Friday 9th July 2010 

St Martin in the Fields, Trafalgar Square

LVSC’s STAN project and the NCIA are working together to gather the opinions and ideas of people that care about voluntary and community action in London.

 Whether you’re opinionated, frustrated, jaded, angry, isolated, passionate, optimistic, traumatised, inspired… or whether you just want a day having real conversations with people about what matters to you and eating high quality biscuits…..

Come and talk to us!

This event will be an open space meeting (a creative meeting format in which participants define the agenda and adjust it as the meeting proceeds) for voluntary sector workers and volunteers, community activists and interested people to explore anything they like about their experiences, their current concerns and their hopes for the future. There will be opportunities to make connections and feed into other research groups about specific issues.

Bring your friends and colleagues, share your thoughts and feelings with us and be part of the debate about the sort of voluntary and community sector we want to see.

This event is completely free of charge

Booking is essential and bookings will be accepted on a first come first served basis. 

Download a flyer for this event

Download a booking form

(Feel free to pass these on to colleagues, friends and other organisations you think might want to attend!)

To find out more, read the post below…..

The open space event (as well as some surveys and interviews we’ll be doing before and after it)  are part of a shared research project between the Second Tier Advisors Network (STAN), a project of LVSC, and the  National Coalition for Independent Action (NCIA). 

The two main organisers for the day are Rachael from the NCIA and Gemma from STAN.  You can reach both of us at stan@lvsc.org.uk, or you’re welcome to call Gemma on 020 3349 8919.

• Who else is involved?

The Big Lottery’s Basis programme, Third Sector Alliance (LVSC’s policy network for VCS organisations), the London Regional Change Up Consortium are all partners in this event.   None of these stakeholders have particular ideas or agendas to push but it is likely they will all send attendees on the day, and will help us to market the event in order to ensure that it’s as well attended as possible.

• What is the purpose of the event?

The honest and true purpose of this event is simply to provide a place where people can talk about their hopes and fears around voluntary and community action in London.  We’re not consulting on any particular idea, we don’t have anything to promote, and we’re not gathering evidence for any particular purpose or funding bid.  We WILL be writing up the day, in note form initially, and will use what we learn as the basis for a report to be published (we hope) some time in the autumn.

• Why are you running it now?

We’re holding this event on 9^th July because funding for the STAN project comes to an end at the end of August, and we want to take a snapshot of what infrastructure and development work looks like now and find out about people’s hopes and fears about what will happen to it in the future.

We thought it best to hold the event before the schools break up for their summer holidays and parents and carers are more likely to be away on leave.  We hope you’ll be able to make it on the day but if you can’t be there there we’ll be setting up other ways to feed into the discussion soon.

• Who is invited?

Our original focus when planning this event was to focus it particularly on infrastructure workers and those interested in infrastructure and development work, but we’ve since decided to broaden this out because we want to gather as many opinions as possible.  We are interested in hearing from people who work and volunteer for frontline AND infrastructure organisations in ALL SORTS of roles – as long as you’re interested in the future of London’s voluntary and community sector, you’re welcome to attend.

We’re looking for project workers, advisors, managers, trainers, grants officers, admin staff, finance workers, fundraisers, or community activists; trustees, new staff members, long term employees, part timers, full timers, people with lots of different jobs, people with no jobs at all, and people facing imminent redundancy.

• Do you mean me?

If you’ve got this far and are still thinking you’re interested in attending, then YOU ARE THE EXACT SORT OF PERSON we would like to see on the day.

And if you’ve got this far and you’re really not sure about whether this event is for you, then you are most likely ALSO the exact sort of person we’d like to see. 

The point of the event is to gather a mixed range of individuals and opinions and to create a discussion where all voices are equal.  We want sceptics and cynics there as much as we want optimistic, enthusiastic people. 

Whether you’re experienced at open space and love going to meetings, or really-not-sure and unused to being allowed out of the office at all, we still want to see you.  One of the principles of open space meetings is that you attend as an individual rather than as a representative of your organisation, so even if your role wouldn’t usually involve coming to events like this you are still welcome to attend.

Come by yourself or with colleagues – there’s no limit to the amount of people allowed to attend from any one organisation.

• What’s the deal with this open space idea?

Open Space is, quite simply, a way of running meetings that allows for lots of different voices and ideas to be heard.  The day starts without any formal agenda and develops as groups of participants gather around different questions and topics. 

If you haven’t been to an open space meeting before it can seem a bit strange at first, but it can also be a really interesting and useful way to interact with all sorts of people on an equal footing. 

Our event will be run by an independent facilitator with extensive experience of running open space with a range of different groups.  It will be an active but flexible sort of day, and you can join in as much or as little as you like.

• This all sounds great!  But…I can’t make it on that day….

Oh no!  Sorry we’ve picked a date that doesn’t suit you.  However, if you’d still like to contribue to the discussion we’ll be announcing an online survey and series of interviews soon, plus you’re always welcome to email or call us directly.