[Imc-birmingham] Birmingham Indymedia minutes: Mon 25th June 07

[phunkee]

Birmingham Indymedia minutes

Mon 25th June 07

BIRMINGHAM INDYMEDIA PRINT PROJECT

We agreed before the G8 to do an offline news sheet, which would have 
coincided with our second birthday on May 1st, but it got 'shelved' so 
to speak.

So now we're proposing to get it going again.

Format: selection of edited features and newswire articles.
A3 photocopied black and white paper folded into A4

dysect and shiar to look into designing templates

How often? monthly and see how it goes from there...

Content? Take stuff off our imc and UK/International sites
perform two functions, to inform and perform outreach for imc birmingham

Calendar of local events

Style: make 1st edition accessible - ensure we thoroughly contextualise 
issues to give sufficient background to new readers who are unfamiliar 
with indymedia.

Shiar to start a Twiki page for the news sheet

Distro: to approach existing sites where activist fliers are accepted 
and extend distro to newsagents and other shops. And of course upload a 
.pdf file on our newswire.

Launch date? in two weeks to coincide with a screening.

How many? aim for 1,000 to begin with

Theme: we decided we'd focus on repression for the first edition

G8, Move, Mikey Powell Campaign, Migration - Congolese demo, Guantanamo 
anniversary

Lead-in to cover why we need an independent participative media

flatine to write a short piece on the upcoming camp for climate action

Proposal to focus next issue on industrial action

Investigative features:

7 Schools are being sold off. New wave of PFI academies

Birmingham international airport expansion

Empty properties

Tescopoly - Tescos store turned away from Kings Heath

BIRMINGHAM INDYMEDIA CINEMA

Proposal carried to change screenings from fortnightly to monthly unless 
there's something special happening.

EDO and the DSEi campaign want to come up before Aug to promote their stuff.

Next screening is the MOVE tour Saturday 30th June at the Drum. Need to 
do a press release and send it out.

Proposal to screen Injustice 2 weeks after MOVE with a small film about 
MOVE.

We had a long discussion about the proposed screening on 911 truth 
movement. Although people expressed a lot of reservations, we consensed 
that we would be happy to screen something on 911although we need to 
ensure we screen the 'right film'. We can also give a critical 
evaluation of it's content at the screening.

Proposal to do a slot on independent media - screen Fox News, Orwell 
Rolls in his Grave.

Proposal to do a slot on anarchism and it's radical history as an 
antidote to lifestyle orientated anarchism.

Discussed possibility of putting on a film festival in the future.

NEWSWIRE

The newswire is focused on more passive forms of media reporting at 
present. We should be trying to foster a culture of active media 
reporting rather than passive media reporting. Many contributors to the 
newswire are posting up events and there's a culture of waiting for news 
to 'happen' rather than actively pursuing stories or doing investigative 
pieces.

We could also challenge more mainstream news stories from a radical 
independent perspective. For instance, an example of sourcing a story 
from the corp. news and beginning with, "The Birmingham Evening Mail 
says.." But actually this happened...

FUNDRAISER & GADGETS

We need some money! proposal to meet up with people we know who've 
offered to help us out with a fundraising gig/party.

proposal to offer VJ's indymedia films as source material.

cinema room

duplicating films to raise money

maybe tie-in fundraiser with re-launch of website?

Proposal to get a laptop from freecycle and purchase a 500 gig hardrive 
to use as a film archive

WEBSITE OVERAL/RE-DESIGN

We can use the developmental site here to test out new designs and CSS 
sheets:

http://mish.dev.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/birmingham/

Banner - suggestions

Donations section - contribute to indymedia and the server fund

redesigning our imc is limited by Mir and our relationship to imc uk

Suggested changes for imc uk startpage, to make it less linear and give 
more prominence to regions and topic pages:

http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/ImcUkStartpageChanges

Problem is these need to be implemented and it doesn't look likely in 
the near future due to technical issues.

Proposal to introduce small changes and fix existing bugs

Talked a little about 'distant' possibility of going it alone as a new 
IMC in the future with a different more flexible CMS like drupal.

phunkee