Location for CB24

@Emily H heya, great news, i just built a mobile sauna for my event in the lake district last month and it's stored there ready for use. its not super pretty yet, but it's crazy hot in less than 10 minutes and got decent control too. i built it for three people but have plans to extend it to double the width which should hold six/seven. We also have a portable hot tub stored there too which was can take to CB. they both run off electricity to reduce burning emissions. so are subject to a site with good power available. another friend does have a wood fired sauna unit in storage if we end up needed that.

I'm thinking to have an online meeting soonish to do some work on site finding. Watch this space for details

@Sam Lee I know it's hard to get and keep balls rolling in summer but think we need to get a jog on if we want to make things happen for next year!!

@Sam Lee a meeting would be good as I imagine sites will be booked already for may bank holiday 2024. So there would be a sense of urgency if we want a new home.

There is an online meeting scheduled as follows:

Monday 24 July

19:00 UKT - 20:00CET

https://meet.google.com/swm-iopk-swz

This has been scheduled and set up solely by folk on the Celtic Burn Telegram group, with no reference to this thread. Not sure if it's linked on FB or not. I'm posting here as there seems to be a bit of a disconnect between various different communication methods so would be good to get a broad mix of people.

@Allan Thank you Allan. I haven't had the headspace to download telegram and connect on there yet and think it's a bit of an issue if things are being developed simultaneously on different platforms :S

@Emily H Things aren't really being developed on Telegram, it's mainly a chat place for the community (Scottish Burners and friends) to... coordinate local stuff. There is a CB channel but again, its purpose is chit chat and news decemenation. All important stuff will come through here untill decided otherwise, using here.

@Sam Lee Well that's good to hear but you can surely appreciate why someone not on the group would feel left out! And being part of that convo will be an important thing, no? Not trying to hate but with many different comms with different people on each one and some people finding some platforms tricky just think some care is needed - if telegram is a new major organisation channel (as chit chat often turns to planning) that's obvi totally cool esp if it works well with local vibes but worth blasting that info / writing it into the organisational structure so people know and can participate

@Emily H you are an important part of the convo, please join it: https://t.me/+auh5XT3E_Zs4NWJk

Salutations! So many thoughts so here goes;

• if we are to find a new site this year I think a) as already said it has to be sharpish and b) it’ll be with a stroke of luck without the luxury of time to decide between a few options. That’s just a hunch given the process. A meeting is necessary and glad it’s going ahead because it’ll give us a barometer for how energised we are as a group to get it done for 2024. Kudos to Sam for provisionally booking 👌 I suggest local working groups to take the helm though, even if it is for 2025! Happy to nominate myself, living in Glasgow, should that be the route.

• Site; only in utopia does everyone want to turn up early/together and all pitch in on build and you can add strike in that too. The groups of people who like volunteering their time for that are vital and I don’t think we should gloss over that or force participation. Personally I love to be part of build and strike if I can but also don’t hold anything against people who don’t, it’s part of my gift to the community and I see the gifts others give that aren’t part of build and strike so I see it as part of the circular economy. I would agree on the site owner being cool with the goings on and implore a level of interaction with us that makes us feel safe to do what we want to do respectfully. I suspect the meeting will indicate how much of a driver this is for a new site.

• Site continued; For the land and current infrastructure I guess there should be a balance between existing and scope to temporarily expand. Marthrown was a bit glitzy but the amount of infrastructure suited us for getting a feel for running a burn imo. Moving forward though I feel at least toilets & showers (minimum plumbed and potable water), a roundhouse type static structure with power and maybe 1 other static structure that could be malleable as a minimum. The ability to have fire and effigies are non-negotiable imo, makes no sense to not have the, which means the current site is not fit for purpose but again, point b) above, do we have the time to find what we’re looking for? Catch 22

• Platforms; I hear the worries of inclusivity of chatting over different platforms but I think it’s a good option to keep things synthesised ironically. Whichever platform we decide to make decisions on should be kept concise and easy to find things and multiple informal discussions left to a site/app designed to do that. Also as we have already grown and moved to telegram to stay connected it seems to have organically stabilised there so don’t see the need to rock that boat. It does however imo need some chat around content/boundaries/usage what ever word you want to use her to differentiate between “Burn” chat and “community” chat. That does link nicely to my last point…

• What are we creating here?; Are we building a community? Are we putting on a burn? Both? Now that it’s coming into our 3rd year do we need to start asking those questions or just leave it to evolve organically? There’s chat about growth, are we talking about the actual burn here?, with points for and against but my thoughts are kinda based on Dunbars number of 150 being the max number of people our brains can handle when trying to make genuine connections and proved by the feeling we get when going to CB as apposed to bigger festivals or even Nest. So I would advocate not going over that number in fear of loosing the cornerstone of 1 of our main intentions to converge in this way…with the right balance of creating the environment we want to connect in without being “exclusive” of course #wearenotacult

See ya’ll tomorrow

Agen-doc: docs.google.com/document/d/1-LRMs0kjDbOeu7MuxhhxjPJazrO5FKRLk-T3fXHlRD8/edit?usp=sharing

Hey I wasn't in the meeting but wanna put in 2 cents:

things we deffo need in a new site:

fire

all night amplified sound via roundhouse structure- i would rather stay at marthrown than move to a site where we have to shut down after a certain hour

toilets/showers

ability to be warm in a space for welfare/ or budget to purchase a bell tent with fire [but then we will also need storage]

eeeeeeeeee

@Adele Meower please add your points to the Agen-doc 🙏

Exploration starting - see trello card here https://trello.com/c/6s4E67fG/150-team-new-location-spreadsheet (please join if you're keen or add your site idea if you have one!) and drive folder with the spreadsheet and list of intriguing ideal site qualities here https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_DL4iv11NN_OzocjELb-KnfIo6YJ6UUe

early exploratory phase time! "blue sky thinking" as my boss would call it ;]

i just converted a disused farm (empty 20 years) into a festival site and hosted a great week long 150 person festival there last month. it's in the lake district, not scotland, but my point is about what can be done with an empty site with volunteers in a few weeks. i also wanted to say that all the mobile infastructure (showers, sauna, hot tub, kitchen etc) would be available to hire for a tiny fee for CB should we need it on a virgin site. i have added the site to the list anyway, if a site in the lakes would be considered.

Hi all!

Meeting minutes from last night’s Town Hall are here. For those who were there, if there’s anything I missed or got wrong, feel free to edit.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TuedaG2KN2yKEYcg6_QEYQ3h98pSv0Z8-wxPQSMPSWw/edit?usp=sharing

Okay, this has been a long time coming, it's more than the end of summer. It's time to find a conclusion to the location for CB24.

There was a site visit to a new location in Dumfries and Galloway this past Sunday that Rachel Allan and me went on.

The site is still yet to confirm if they'd have us but it seemed positive. Also they'll come back with a price but we expect it to be cheeper than Marthrown.

The site has: kitchen, main stage, longhouse, polytunnel, ticket booth thing and a river with good swim spot. 5am noise. 4mile public transport. Big burn yes.

We currently have Marthrown provisionally booked for 22nd-30th April.

The original AP by Laura decided 2024 dates to be 29th-7th April May. To fit over Beltane and May bank holiday. The new site can accommodate us for then, but, they have a big 3000ppl event three weeks later so there's a tiny overlap with their early site volunteers (wouldn't get in our way).

Here are some more fun dates: school hols (parents, teachers, kids) 29march -15april.

Beltane- 1st May

Full moon - April23, May23

I don't want to open up the date AP again, and if we went with that then we move sites to this new place. If we change dates then we can go with old site or new site at an earlier date. That's where we're at. What should we do?

I think that we should first decide on which Site we prefer- new location or Marthrown. And afterwards, in case we chose Marthrown, then there is no further question re: date, as we could only go with the one provisionally booked (22-30). In case we opt for the new site- we could then quickly deliberate between last week of April or first week of May; just no point starting with the date question, if you ask me.

My advice: Let other stakeholders argue for Marthrown vs New Site, here in this AP, and over the coming week, and then, on and at our Monday the 16th meeting- decide finally for the 2024 location and close this AP.

@Sam Lee from what little I know of the new place so far , I'm very interested in following up on that option. as I have said previously, I can bring a mobile sauna and hot tub that I have acquired over the summer as well as anything else we are missing. I'm about to buy a new huge marquee for example (which will hold all of us) and have now got two huge heaters too. I assume the site has mains power and capacity is not an issue etc

@Tom Allen no mains power. No capacity limit.

@Sam Lee depending how much power we need, I have a 14kwh solar battery system, which can run a small festival, I've done 150 person events with it. Renting in a small generator isn't expensive if we need to, I can manage that and have half a kilometre of cable

@Tom Allen Thanks for all your infrastructure offers Tom xxx feels easier making a potential field move hearing this from you.

@Sam Lee my absolute pleasure. The more my stuff gets used the more I can justify hoarding it all 😜

@Sam Lee site looks very exciting!! definitely curious to hear the price as we'll have to bring in extras so need it to be pretty cheap for it to work. also curious about other realities i.e. Laura's question below re toilets etc.

looks like quite a blank canvas vibe though which is exciting. big fire is very exciting. sound curfew - did they indicate if that is mega noise or all noise? looking forward to the big meeting with more details and big chat.

dates - I vote keep it simple, we had an AP with an answer, let's go with those dates if they are available, marthrown was booked for the closest possible dates to then so if we stick with marthrown we just go with the booking that was the best case scenario. saves us one convo ;]

Site pictures - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10e8CKkK4p-S4yNAlFy_YPozebslK8I-9

@Sam Lee Wow the scenery is epic here. Looks like some pre-existing things we can use. What is the situation with toilets, water and sanitation?

@Laura Jayne two composting toilets that we'd have to change ourselves (would need to negotiate for these or bring in our own). Drinking water - yes, taps around.

Hmm just realized my settings on loomio were such that I would only receive emails when a new thread was created or when someone mentioned me, so I wasn’t notified about any of the comments from yesterday. Makes me wonder how many people unwittingly have their settings that way.

Re: dates I had thought we’d changed to April 29-May 7 regardless of site. Was the 22nd-30th the closest Marthrown had available? I don’t have strong opinions on this but would agree that perhaps it’s a site dependent decision.

I strongly feel the site decision should not happen *within the meeting on the 16th, as 1) we already talked about it not happening then and have told people it wouldn’t 2) in the AGM we discussed the idea is using word of mouth where we ask everyone to tell everyone they know about the decision and then make a decision with as much community participation as possible, so far this hasn’t happened but I thought we’d use that after the meeting. I thought we had also talked about having a literal vote but that very well could’ve been my own interpretation.

Could we 1) have the meeting and take detailed clear notes (including perhaps taking note on the voice opinions of others, an idea Sam has mentioned) 2) spread those plus some kind of poll link via the everyone tell everyone method, and 3) perhaps put a deadline of maybe at most a week for people to read notes and vote?

Perhaps some might feel a literal vote goes against the AP process system, in which case we could make the decision via comments here after the meeting, but personally I would like for those who can’t attend the meeting to have a chance to both hear details on it (on what was learned at the site visit that we didn’t already know from my call with her in August ) and then at the very least a few days to process and share their thoughts if they didn’t have time to attend.

I would like to advertise the meeting and push it as much as possible but I want clear messaging with process and dates, therefore I'd like to make the process decision now if yall don’t mind. This info to be shared? (we can share it after 5pm today if anyone wants to amend it before then)

****Important information to read*****

Celtic Burn 24 meeting, 16th Oct, 8:30pm

TLDR: Will we move to a new site?

Facilitator- RachelR

Scriber- EmilyH

Agenda/ process:

1) Sharing what we know about our two potential sites.

2) Asking questions about what we know.

3) People giving opinions about what they think/ feel about the decision. Live scribing inputting into the AP on Loomio.

4) What happens next? AP to remain open for one week after the meeting to collect any more advice, then the decision to be made 23rd October 8:30pm. Decision made in the way we normally conclude AP’s.

More info:

How we make decisions -

New site pictures -

New site info in this thread -

@Sam Lee this seems fine to me, though maybe sending it out later on tonight rather than 5pm as others not be able to check loomio during their workdays

MEETING SUMMARY AND PROS/CONS

Conclusions from the meeting today - check it out here! The full notes of the meeting are attached here and are also uploaded to the celtic burn community google drive (link below), alongside a pro/cons summary table as actioned in the meeting. Link to drive below - anyone with editor rights to the celtic burn community drive should have access, which should encompass a lot of the community - but please request access if it does not open for you.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1O5m-Eya501DNw79aIn6kn9COyJor62pZ

The overall feeling amongst meeting attendees was that although the site was very interesting, it does not seem like we're ready for it yet - very adventurous situation. Another year to continue building the community was broadly thought to be needed to get ready for a step like this - although the site has a lot of potential and could be considered for 2025.

The AP will keep going for one more week though so please add your thoughts - not everyone could of course attend the meeting so perhaps there are some wildly different opinions in the community! Please do take a look at the meeting notes for the full picture and share your thoughts!

AP Decision: We will continue with Marthrown of Maybe for another year.

The dates that Marthrwon are available mean that we change our dates of event to 22nd-30th April (To be confirmed when I pay the deposit)

Emily summed it up really well above, and thanks to everyone that attended the meeting and gave input. The proposed alternative site was a step too uncomfortable for us to manage this year.

One more year at Marthrown, famous last words.