“The Most Important DF Event Ever”

Dec 24, 2009 by phinharper    3 Comments    Posted under: Span That World

North Easth Thing

People have been describing North East Thing as “possibly the most important event in DF History”. Let me see if I can try and explain why.

Before

Before got chaotic, on DF Committee we’d known for a long while that Josie Vallely was North East Rep for the movement and had been well up for coordinating a magnificent Thing but somehow this knowledge has got lost had got lost amongst a web of poor communications around the time of Old/New. So instead of taking a step back and letting Josie do her thing we pannickd and booked a Sheffield venue in the vague suspicion that Josie had gone off the rails and run away to join the circus.

A few weeks later the penny dropped. Not only had Josie booked a venue but she also was pulling in bookings in numbers previously unheard of at Regional Things. A buzz of excitement spread through the e-group and overflowed into spanthatworld.com. We cancelled the Sheffield booking and set sail for Hamsterly near Bishop Aukland.

Friday – Arrival
This was the day that a huge cloud descended on the entire of North England which made getting to the venue somewhat difficult. Those DFs who were not so local and had travelled many miles found themselves cosy and warm in the Morrison’s Cafe waiting on a mini bus that Josie had booked to ferry everybody to the venue.

The venue itself was in a terrible state, despite being a WCF centre it was drafty, badly insulated with single glazing above hugely inefficient electric heaters. The thermometer in the main meeting room read 2 degrees when we arrived. Luckily thanks to the growing popularity of Things and Josie’s proactive organisation this was THE LARGEST EVENT OF IT’S KIND EVER…..yes bigger than any “Forum” from the archaic history of DFs, bigger than any “Committee Meeting” from the days when you could only go to Things if you were invited by DF Committee. This was huge – well over 40, closing on 50, so our combined body heat warmed the room up slowly untill many people chose to sleep there rather than brave the icy dorms.

Friday – Night
This is where things got really interesting. All 15 of Lezes DFs had never been to a DF Event before let alone a Thing. Some had been to V-Camp 08 but others were totally new to Woodcraft Folk. This brought a whole new edge to “the plan”. What would these fresh mind make of our peculiar ways? Unused to the usually intense DF Business would issues about events they had never been to hold their attention? Previously a lot of a Things has revolved around Committee meeting and discussing while other DFs feed in and have their say, would this model really be interactive enough to justify committee being vastly outnumbered? All these issues bubbled round in our minds as in true Woodie style we played Ratchet-Screwdriver to break a lot of ice.

Saturday – Business Time
Kicked things off fast with a few games. Ticked off some formal stuff like approving minutes from previous meetings (tough when only 35% of those in the room had actually been at the last meeting and even less had actually read them).

Then it was all aboard the good ship Open-Space and out into the open waters of a pretty experimental day. In open space you have several simultaneous discussions each with its own facilitator and you are free to wander between the discussions. We had a slightly scewed version where the facilitators all had some connection to that discussion, for example Kemi Rooney ran a discussion on the new Blank Canvas event because as affiliations rep she will have a huge role in bringing that event to life. The downside of open space is that not everybody gets to every discussion and the feedback afterwards can feel unsatisfactory if you had a particular interest – but hey that’s what experimenting’s all about right.

It was generally a success, some people got bored and wandered off, others threw themselves hard into the discussions right through the day. It was clear that there were tensions and cliques being built up and broken down constantly. Would have been fascinating to be a fly on the wall. Finn and Phill both arrived un-simultaneously by bike collapsing from exhaustion and frustration with the fog bank which hadn’t gone anywhere.

What no one could have predicted was that we churned through the programme at incredible speed so had far more time than usual to take breaks and even finished at a reasonable hour of the night meaning we had loads of time for an international party that Bridget and Josie had put together. the ceiling was festooned with bunting of every flag in the world, the df international travel gallery went up by the log burner. We played pass the parcel, i wasn’t paying much attention until the parcel stopped on me and i had to eat the contents of a teabag – “easy” i thought, tearing the bad open and pouring the contents into my mouth. seconds later every drop of moisture in my throat and tounge had been absorbed and i was coughing violently. Gina offered me a drink and gratefully i drank some not thinking to look at what it was…..alcoholic Ginger Beer….thanks Gina. That didn’t end well.

Sunday – Evaluation Day
Nothing about the event had been “business as usual” so it was crucially important to do a proper evaluation. The evaluation was fascinating and I wish we could have had more time to extend it. There were many key questions raised that in the past have always been oversimplified until the answer is far more obvious than it is in reality. Committee have been grappling with some of these on the e-group and some of what was said has gone into the minutes. Here’s a taste:

Food
Althing 2009 passed a motion bigging up Vegan and Vegetarian diets as accessible, cheap and ethical. Meat should only ever be an supliment – so a pizza with chicken is kosher but “toad in the hole” less so. However many DFs at North East Thing were passionate meat eaters and one way or another felt that the international menu that was provided was not accessible to them, some even choosing not to eat at all for the weekend. At what point then do we as DFs and the wider WCF acomidate the cultural diet of a member even if it conflicts with our ethics? When does needing a menu that is familiar flip from wanting to be included to being fussy? Can we financially even afford to have that discussion or should we just try to scrape by? Food is a great issue because nearly everybody is interested in it and as was pointed out we will never get it 100% right. But if you had to decide what would you choose?

Critical Mass
NE Thing was Big – some would say too big. It cost a lot of money had made discussion hard they said. If we continue to push Regional Things with the kind of exciting program of NE and they continue to grow then what is the point in Althing? would it not be better to have several small Things throughout the year with Althing being a really big focus for everybody to come together on? OR are Regional Things the real heart of our democracy needing as many people as possible to make them ultra diverse and really representative for the whole movement?

What the point in a Thing?
In the past it was a Committee Meeting that a some point got opened up to the wider movement in the name of transparent democracy. More recently it has opened up again to a slightly uncomfortable compromise between an open meeting of committee and an event to get loads of local DFs involved in a meaningful way with the business side of the movement. What we learnt at NE Thing is you can’t always have both so which side of the fence should we fall? Or should we try and find a more effective way of striking the balance? Many DFs at NE had very little interest in Plan Bee (International Camp 2011) and who can blame them? But we needed to discuss it none the less. Forcing all DFs at a Thing to discuss an issue that is not relevant to them is hardly inclusive and yet glossing over that issue or skipping it would be irresponsible and unproductive.

Leaving
All to soon we ran out of time, bolted our baguette pizzas and once more ran away to every corner of the country. We had nailed the tidying that morning straight after breakfast and actually left Hamsterly in a better shape than we found it. Goodbye’s were said, flipchart paper was rounded up and off we shot.

Thank You
To everybody who came in particular to the incredibly brave DFs who had never been to a DF Event before. I remember I was terrified of DFs for ages. I didn’t go to a Regional Thing untill i was 19 so to make it your first ever event not long after your 16th birthday demands enormous respect.

Thank you to DF Committee for helping to run such a shot in the dark event – something i felt went really well was how nearly everybody ran part of the discussions or had really key contributions on specific issues.

Thank you in the fullest most powerful meaning this post can muster to Josie for setting up the most challenging and exhilarating Regional Thing I have ever attended. I said at the start that some people have described it as the most important DF event ever and i will add my voice to theirs. It was a turning point towards really developing the movement in a way that can have meaning for everyone.

What’s Next?

The Next Thing is Eastern Thing from the 12th – 14th of March. As ever its free if its your first regional Thing and only £10 if its not. If you would like to come or have ideas on how it could be run please get in touch. E-mail Will, our event rep events@spanthatworld.com.