Fossil Fools Day! (third meeting) 27th March 2009

Dear followers!

Here are the minuets from the third meeting I attended for the event 'Fossil Fools Day'.

Those present: Chris Bird, Laura Harrison, Kate Wilson (friends of the Earth), Caz

Some major developments from last week of how the event is going to take place. This is the last meeting we are going to hold until the event happening next Wednesday.
Be at Transitions Town Totnes building at 10am next Wednesday.
Topics discussed:
We touched on the subject of where the trail is going to take place when we get into the civic square for the trail. Possibly going to use either the benches to hold the trail, or the steps that lead up to the community hall. An advantage of using the steps is that we will be higher up, so the audience can see what is going on, but there again, we will have to shout pretty loud for anyone to hear us. The advantage for us to use the benches in the actual square is that the audience will be able to hear us better, and closer to the action. We also don’t now how many people will be there anyway.

There was talk of us possibly having some musicians to come along with us, so we might get some music while parading up the town centre.

There will now be some media coverage of the event, as Chris has gone into ‘Totnes Times’, and they will hopefully be covering the story for Totnes. He has also contacted Spotlight (South West television news station) and the Herald Express for other newspaper coverage.

There was talk of getting a town crier involved, to shout various things while going up the main street. Someone is going to get back to Chris about this. We also have a judge now, to facilitate between ‘King Cole’ and the prosecutors. We have asked Kate Wilson, who is affiliated with ‘Friends of the Earth’, and she has agreed.

We are also getting sorted the use of Dartington’s costume department, and hopefully going over on Tuesday next week with Chris to sort out some costumes.
See below for various tasks to be completed by next Wednesday.
Tasks to be completed
-Shakers (Write on the bottles “No more Coal! Leave it in the ground!” ect slogans)

- Alternative Energies speeches (Wave Power, Power and Wind Power)

-Ask about number of women at Dartington for costumes

-Email speeches to Chris

-Print out leaflet

Over the next few days, I put the finishing touches to the head-dresses I made for everyone, and made many, many shakers (unfortunately keeping my neighbours up to the wee hours!)

Here are some photos of me hard at work!:

Here I am surrounded by the many bottled shakers I made, and with my solar head-dress on! I filled the shakers with pasta, which did provide somewhat of an issue with the 'Friends of the Earth', but as we cannot put stones in, due to the safety implications, pasta it was!

Here are the three finished head-dresses. They're nothing special, as long as we get the message across.

I also put labels on each of the bottled shakers. They were telling the audience what was going on, what our mission statement was, where to find out more information and to remember to recycle the bottle! I did this to nearly twenty bottles full of pasta!

Initial thought after the meeting:

Although there is alot of positive thinking and enthusiasm about the event, I just feel as though the whole thing has been put together too quickly. Even at this meeting today, I am still explaining to other helpers what their role is, when the day actually is, what time to turn up ect. We have less than a week, and Laura and myself have still so much to do.