Three meetings and a leaving do?!

It was a very full week last week, a committee meeting on Monday evening, a gathering of traders at Southampton City Council offices to talk about the proposed Portswood Project, team development of our social impact, Jamie’s leaving evening out, my first writers group as well as all the usual October Books activities. I am glad we had a long weekend after to recover.

Committee Meeting

Jamie’s last Committee meeting and we all expressed our thanks for his co-chairing of the meetings for the last 18 months or so. We also welcomed Liz Bradley to the team, her first Committee meeting as she is joining us as Membership coordinator and officially starts on the 5th September.

We hold our Committee meetings once a month on either a Monday or a Tuesday and we aim to have hybrid sessions when we can. This time everyone was ‘in the room’ which is definitely my preferred set up. We are still in the process of defining our procedures for decision making and organisation management following our move to a Community Benefit Society last year. We’ll make sure info is on our new website, which is coming soon.

If you want to find out more you can become a member and being involved in Governance at October Books do drop us a line at info@octoberbooks.org. We are actively seeking more Committee members from our local community.

The Portswood project

City Council had invited all of the traders in Portswood to the Council offices to talk about the proposed changes to Portswood High Street and to find out what the barriers are to the implementation of all or part of the scheme. I spoke about our general support for the scheme, with the benefits of less traffic reducing noise and pollution and making the high street a better place to be for pedestrians. I also mentioned our garden and the use of green infrastructure to reduce anti-social behaviour, fly-tipping and crime. Others were all for more CCTV and police presence.

We do hold paper copies of the feedback questionnaire in October books so please do drop by and pick up a copy or fill in the online form here . We do hope that use your imagination to describe the Portswood High Street you would like to see…. more on this coming soon.

Social Impact activities

The team are in the process of creating a Theory of Change (see more here). To do this we have collated information on all our social impact activities with the whole team getting involved. In this weeks online session we had a go at ‘collective patterning’, grouping all of these activities into themes together. A huge thank you to Rosie for facilitating this online session. We will be talking through the social impact measures and the theory of change at the next couple of Committee meetings and likely presenting them at the November AGM and members meeting.

Jamie’s leaving evening out

Its not often we are all together as team so it was great to be in the same space to say our goodbyes to Jamie and celebrate his contribution to October Books. We were at The Trago Lounge and shared a few drinks and stories of the last four years that Jamie has been at the shop. He started with us as a casual worker in October of 2019. We all know what happened in March 2020 (pandemic in case you had forgotten) and Jamie stayed on in the shop running operations during the first and second lock downs.

Jamie’s ‘can do’ attitude and willingness to try new things meant we did deliveries to those self-isolating, started a few new products lines and helped to support our customers through those times of change. More recently he has worked with me on the Community Share offer and business plan and been in the process of getting a new website up and running. We will miss him a lot and wish him well in his new job up in London.

We also heard on the evening that Jess will be leaving October Books too. She applied for a role with Beyond Reflections, a charity supporting trans, non-binary and questioning adults, a cause close to her heart. She was successful and will be leaving us in early October to take up a role as Volunteer Co-ordinator with them. We will be sad to see her go but recognise that this new opportunity was too good for her to miss.

If you know anyone with Shopify website skills or website skills in general please do let us know as we need to get that website finished and online sale of books sorted before the end of September if possible.

We will also need to take on someone with a Promotion and marketing background to replace Jess when she leaves (job description not yet written!). Write to clare@octoberbooks.org for more information.

Collective Imagination Writers group

As many of you who know me, I am passionate about imagining the future we want to see. My thinking is that until we know what the future looks like, feels like, smells like, sounds like and tastes like, we are going to struggle to shake off the confines of old ways of being, doing and thinking. We imagined we could buy a bank and not be beholden to an uncaring and distant landlord…. we made that happen because we imagined it.

So, this week I joined a Writers Group as part of the Collective Imagination Practice community… and used these blogs as material for the group to review. It felt a little scary to have work critiqued but it was invaluable and will help to guide me as these blogs develop…. So keep watching this space

My book recommendation if you want to dip into Imagining our future is From What is to What If by Rob Hopkins

That’s all from me for now. I am only working one day this week, part of a new rhythm for me where I work extra hours four weeks of the month and then only work one day on the fifth week. I want to make sure I have some regular downtime in the coming months as I know things will get frantic and busy, and this seemed a sensible approach. Do drop me a line if you have any questions or thoughts and ideas about the content of these blogs… and do let us know if you would like to join the team!

Clare