I didn't finish these minutes off properly before I got Ryan to post them for me. Here is the better version. This is
the working group meeting to come to -- no action points actually assigned to people!
Action Points
* Next Behind The Scenes meeting: We need to decide what to do about the tax situation with the shop. (See below.) No one in particular stood up for this, but can we get our treasurer Callum on it?
* Sean: reply to grant applications, put them in contact with the right people, make sure the dance performance happens at the forest, be more hands on.
* Next Forest Working Group Meeting: decide whether to create a new budget for screenprinting, or keep it coming out of the artist facilities budget. It ought to start paying for itself, after startup costs.
* On the bb, and next Forest Working Group Meeting: what to do about budgets for external task forces such as Nix' forest road trip to Knockengorroch.
Attendance
Lots. A whole bunch of us plus all the EVS and the new EVS.
Agenda
Ryan explains what working group this is and how meetings at the forest work
The Forest at Knockengorroch this year
New shop manager for the next month
Monthly grant
Screenprinting
New till
External Task Forces
Knockengorroch
The forest is supporting a zine stall at Knockonegorroch. Giving away free alternative media and some forest stuff too. Nix has already been granted £100 from this working groups budget and £100 from the Community Action working groups budget for it, and also has permission to take the Forest's old photocopier to Knockengorroch in a van, along with the cave's computer. Partially the money is intended for renting a van.
It's a suicide mission, unlikely the computer or printer will come back alive. The road is bumpy, but Nix has bubble wrap. Sean and Chris bet the photocopier is broken before it gets there. And people are not happy about going to different working groups to collect money from them all. But it will be really cool.
The group says the £100 is still okay. Taking the copier is okay. But Nix cannot take tea from the forest to give away for free. There, we draw the line. Take all our valuable computer equipment and our money, but not our tea!
Chris says Anchor Car & Van hire is the cheapest in town
Concerns: the old photocopier is still good, it might get damaged
Shop
A new shop manager gets chosen every month at this meeting. New manager: Olivier.
Shop meeting tomorrow 3pm.
Forest is not getting as much money from shop sales as we thought because the forest is paying VAT on shop sales! Currently if the shop sells a CD for £10, we give £8 to the artist and forest takes 20%, £2. But then, we believe, the VAT man takes 17.5%
of the original £10 from the forest, so the forest actually gets 25p. Oops!
We decided to postpone this till the next meeting also. It would be good if someone could look into this and get more info about the tax situation. Could we get Callum, our treasurer, on this?
Sean says (after the meeting, while he is writing up these minutes): based on our current understanding, legal options are:
* Leave it as it is. Forest is basically getting no money from the shop, maybe that's okay. Kinda sucks to take 20% from artists only to give it all to the tax man.
* Just give 100% of the money to the artists. But then legally they have to pay the 17.5% VAT anyway so it's no different.
* Get the forest more money. Normally a shop would take 33%, the artist would take 66%, 17.5% of the artists 66% would go on VAT, leaving the artist with just under 50%. If a shop sells your CD for £10 and you get £8, that's fucking amazing, with a record label the artists gets about 4p or something, so if the artist just got £5 from us it would hardly be bad? Nix wanted the shop to make a little money back for the forest. Seans says 80% to the artists is ridiculous, we are running a shop, that takes a lot of people power and money for rent etc., 50% to the artists after VAT is still really good for the artists.
Grants
We had 3 applications for the monthly grant.
CloseUp is about some art exhibitions in public spaces in Edinburgh. They want the £100 for printing flyers. Funding flyer printing seems kinda lame, we say no, but will let them know that we offer the cheapest printing/copying in town. 20p per color a4.
Jose Campos wants to do dance peformances/exhibitions/workshops in the forest. We decided to give the money to this one. Something happening in the forest, sounds good. I will point out to him that he might want to rent our hall instead of some other rehearsal space. The money is for renting rehearsal space and buying costumes.
The Last Five Years is a fringe theatre show. Basically they want us to help fund their fringe show (hiring venues, etc.) and in return they'll do some free performances at the forest. We are not in the business of funding fringe shows, it sets a bad precedent, so no. I will put them in touch with James about booking the hall asap if they want to perform at the forest during the festival, and also point out that if they want to do free performances here we have an open stage downstairs all the time during the festival they can just come and do it.
Screenprinting
The Artist Facilities working group showed up at the Behind the Scenes working group meeting to ask if they could spend £100 of
their £500 budget on screen printing. We say yes, but this has nothing to do with the behind the scenes working group, artist facilities decide how to spend their own budget.
AF: It's your budget, you decide how to spend it at your meeting! This is one of the reasons for having budgets, working group autonomy.
There seems to have been some confusion about whether screenprinting comes under artist facilities or is its own thing. But so far it is coming out of the artist facilities year-end budget.
Does screenprinting needs its own budget outside of the Artist Facilities budget? Nix proposes we talk about a budget for it at the next forest working group meeting. Chris says screenprinting can start making its own money once it's going and will pay for itself, startup costs might be about £100. Ryan says screenprinting has spent £33 already on keys and chains etc. Chris is surprised.
James says: we should not be inventing new budgets at this meeting, that's for the forest working group.
Budgets for External Task Forces
There are some things, such as Nix' suicide mission to Knockengorroch, which do not come under any working group but rather are 'external task forces.' Problem is, the forest working group fucked up when it created the budgets, because it didn't create a budget for this. Hence we have things like Nix rounding up money from different working groups.
Potentially we could create a new budget for external task forces and it could be huge, in the thousands. But who is the external task force working group? Who decides who gets to spend the budget?
We will discuss this problem on the bb. Until a fix is decided for it all external money spending goes through the forest working group. Don't round up money from different working groups.
New Till
Is coming. It costs £150, including till rolls and stuff. Yes we do need a till.
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