Okay, I decided to organise a weekend long video activism gathering at the rampART for a number of reasons. One reasons was that I think that this is exactly the kind of event that social centres like the rampART should be used for and I'd personally have liked to see a lot more such events taking place while the space has been available ("If you want something doing, do it yourself"). Secondly, I benefitted from going to two similar video activism gatherings in previous years and felt it was bad that there hasn't been for almost three years.

However, the two previous events were both quite unstructured and I was a quite disappointed over the lost possibilities, especially after traveling a long way for a whole weekend and then find lots of dead time and lost opportunities. This was something I wanted to avoid with this one and I thought I could learn from my previous experiences and make this one work better.

My plan was to have a good structure but it didn't work out how I hoped. I thought that the best way was to co-organise with all the people attending ie. form the programme collaboratively before the event by using email and or a wiki page. In the event this didn't work at all. Most people attending did add details about themselves to the wiki but seemed to shy away from using the wiki as a shared notepad for shaping ideas for the programme. Email didn't work either as I didn't have confirmations and email addresses from everyone who put themselves on the wiki so never had a definitive email list.

With the idea of preparing the timetable collectively before the event out of the windows (and not brave enough to take the entire responsibility for making those designs myself) I decided we'd have to do it together in the first session together on Friday night - exactly what I hoped to avoid. It really bugs me when valuable time together is 'wasted' shaping an agenda which could have been done in advance. Worse was to come since only 9 people turned up on friday night and therefore it was impossible to know all of the workshops being offered by people who would come the following days.

This I think was were I messed up the most. The previous video gathering I had been too - in fact all activist gatherings I have been to - involved a weekend which people came to a place and stayed there together the whole period with accommodation and food all as part of the gathering. Such an event leads to plenty of time for informal networking, socialising, and diverting off topic. However, that's not how this worked gathering has worked here in London and I realise that at multi-day gathering I have ever been to have taken place somewhere other than London.

What has happened here is that only three people have come from outside London and one of those is staying with a friend. Apart from the fact that I bought to much breakfast stuff this also means that people have to travel each day to the venue and leave at a reasonable time to get home. This and the fact that many people have other things they wanted to do during the weekend meant that people have been coming in and leaving at various times and that there was never an occasional when we could have a good round with everybody and introduce ourselves etc.

The possibility of coming in and out of a gathering isn't something I've experienced before and it means that there are a lot more people coming to this gathering than I would have imagined and arguable a lot more people than is effective for doing good practical workshops and skill sharing. It also means people don't have time to just chat and get to know people so the whole informal networking thing which enables collaborative projects to form is unlikely to happen during this gathering.

Additionally it played havoc with the timetable put together Friday night and well had to reschedule session from the very first and ran wildly overtime from then on (my fault for not being on the ball on that but I haven't had a watch since the RTS on the M41 and don't plan to start now).

Nether-the-less, we really covered a lot of ground and I think people were getting useful stuff out of it. There was a great diversity of skills and experience and not just the usual suspects (in fact we were missing many of the usual video bods which is noteworthy I guess). We got to cover implications of new technology and have some ideas to propose for changes to indymedia that might help to encourage more video contributions and bigger audience potential. We got to watch each others films, discuss and offer constructive criticism. We got to do both practical workshops (to some degree) and also theoretic discussion around what makes a good video that is useful and that people will want to watch.

Personally I found I couldn't benefit as much as I hoped since I constantly had on my organiser hat, not just for the event but also for the space itself and distractions that had nothing to do with the gathering. I also ended up cooking and again an activist gathering where people are staying in the venue for the weekend would involved participants volunteering to do cooking shifts etc but that didn't seem possible the way things have worked out here.

I'm well aware that London is weird. It is fundamentally different from other places in the UK and many things constantly remind me of how different the dynamic manifests itself. I think this gathering has reminded me of some of those differences and I certainly failed to consider how they would effect the gathering.

If I was doing it again I would plan a structure from the start - ideally with a working group but alone if need be - and try to build in some flexibility where possible. I'd also not do a free event as I think a nominal charge to cover costs would also have the advantage of encouraging more people to actually stay the duration rather than just pop in for a few hours for bits that they thought would most interest them. This would almost certainly have meant less people but to some degree I think it would be a price worth paying for having people around more. Finally I'd also try harder to delegate a lot more to share the load , feel less stressed and get more from the event myself. Anyway, this has turned into a ramble so I'll get on with the plug for the sunday screening...


PUBLIC SCREENING 7PM SUNDAY

During saturday, two people went off an filmed the protest about camp xray prisoners and the footage from that is being crash edited to produce a 3 - 5 minutes piece to be screened tomorrow.

On sunday, people will be going off to film at the two 'events' taking place at 1pm - the Stockwell protest about the shoot to kill and also the non-protest event of demonstrating various things in parliament square. Again, we hope to have knocked out 3-5 minutes films about each of these protests ready to screen Sunday evening.

Additionally, we will be screening what is probably the UK premier of Latitude 36. Plus 'Disorder Disorder' and many other activist films including stuff from Revolt video from Ireland.

So, please come along and pass the word.

Films start at 7pm and we may well have some cool VJ's at the end

15 RAMPART ST (OFF COMMERICAL ROAD) LONDON E1 2LA