NOTES from Steering Group Meeting 2
Meeting-26 held on 3rd September 2026
At the October Gallery
Present
Agreed
- To hold future steering meetings as monthly online events
- some of which might be in-person (at the October Gallery) with Guinness etc.
- Each member to nominate one (favourite/local) venue for talks/workshops etc.
Informal presentations
was recently made Professor Emerita Fashion, Design, Earth & Equity after 20 years experience in setting up a world famous centre of research and learning. Dilys was pleased to have retained influence with the reduced pressure to compromise on behalf of a large institution. Organisations need to adhere to their intentions and retain a clarity of purpose. The name of the Centre put sustainability as the foremost concern. However, values that she also advocated for our enterprise are summarised in the Recommendations section (below):
began as fine artist and became involved with the Attainable Utopias project. Found a community-facing Open Source platform (Wiki was designed to encourage collective community involvement by programmers). @Les's Community Currencies interests have a useful overlap with Tiki's Community Currencies.
always on radical side of politics - working with residents associations then ran a wholefood shop. History tells us that working class was driven from the land, so organic food symbolises their reclaiming of the land. Diploma in Applied Permaculture and chaired the UK Permaculture Association. Subsequently began to create LETTS schemes with up to 150 members. Currently working with 4 people to develop (another) Open Money system in Hackney.
left 2 years after 22 years as a lecturer and 7 years as a research coordinator. 'Reimagining' implies reiteration and this is contentious because we can't necessarily re-visit/reproduce circumstances that once existed. Art school as a place in which anything can happen. This era/dream has been lost in some of the most famous art schools. In addition to 'something imagined', 'vision' can also imply a constellation of practices. Existing beyond paradigmatic (discipliary/subject-based) certainty. Schools are becoming more defined in big capital's notion that (art school) institutions are places that have something to sell. The less clearly defined the educational 'product' the less attractive it will be for corporate interests. The art mentoring process takes place in parallel with investors and galleries. Questions of profit.
didn't approve of the concept of 'education'. Was 'learning' better? But should learning be embedded in creative and co-creative processes? Led to a vision of no-curriculum groups where learner-curiosity is revived. Individuals would work in co-creative teams, invested-in / supported-by local communities. Idea partly based on cost-saving and long-term social benefits of teamwork.
Francesco valued 'placed-based' learning processes. E.g. worked with dispossessed/disaffected kids in the context of migration / local knife-crime. Sought to empower individuals to become agents of change.
Recommendations
(extracted from the presentations)
- value and maintain equity within social and economic terms
- value and maintain clarity/candour about how we interact
- value and maintain clarity/candour about our knowledge gaps
- value and maintain clarity/candour about our systems )
- value and maintain conduct that is non-judgemental
- grow as a heterarchy (irrespective of status/celebrity).
- immersive (hands-on?) approach.
- promote and sustain a creative approaches
- acknowledge the value of emergence
- acquire the ability to know how/when to be iterative.
- promote and sustain critical and (self)reflexive approaches.
- bust the myth of individualism.
- do we need an administrators/legal advisors?
- Tiki is tried and tested and has huge versatility that @Jonny can provide.
- WhatsApp is familiar/works well for casual steering group communications/organisation
- will set up a Big Blue Button (at first glance - needs "dedicated" server and see docs (16GB of RAM, about £70 a month on Linode. @jonny to asking Fred at BBB if we can have use of a free server / check out Jitsi...
- Will set up more groups
- Steering Committee
- Associates (?)
- Plans to upgrade our website to latest Tiki 30
- Recommended The Origins of Virtue (book by Matt Ridley) that addresses human groupishness in the context of synergy/dysergy and teamwork discussions.
- Further to my asking "do youth clubs still exist?" it seems they do and are having something of a revival, according to this Radio 4 "The Return of the Youth Club" documentary
One quote that stood out for me was "for every pound saved by closing down youth facilities, it costs three pounds later on in prosecutions and imprisonment" (or words to that effect). - Regarding a "local" venue, I'd like to nominate Beaconsfield in Vauxhall
Just got an email asking for help, seems they're on their last legs! 😥
- NEETs might benefit from a non-monetary way to manage value/themselves.
- National/international currencies use arbitrary units to 'measure' value.
- by contrast Community Currencies (or Open Money) enables local communities the chance to measure value using their own criteria.
- Our organisation should use a Sociocratic approach.
- it is a well established, consent-based decision-making process.
- NEETs might also feel empowered (bonding aspects of sociocracy) if they could see we use it too.
- Cohorts of NEETs might co-develop in a Nature-based environment, rather than isolation...
- we will need to source accommodation for learners
- resource economics / mathematics needs to work
- we need to loosed the disciplinary strictures in art schools that risk stifling transdisciplinary opportunities.
- what constitutes good practice is important to what can be learned effectively
- Q: what exemplar of effective practice might help us to work better?
- i.e. radical / inspiring / stealthy / no-intrusive / under the radar?
- A: a prison librarian who was also a psychotherapist.
- He 'curated' an exhibition by inviting a visual artist (Paul) to give a talk
- inmates asked for print-outs
- they then put them up in their cells
- @John Wood
- We should be mindful that our work will/should leave a legacy
- Run a series of public lectures as a way to sign up NEETS and other potential learners and supporters
- Places of learning should be more than 'safe' spaces, 'brave spaces' and 'just spaces'.
- Ethics of care should also include 'self-care' (see joint paper).
- Victims of trauma can become experts in their own trauma. Mentoring others can also support oneself.