People from Manchester Social Forum are planning a meet-up with other social forums and interested people in a camping weekend, provisional dates 21/22nd of May 2004. The idea is get together informally, share experiences, meet nice people, eat good food and see what develops. We plan to have space for music/art/discussion etc and hopefully independent media also as there is a possiblity Indymedia might decide to be involved. We had a campsite in Edale, Derbyshire in mind but have been told we can't have it now. Please see below, and if you can help in any way, please contact the manchester social forum email address at the bottom of the email.
Thank you.
Heather
We've been told we cannot have the Edale campsite we planned too because we might commit terrible anti-social acts like talking and staying up late... so we have a problem in that other campsites might not like us either.
there are a few possibilities people have come up with, and some problems with them
1. keep looking for campsites and getting rejected :-(
so does anyone know any nice people out there. if you do please, please ask.
2. ask nine ladies if we can camp on the bottom site. but people are worried about sheer rock drops and small children. also there aren't toilets or showers so that would put some people off coming and we want to include people not exclude them. also nine ladies people might not want us. it would be bringing a lot of strangers onto the site at one time, many that we don't know either, so for lots of reasons i don't think we should ask.
3. just go to a field and squat it. but again same problems with facilities as 9L, also trouble from farmers, police etc which people don't need.
so it looks like option 1 unless anyone else has any ideas? please network this around because we really, really want to do this. if anyone has any ideas/contacts/rich landed gentry friends/convivial members of the countryside alliance (!), etc
please email mancsocialforum@riseup.net
cheers
heather
Comments
Hide the following 3 comments
just to clarify option 2 so noone gets worried!!
11.04.2004 13:14
heather
Think creatively
15.04.2004 08:36
You seem to be listing all the drawbacks and none of the positive things. Any option is going to have pros and cons.
The last I heard Nine Ladies is wanting to get more people involved and this could be an excellent way of doing so. If just a couple of people ended up staying there for a bit that would be a positive thing to do. They may say no but let them at least answer first.
Compost loos can be built - that happens at every EF gathering - so definitely no reason not to have it there. I don't reckon you need showers for a weekend - and lets face it, some people will be put off by camping full stop anyway. Where ever it is, whether a plush hotel or in a field, some people will be put off.
I dont see the problem with small children. Are you suggesting that if there were no big drops they'd just go off and play wherever they liked unsupervised? Obvious solutions are to either have a creche or say no small children. Whereever it is if you don't have a creche it's not going a good meeting space for parents of small children.
A land squat may encounter probs with cops but it would also be empowering for those taking part. The land is ours squatted very provocative 4 locations in Wales this weekend, the last was in a car park in front of offices of Pembrokeshire National Park. They're still there now as far as I know.
So I think there's lots of possibilities for this to still happen. It just requires some creative thinking thats all.
steve
fair enough
15.04.2004 10:55
cheers.
heather