Chicks on Sticks – September 25th, 2014
Attendance: Malia, Sarah, Amy, Soozin, Laurel, Nicole,
Gabrielle, Anne, Gaea, Sharon
Chair: Malia
Notes: Gaea
Timekeeper: Anne
Check-in:
Gaea: Unemployed for the 3rd time in 3
weeks. Hopeful on jobs. Stilt group at Fest up for Best Non-Stage
Act! WOO!
Anne: I'm cool.
Gabrielle: Quit at the Mall and is job searching for other
things.
Nicole: had a great gig last night which was happy. Probably finished with stilting for the
season.
Sharon: Everything is good.
Laurel: Had too much fun on stilts at Fest. Other things are good.
Soozin: New cast, the bones are healing well. No need for surgery. Hurray!
2.5 more weeks and then it should be off. Job interview tomorrow, cross fingers. Job has benefits and is full time.
Amy: Good. Job
hunting in window of time between things.
Getting lots of things DONE!
Vietnam is opening to adoption again, which is exciting.
Sarah: First meeting!
Yay! Life is interesting as
always. Excited about possibilities but
also whew!
Malia: Good! Fiddling
squirrel! Life is fun! Weather is good and there are many blessings.
Tonya: Youngest started preschool. He hates it.
But there is the promise of a little bit of time. Exciting possibilities.
Agenda: Adjust play dates to 20 minutes, Mission discussion
to 45 minutes
Finance:
Sharon: balance $3414.01.
Income Tax: Federal = $430.32; MN = $281.35 . We
owe an interest and penalty of $ 748.62, which is more than the tax.
Jesse suggests we pay the tax and file letters about how
great we are and how we made a mistake and see if they will give us a break.
Soozin: Have we paid her?
Sharon: yes. We paid
her $250.
Soozin: Proposal: We pay the $711.67 of taxes and file the
letters per Jesse's recommendation and wait and see what we hear back from
them. Seconded by Laurel.
Tonya: Is there more penalty if we don't pay?
Sharon: No more penalty but the interest continues to
accrue.
Propsal passed.
Soozin: Voting is fist to 5.
Fist is block, five is all in with all the bits in the middle.
Sharon: Gigs: Angie's C4 gig – She contracted CoS as
stilters and needs to pay CoS.
Selby Jazz
fest – Angie Coordinator – Angie's gig which she hired CoS for.
Little
Mekong round 2 – Soozin Coordinated – Check is requested but not yet paid.
Minnetonka
gig – Deb coordinated – Unclear about this gig, Sharon has no record. Soozin and Tara stilted gig.
Nicole: Will contact Angie.
Playdates and Fun things
Tonya: Knows a pinup photographer. Does great, campy work. (See calendar) We could do a photo shoot with her. This could be great pro photos to use for
website, etc. This could also go big and
we could do a bunch of costuming and be a winter project.
Willing to do discount or barter. Might want to barter to teach her children to
stilt or host a b-day party.
Normal sitting fee = $250/person + $25/print she edits. Will discount to $99 mini-session rate
instead and bargain/barter down from there.
If we do a calendar, this would be for 2016 to give time to
do a really nice job.
Her studio probably has high enough ceilings for stilters.
Who wants to be involved, is there enough interest?
Interested in the project: Malia, Sarah, Amy, Soozin
(half-in), Laurel, Sharon, Nicole, Gabrielle, Anne, Gaea, Tonya
Committee: Malia, Sarah, Amy (if needed), Laurel (depends on
life commitments), Gabrielle (depending on new job), Anne, Gaea, Tonya
Amy: Wants to go apple picking on stilts!
Gaea: YES!
Amy: Urban gleaning, we could go pick apples and give them
to food shelves.
General agreement that this would be fun.
Amy: Will look into it.
Amy: What's up with the business cards?
Malia: We designed some but it stalled out.
Soozin: We can do cards like the Sparkit.
Amy: Cost?
Soozin: $50/200 cards - These are with photos where you just
submit a photo and it prints on the card.
Malia: I did/can do hand drawing for the cards.
Much discussion. I
can't write and raise my hand at the same time.
Soozin and Malia commit to designing cards.
Gaea: We could do this sort of like collector cards where
each person has their own photo and all the contact into for CoS. Then people can hold more than one.
Amy: If we do the photo shoot, we would have gorgeous photos
for each of us.
Sharon: Can Malia and Soozin decide that?
Soozin: That's a different project. Let's just do the 5 photos and have them
finished.
More discussion.
Still can't type and raise my hand.
Malia: Proposal: We spend $50 to get 250 cards. Passed.
Bedlam lower town:
Gaea: Lower town announcement. Read Deb's email.
Nomination Process
Soozin: Tara's concern is that the process doesn't include a
way to judge when and who. The wording
says we can invite anyone who meets the sponsor + 2 people criteria.
Sharon: There is a cultural fit block in the first
paragraph.
Soozin: The concern is 2 part, 1) that we know when we need
stilters and 2) that we are clear about who can be invited. Some people rely on the stilt money and
bringing new people in unexpectedly can reduce that. That's part of being a professional.
Lots of discussion.
Fingers too slow, too much raising my hand.
Malia: Note in the notes: We don't accept new stilters until
January when we assess the stilters and gigs we have.
Malia: Let's make this a 2 part process. Nomination
separately from January gigs.
Gaea: Proposal: At the annual meeting in January, we assess
the stilters and gigs we have and determine if we need new members at that
time. Sharon seconded. Passed.
Malia: Vote on nomination process! Passed!
Let's yell Thank You DEB!
Sarah: Take a picture for Deb!
Malia: Do we need a break?
Gaea: Let's skip it, we're behind time.
Mission/Vision/Values
Malia: Does anyone have the notes from last meeting?
Gaea: On my phone still.
Malia: I have my vision for what this discussion is, but we
should discuss this as a group. What is
the purpose of this conversation. I
would like to go around once to say what each person expects from this
conversation.
Malia: We are going to condense and articulate what we think
the core mission is and identify the top three things we want to have a conversation
about/areas of discomfort.
Soozin: One conversation is about the mission. A different conversation is the values. They parallel each other but they aren't the
same thing. Who we are is the ancient
art of stilt walking and providing color and art and empowerment. The values are that we are a political group
who doesn't support certain political action.
Tonya: I agree and Deb's email is similar. Read Deb's email.
Soozin: Some people are new, some have been a part a long
time. How are we a community consensus
based group vs how are we a professional stilting group. At the retreat, there was a question about
whether we have an offshoot company of professionals or not. This caused a huge impasse and seemed to stop
the meetings for a period of time. The
Ordway gig is fun because it is full of kids but doesn't jive with everyone's
morals because the support of their sponsor.
How do we align that with the group values and as a large group will we
always align or do we need to accept that the individuals may not always align
with the whole groups values. Everyone
agrees that we love stilting and dressing up, but may not be interested in the
money. A core value might be the fun of
stilting, not the monetary reward.
Malia: So, you think the mission statement is a different
conversation and the core value conversation is a different conversation. We should discuss the core values and whether
we need to decide about gigs as a group.
Amy: Whether we need to discuss the mission statement is
different than the core values and I'm tired of discussing the same things
about the mission statement.
Gaea: I don't think we need to adjust the mission
statement. It is good the way it is.
Sharon: We should look at the values and then look at
whether the mission statement needs to be pared down.
Malia: Let's read the values we have now. Read lists from last gig.
I would like to talk about the hard things that are starred
Sharon: Which are starred?
Malia: How to propose and start projects. Gigs with
questionable causes. Sharing the work load.
Gabrielle: What I'm hearing is that we are looking for a
system or a standard for how to do stuff.
Maybe we can come up with a system to address concerns, or show the
steps about gigs.
Malia: Can we start with the Gigs with questionable causes,
Deb is right that's where that started for me.
Sharon: This kind of addresses the professional stilters vs
the people who are doing it not as a profession but more as a hobby.
Soozin: I like our mission statement but it doesn't say that
we are a professional, work for hire stilt troupe. This is a question of who we are, especially
when people contact us about gigs for free.
I would prefer to take gigs for hire because this is part of my
profession and I put money into the costumes and the effort of doing it.
General offtopic-ness
Malia: Let's bring it back and not talk about costumes. We can talk about that for hours.
Soozin: But it is about costuming, because I don't take gigs
in bars because I don't think that's where I excel and the kind of stilter I
am. I don't have costuming that is
appropriate for that. I do children's
events well and enjoy them but that's me as a stilter. Other stilters may do those gigs, or gigs
around drunk people or whatever and that is up to them.
Amy: I stilted topless at First Ave. Just saying.
I don't think that the communal and the professional are
mutually exclusive. I am a professional
and I stilt as a professional but sometimes I stilt with my friends in the
park. Dividing them feels icky.
Laurel: In some groups, the group has decided to take a
certain number of free gigs in a certain time period as a way of giving back to
the community. The group as a whole
makes those decisions to give back to the community.
Gaea: I like that idea to bring up in the discussion.
Tonya: In the idea of dividing or not-dividing professional
vs communal work, it really depends on what my life needs are. It shapeshifts and varies year by year and
would be hard to break apart.
Soozin: I don't think it needs to be one or the other. When someone hires us, we are professionals
because someone is paying us money to do it.
We need to take that into the equation, but that doesn't mean we have to
get paid for everything. I think there
is room for a side group of folks who are interested in doing paid gigs. This is where we splintered off before. We haven't been doing well on doing the pro
bono gigs. Laurel was the only one at
Little Mekong and I was the only one who could do the Breast Cancer Walk.
Sharon: The difference between pro bono and professional
shouldn't be a difference. We are
professionals whether we are doing it paid or for free.
Malia: Isn't that why we created this the nomination
process? To make sure we are all
professional?
Soozin: The quality of professionals means we need to have
good costumes each time.
Malia: I'd like to name something here. We are an all-female group wearing costumes
in which we can be sexy or sex objects.
How do we name this, how do say this without tearing people down if the gig
feels yucky. If we want to do burlesque,
can we still say we are family friendly?
Sarah: Deb got the text and says “XOXOXOXXO!”
I don't know all the history here. It seems that everyone likes to get paid for
gigs. I wasn't here for Ordway and don't
know how that conversation went. Maybe
we need to decide if there is ever a time when we as a group will say “We
refuse to do this gig for moral reasons.”
Are we saying we're all about empowering women and doing gigs and
getting paid AND we're a political machine and we say we don't want to do a
gig. Maybe if a certain number of
individuals say no, we don't take the gig or maybe that is an individual
decision that we all do for ourselves.
Maybe each active member does one pro bono gig a year as a
part of membership. Otherwise its easy
to say you don't have time which hurts our mission.
Gaea: The issue of sexy vs sexual is sort of like safety
standards. We all have our own
line. I am ok with working at Fest where
I deal with drunks and safety issues and all sorts of chaos. I'm ok with that, but not everyone is and
that is ok.
Soozin: Can we do character building workshops and other
things that will help us recover?
Gaea: Huge Theater has free improv classes.
Malia: It seems like right now we don't think we need to say
we have things we don't do.
Sharon: I think its good to have certain things we don't do,
like political campaigns.
Amy: We used to have a no political campaigns rule.
Soozin: But what if we are photographed with a political
candidate, that looks like we support it.
Much discussion.
Malia: Do we have things or not that we say that we don't do
at all? Temperature check.
Amy: It seems like the way to do this is to vote on each
gig, which would be a meeting every 2 hours and would hold us back more.
Amy: We as Chicks are role models and we need to be aware of
that but what does that mean. I would be
ok with stilting for Planned Prenthood, but that might not be a Chick's
gig. Because it is so political.
Soozin: If no one responds and no one wants to take a gig,
that is an answer about whether we want to take a gig.
Malia: If we are talking about cultural fit, I think a list
is a good thing to have to help define the culture.
Amy: What I'm hearing is that we are jelling that we need to
have an articulated list of values about what kind of gigs we take.
Sarah: I don't know what shape this will take, but maybe
there are three things that we just don't do.
Gabrielle: This is more about an expression of what we're
about, not a list of things. Are there
things we don't stand for or we don't want to be associated with. We are a collection of individuals not one
collective mind and we need to decide where that fits.
Malia: We need to have these conversations and decide what
we as a group do. We have a lot of
potential to take a stand for something, we could do this actively not just as
a passive thing.
Tonya: In the interest of moving this forward, can we move
this to a small group?
Gaea: I don't think a small group can accurately represent
all the voices in this conversation yet.
Tonya: Sigh.
Amy: I agree with Gaea.
And the sigh.
Gaea: I think it is important to look at what all the
aspects are. Ordway, we love stilting
for children and getting paid, but we also don't like the sponsor. Making a decision needs to include all those
factors.
Soozin: It is also good networking. The Colon Cancer gig felt uncomfortable, but
only because it was weird, not because it wasn't for a good cause.
Amy: Great experience with the NHL but the NBA was awful and
sexist and ugly.
Soozin: Maybe we have a list of preferred clients, of people
we enjoy working with and working for.
Having a relationship with the Ordway is important, though they have an
ugly sponsor. But we like the Ordway and
that's important.
Malia: Can we move to have 30-40 minutes in the next
meeting?
Amy: We can think about what's important as homework for the
next meeting. What's important and
photos to Malia and Soozin for the cards!
Malia: Next meeting: November 20th. Anne, can you find a space.
Why did we start meeting at rental spaces? To facilitate
business. We can give up on that, though
we need a table. No living room
meetings.
Draft the agenda: Deb? (back up Amy)
Chair: Soozin
Notetaker: Laurel
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