CHANGES TO THE GARDEN

9.1.2006



Dear Members/workers/volunteers,


The shape of the Garden is changing.

1. It will work more as a co-op with everyone having shared input and with equal benefits.

2. Everyone is entitled to a time-space in the Garden. This is a time to be at the Garden on your own. (See time-table in the shed for spaces still available.) This time-table changes every two months.

3. There is a volunteer gardening drop-in club every Tuesday. Anyone can come along to help with gardening, maintenance etc. And to drink tea.

4. Payment for services- youth club play-work, adult art club tutoring- will no longer be in money but in tokens.( Equivalent in value to the former rate of pay) These can be exchanged in a local health shop for food items and/or for health treatments- there is a clinic upstairs. In time, other shops and local services may come on board. This system will take affect, subject to the success of a grant application, in May.

5. Work tokens can also be used to hire time in the garden in order to run your own workshops, classes etc which you are qualified or have experience in teaching. (Yoga, Art, excercise, Qigong, etc.) You will advertise these for the local community. These must also be publicised in Autistic publications and at the adjoining Peter Bedford cafe.There must be a concessionary rate offered. All earnings for this will go to yourself. However if you need assistance, you are entitled to ask another member/worker and to agree a sum according to earnings.

6. Other artists/practitioners will be recruited to hire out space provided their Intended use is acceptable and of interest to members. Money raised in this way will go towards general necessities at the garden.

7. Gradualy our reliance on grants will be phased out and other aproaches to funding will be sought.
This will involve:
a) A schools programme.

b) A doner scheme where businesses can fund the involvement of either a child or adult with high support needs for a given length of time to attend a club or course or to have one to one tuition/mentoring.

8. Every three months there will be a meeting/bonfire at the garden where ideas about how the garden is going to be used will be discussed .


REASONS FOR THE CHANGES


1. The need to continuously make out grant applications is draining energy away from the fundamental purpose of the garden project. That is to provide a shared place for mutual support.

2. The last four grants have been unsuccessful. A sign that I am growing weary and so slack in this role; not really fully believing in it anymore.

3. Money is becoming the judge of worth and this is affecting relationships between those who get money and those who don`t at the garden.

4. A system of tokens enables many people to be recognised for effort in many different ways. The tokens can cut across difference where money highlights it.

5. Money is problematic in this project because not everyone can be self-employed and this puts payment on the wrong side of the present law.

6. Money seems to make people think in a narrow frame about the space. I.e it is a place to go for a certain amount of hours. It is hard for other ideas or connections to come about in this framework.

7. If on the other hand it is seen more as a shared space, then people who have an involvement with the garden as an Autistic learning space can still earn money by self-initiating projects from a wider basis of their own skills and drawing on a local paying community.

8. This type of inovation will naturally build links between the Autistic/educational aims of the space and a wider inclusive community. This will inevitably broaden perceptions.

9. I feel that it is no longer necessary or healthy for me to be the only person driving decisions and making things happen in this space.

10. After five years of intense involvement in founding this project, I am getting tired and need to open up the space and its possibilities as a place of dialogue between many types of people. Without this opening I feel that the Garden can not maintain momentum.

11. The Garden is the sum total of everyone`s ideas. I would like to see a more fluid and casual set-up where we support one anothers’ development by perhaps exchanging skills once a month- each month somebody different teaching others something that they enjoy doing. This need not be too formal. A swapping system of skills and interests that we are perhaps learning at the moment ourselves.


Exceptions to the token system:
1. A general co-ordinator responsible for the day-to-day running of the project, for
approaching businesses, for recruiting artists and practioners and making links with
organisations concerned with Autism will have a fixed monthly part-time wage and
must have a self-employed status. I will fill this post for an initial six months starting in May.
Before that I will continue to do it on a voluntary basis. After six months, anyone is able to apply for the post.
There will be a vote of all members to decide. This post will always depend on regular election.

2. People employed for specialist services- carpentry, plumbing, gardening- which
involve a specific job or for one-off training/artisitc development workshops for
members, have the option to be paid with a cheque if they are self-employed.

So these are the ideas for a few changes!

There is no compulsion in this new set-up to do more or less than is comfortable. Lifestyles change and are changeable and involvements reflect this.

There may be people who feel that the conditions of their involvement have dramatically shifted. – Especially those paid with money before who suddenly are not paid this way. Those who withdraw may need to earn money right now and that might be the priority. That is fair enough.

Whatever peoples’ situation, the space is there. Basically a free space to experiment with ways of living and to question certain beliefs about oneself and others.


Happy New Year!


Ruth