed to finish on time! Most decisions were done by consensus and through the “Open Space” style discussion. People opinions on how good Open Space seem to vary greatly; personally I like to discuss things as a larger group, but I can see how discussing in smaller groups can empower people, who might not usually be able to get their voice heard, to take part.
There were loads of brilliant new ideas and I ended up signing up to plenty of really interesting action groups. Something that grabbed my attention was an idea for DFs to create their own land-coops. The plan is still in it’s infancy, but I hope I can contribute to help make this a reality. There was much talk about how to shape the campaigns this year and how much work we should put into the anti-cuts movements. We would like to support the anti-cuts campaign, but not to loose sight of the those chosen at Althing. And on the matter of Althing, we discussed how it should be changed, and how we can make it better.
Many other action groups have been formed and the existing ones gained more members. A new one is going to try and create the fundraising event SpanThatWorldWithFood. Another group I am involved in is trying to find ways to no longer get banned from venues. DFs may have cleaned up our act a lot in the past few years but we still need to be careful – we want to make sure that everyone, not just coordinators of events like me, are doing everything we can to avoid being banned.
Committee was “hot-seated” and I’m glad to report they all seem up to be doing a good job. The movement seems to be going to exciting places at extreme speeds.
It was a fantastic event! Much fun was had and much business was done. The KP, Henry, was amazing and he helped us all fill up on skip-cake and bucket jam. I’m really glad I went, it was definitely worth the travel and the time. There’s no better way to spend a weekend than at a Thing.
