mural in downstairs hall way for august

[James]

last year, the theatre and the cafe felt very separate. People would come thru the bright airy double doors direct from the street and not realise a beautiful cafe lay beyond that dark dingy set of double doors underneath the stairs. sad

This august, can we have a bright colourful mural saying "Cafe this way" or some such thing please?

Maybe even move the pidgeon holes elsewhere and have some cool art on that plinth space to entice people in?

thank yous

[ravanwin]

does it have to be bright colors? I am sick of the forest looking like a nursery school. Pitor is repainting the doors a kindergarten yellow. Someone painted the old wooden fuse box the same childish yellow. we are beginning to look like we have been designed by PlaySchool (awesome looking tape players but, after that --- really).

I think, we've lost the thread in this building at times. Though some stuff is awesome some stuff really, i think, gives the wrong impression of who we are / who we want to be. Maybe this is a big Vision thing with a capital V but I want to put it out there now so we have some focus before moving. I think we need to come up with a clear way to make decisions about aesthetics rather than letting the aesthetics continue to be those of, for lack of a better term, the lowest common denominator. This is not to critique anyone's energy or work but to say that not choosing an aesthetic is STILL a choice and now we can look and see what it leads to.

Things to consider: how to decide on how things look? Separate committee? One Person? Could there be a volunteer post in 6 month revolutions of FOH Manager? How do we balance "control" with "openess". This seems to be the overriding rift within the forest that in order to exude control on quality (or rather - maintain a unified theme or style) we seem to believe this negatively affects "openness". Does it? Does dressing our space up like a hippy pre-school not reduce our "openness" (re: attractiveness) to more serious-minded artists who deserve to be have a good space to paint, mural and exhibit? By serious I do not mean "professional" I mean artists who seek to push their work beyond the level of a hobbyist or a dabbler. It is the same argument with events and, in fact, the same argument in terms of barring wierdo-fucks. By interpreting "openess" as allowing WFs to run rampant we become closed to such people who would not like to eat a cake with a woman who hides a dead cat in her pants. ... This is a bit of a rant --- sorry. My point is - I think, for the future and maintained health and interest of some of the collective I think we need to think harder about how we choose to dress ourselves. I think we have had some awesome looking spaces in this building and we continue to have vibrant and exciting new work shown all the time --- this is a fact. An undisputed fact. But I do think we allow a certain degree of amateur, immature and, juvenile ideas and associations to occur. It would be nice, somehow, to talk about growing up and taking some control. Is it possible? Is it even wanted? Would more people get involved? Would more people call us wankers?

To conclude, I agree with James - it would be great if those doors got painted in an awesome way that made people go ---- FUCK. I wanna SEE what's in there! Giant Golden Mystery Doors which lead to the year 1990eighteen and beyond? Like a portal to another dimension which, in fact, is a ragged cafe and some manky toilets!

r

[Gandhi]

Right on the nose with that one. I'm not a part of the Forest collective, and therefor my views are from a punters eye. I personally feel that the decor and artwork simply does not reflect the amazing amount of talent their is in the Forest.
Rooms, walls, doors, tables etc are all completed dislocated from each other in style which although does in one way show there is loads of different types of people in the Forest it does not give the place a singular identity. Or is the randomness what the singular identity is?...now I'm confused.
I'm all for having different stuff and styles everywhere but sometimes it looks kinda tacky. And a common theme and style would look pretty smart and allow the artwork and other random things to stand out a bit more and have more of an impact as well as being more inviting to other arty types as well as being less inviting to weirdo fucks.

I do however wish to meet the woman with the dead cat in her pants as she sounds fun.

[martinmckenna]

we dont seem to have a vision with look of the cafe , two things i think are the cause of our present look is lack of maintenance of building ,an example being the floor . this should be done periodically every 4 months or so .not done when its a mess . maybe in the future this kind of event will be in the events books or on a calender .

there is also the fact of people just sticking up random things here and there , then we get stuck with them. some times it works some times it dont . but i feel an awkwardness in asking for it to be removed . as we have no idea what the policy on this is . i know some of the stuff in cafe is important to people , but would it not be better if it was displayed better .As an example there is a lightbox thing above the kitchen , could that not be hung on a wall and lit up . it looks interesting.

there is also all the stuff that gets left behind after an event .a recent example ive notice is that when people are hanging stuff from the ceiling in cafe the rope get left after its removed . it is the responsibility of the people hanging this stuff to remove it properly.this should be stressed to them. this is adding to ragged cafe look. its a small thing but incrementally this all adds up to ragged cafe . which must dishearten the people who clean it and put off the people who want to be in it .

any aesthetic choice is going to alienate someone , a bit like the volunteer party to end all partys or bongo drums . should the cafe be a neutral space! other than the events that are put there. or maybe choice things on the wall . that could be changed every 4 months . it could be that space get curated for 4 months at a time .

and finally i know some people like it this way and want to preserve it like a museum artifact . the reason it looks this way i dont think is something we want to preserve .all the changes to red room have made it better , change has been good!

[Shannon]

The main room will be getting an overhaul. The plan is not hippy. There are still some details to work out. Emi is going to send some photos and Marian is going to make us some crazy model on her computer. There will be some cohesion in the room and some colour and improved lighting. We talked a bit about strategy for front of house in the future, ie: the idea that one person would get creative control for 3 months, but for now we seem to have come to something we'll collectively start implementing. We are meeting at 10.30am Thursday morning to look at Marian and Emi's stuff, pick colours and go get paint, fabric for chairs, etc. There will be a work day soon. More details to follow.

[chris]

colour choosing by group has a dangerous history...

[chombee]

This seems to be the overriding rift within the forest that in order to exude control on quality (or rather - maintain a unified theme or style) we seem to believe this negatively affects "openness". Does it?

Not necessarily, I think a balance can be struck. For example, if we saw the benefit of having one person be in charge of the aesthetics of the cafe, or a particular room, and that person having total decision-making power over that domain, I would not have a problem with it as long as the post is only given for a set number of months at a time and there is a merit-based (not clique) way of deciding who gets the post next so that everyone has a fair shot. And also obviously if someone is doing a bad job we can all agree to sack them and give someone else a chance. I don't think that compromises openness at all.

Single person versus committee, if it's a single person and they are contactable that might go smoother and seem less bureacratic than for example requiring aesthetic decisions to go through the visual arts working group and be done by consensus. There is also something to be said, I think, about avoiding making design decisions by committee. They are the sort of decision where a compromise is likely to lead to something no one is particularly happy about, a lowest common denominator, whereas a non-compromise would really excite some people and not others and that's probably better.

Decisions can be made well by consensus when there is likely to be some compromise between the different points of view that will keep everyone happy and be the best of both worlds. But the sort of atomic decisions where no such useful compromise exists should not be made by a committee.

To maintain openness though, the decision of who gets to make the decisions for the next x months should be up to a working group of some sort.

For example, in the Debian linux project, any decision about who to elect as the next project leader or about a change to the Debian social contract or something like that would have to go through one of the project's democratic decision making processes whether it be voting or consensus. But a technical decision about how some feature should be implemented in some program is singularly decided by the maintainer of that program. They have discovered that making technical decisions democratically just leads to bad decisions, and this is because of the type of choice you are faced with, there will be good options that will make some people happy and piss others off, and the only options that don't piss anyone off are the mediocre ones. Ofcourse, you don't get to be a package maintainer except by merit.

[ravanwin]

i think 6 month care-takers for FOH / Murals should be sought. This would keep random rubbish off walls

[Shannon]

I think the foh meeting agreed with the short term caretaker idea. However, we also managed to come to an agreement on something we don´t think is shit and it´s only for a few months anyway. We also have a potential design for the upstairs landing. I think we´re pretty close to agreeing colours. The design is flexible in terms of colour and a couple of us have colour palettes which we will likely choose from. It will be a massive improvement to what the space looks like now and has looked like for almost a year. Since all of us who were at the meeting now have a stake in the new design, it will get done more quickly too (because we have more hands to help). Let us introduce the rotating foh curators in the new space?

[chris]

use gloss for woodwork and matt for walls..

[Shannon]

Done.

[martinmckenna]

visual arts has already agreed to put a mural up on the stairs , before this all kicked off . the guy is coming to do it on monday . does this still stand

[Shannon]

If you've already got a guy, go for it. I think Cyrielle's design is pretty flexible. Could go anywhere.