Local Social Fora

Social Forums: World Social Forum | European Social Forum | Local Social Fora | About the Social Forum Movement

=Local social forum resources=

Forum Websites

 * Manchester Social Forum
 * London Social Forum
 * Cardiff Social Forum
 * Durham/North East Social Forum
 * Leeds Social Forum
 * email: Leedssf (at) yahoo.co.uk
 * More info on Leeds Indymedia.

Networking Local Social Forums

 * There is a discussion list for local social forum activities across the UK to network, share experiences and so on. Subscribe here.
 * There is the beginnings of a wiki discussion for local social forums to engage with the ESF on esf2004.net.

Building local social forums - feedback from ESF2004
The original documents

Building Local Social Forums: document
This document was put together from a meeting of members of currently existing local social forums (LSFs) who wanted to share experience, and others who were thinking of setting on up.

For the original documents, see:

http://wiki.sheffieldsocialforum.org.uk/Local_Social_Fora#Building_local_social_forums_-_feedback_from_ESF2004

There are also condensed parts of this used in preparation for the UK LSF meeting in Sheffield:
 * guidelines for an open space LSF
 * LSF case studies taken from questionnaires filled by four different LSF's.

We first went round the group to find out what questions were uppermost on our minds.

From this list, we narrowed down to five themes:

1. What do local social forums do? 2. How to start? 3. What do you do with the charter? 4. The local / global relationship. 5. Outreach and publicity.

Due to time restrictions, we only had 12 minutes on each of these: only enough time to make a very meagre beginning - but start we did!

Note that some other issues came up that we didn't have time to cover: see the website above for the full brainstorm. Some to mention would be:


 * Do LSFs vote?
 * How to keep LSFs going / avoiding ending up in an activist ghetto?
 * How to avoid building to an event, only to subsequently dissipate?
 * What works and what doesn't work?

On to the five themes:

1. What do local social forums do?
Most already existing local social forums had held at least one large annual 'social forum' event.


 * Irish Social Forum: held weekly meetings to plan for an annual event. These were open meetings, and ended up as networking events.
 * Gothenburg Social Forum: Brought local organisations together for a large event, placing the emphasis on certain organisations taking responsibility for their own mobilisation. The local context was an explosion of (non-co-operating) groups that the forum aimed to bring together. Large meetings were held once a month.
 * In Belgium there was also a WSF-like 'mass' event.
 * Sheffield held a ‘launch event’. One participant expressed a fondness for the New York LSF model of a ‘seed group’ and connected working groups.
 * A new South Manchester LSF has a very local focus. The aim is to share information

2. How to Start?
This theme was particularly to help potential new LSFs avoid some of the pitfalls that others had encountered.


 * Ask local groups directly – don't rely on printed publicity. Making personal contact is the way forward.
 * Organising locally ('mobilising') for European / World Social Forums.
 * Be clear – both in your group and when communicating with others – on issues of transparency, the WSF charter, being open to all, etc.
 * Ask people attending meetings: be honest about your agenda; come as individuals, not representatives.
 * Think about finances: fundraisers? Ask groups to contribute? Charge for stalls? Other...?
 * Big Question: think about in what way / if at all the group wants to relate to trade unions.
 * Don't be over-ambitious – think long term!

3. What to do with the charter?
There was a general agreement that, whilst the WSF charter was a key document for LSFs to refer to, the charter itself should be used as a 'base', not as a set of unchangeable rules.

The reason for this was because of the need to adapt points in the charter to local circumstances.

It was emphasised, however, that people coming to the forum as individuals – and these individuals all being equal /within/ the forum – was vital.

4. Local to Global
We discussed the balance of local and global issues that LSFs might want to reflect. Particularly, we looked at the kind of speaker a LSF might want to invite to an event.

It was noted that it can be embarrassing if international speakers come, but only get a very few people in their workshop. However, national speakers have worked for some.

It is also good to get people who can give the context to LSFs – the World and European Social Forums.

One LSF had focused on issues, not speakers: thereby keeping local issues central to the event.

5. Publicity and Outreach
The main points we came up with here were:


 * Using the local press is good – but takes time! Planning is necessary, and knowing when is the right time for which press release. Having a local contact who knows about marketing can really help!
 * Keep the ‘Social’ in your local social forum – e.g. make it a social as well as a political event. You’re more likely to attract people this way.
 * We wondered how best to split outreach time between organizations and individuals. Some said 50 / 50.
 * It was noted that organizations attending want structure – they don’t want to be told to self-organise! Those working to make the local social forum happen have to provide this structure, whilst making the forum as open as possible.
 * Networking – talking to people still counted as the best way of getting them to come along. Word of mouth.
 * One LSF asked organizations to take responsibility for getting their own ‘constituency’ to come along. This worked very well.
 * Feeding people when they’re there was also a popular way of persuading people to come along.

END

=Local Social Forum gathering: Sheffield, 4th and 5th December 04=

Here's a link to some of the paper output from the day.

Here's a link to the raw notes from the day that Dan did. (I need to get these summarised, but can't find the time! There's nearly 4000 words to condense... damn you and all your interesting things to say! Will try soon... in the meantime, it's worth just having a browse through these.)

And here's a word-downloadable version.