Hello,

Thanks to everyone who came to, & helped run and organise, the Bristol Social Forum launch on Sat 30th April. Numbers were a little lower than anticipated (70-90 came throughout the day), but the diversity of groups present was greater than most people generally could have hoped for in recent decades. It was also good to meet up with a number of people who I only ever, or mostly only ever, communicate with on email, and I'm sure the same positive feelings were felt by others.

Visit us:  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bristolsocialforum/

WHAT NEXT?

The next meeting of the, now launched, Bristol Social Forum will be on Wed 18th May, 7:00-9:00pm, @ "1 in 8", 160 Gloucester Rd (A38). Map:  http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?G2M?X=359100&Y=175533&A=Y&Z=1
This is along the 'showcase' 77 bus route, which links north and south Bristol, and which cuts through the city centre, and so is quite accessible to most people.

We also hope to have a theme for this meeting, which will be posted a little later.

The Bristol Social Forum Constitution was agreed by consensus at the launch. The next phase of the forum - alongside beginning to put into practice the tasks outlined for the forum - will be to put together a set of procedures and positions.

My personal feeling on this, as the person who currently does most of the emails, is that the position of secretary, which is effectively the job I have been doing, is simply too much for one person to sustain, and needs to be shared between 2 or 3 people. One other person agreed to help with this job, but we still need a Treasurer.

Any volunteers?

How these positions will be held to account, and what their remits should be - within a project compromised of independent groups which are unlikely to forego their own independence either by design or by accident - will be for those groups and individuals who comprise the forum to decide at these public meetings.

A FEW MORE NOTES:

Hopefully others will post their own feelings on the day. Here's a few more points raised during the constitution. A reminder of our Constitution can be found here:
 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bristolsocialforum/message/286

An area it was felt we are currently lacking is with our contacts with unions, although a number of people at the constitutional discussion were themselves in unions. This was partly put down to Patrick's stroke. Patrick was intending to contact and liase with unions in Bristol, and once he became unwell, we didn't have enough time, people, or energy to fill that gap.

It was also felt that the political left were not as represented as they could have been. It was noted that most people who this applied to were out canvassing for the election, and would hopefully be better represented at future events.

On the issue of what we ourselves as a forum should cover, it was noted that while the constitution does not explicitly cover every group or issue, it is sufficiently broad for all social issues to be able to feel implicity included as part of our brief.

In particular, the need to focus on Bristol issues, and how they link in to global issues was covered, as well as the need to experiment with formats and issues covered at future events. For example, the launch was intentionally quite informal, while future events may be more educational in form.

Within this context it was also noted that culture and the 'pleasure principle' should be a part of these events whatever the format. The Gigantonas Theatre and the serving of food through the day at our launch, were felt to be good examples of culture and the 'pleasure principle'.

Our next high profile event should hopefully take place some 6-8 months from now. This would conveniently coincide with the next European Social Forum, due to be held in Greece in March 2006. While it was felt that this gives us something to mobilise around, there was also concern that our energies shouldn't only be spent mobilising for the ESF, at the expense of other local issues and energy.

I hope to see some of you on the 18th, as we now begin to the process of putting our constitution into practice.

Best wishes,

James