National meeting of Local Social Forum (LSF) in UK - 5/6 June 2004

Notice: this is only a short summary . A long version of minutes will be published soon on the UK list
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There were people from London Social Forum, Leeds Social Forum, Manchester Social Forum, Sheffield Social Forum, Liverpool, St Denis Social Forum (France), Red Pepper, Madrid Social Forum (Spain)

The meeting was interesting and constructive.

After introducing each other we decided to present the experiences of the LSF were we are working in focusing on methods for taking decisions, composition of the groups (individuals/parties/Trade Unions/NGO/Associations/Groups involved in the SF) , open problems for the SF, actions/activities, when did we start) It was the first time for us seeing each other and it was also interesting to compare our experience with what?s happening in France, Italy, Spain.

The afternoon was dedicated to the proposal for ?how to network in Uk and in Europe and the role of LSF in the ESF

Sunday morning we discussed about the proposals of LSF for the ESF 2004 (how we can make them merging?what tools can we use?) and practical proposals for the network of the UK LSF

Proposals from the meeting

1. Networking between Local Social Forum in Europe

· International Local Social Forum website suggested by St Denis Local SF supported by the people in the Manchester meeting og the 5th/6th of June.

Suggestion for the website

· Map of the world with links with the countries and different locations to click on
· Each LSF sends infos about activities/announcements/methods of work/charter of principals
· Thematics linked for European or world network
· The aim is to facilitate the merging of proposals starting from the ESF in 2004
· A call for suggestions will be put on the UK SF list and on Wiki (Mariangela and Kevin) to be send to St Denis

2. Networking between Local Social Forum in UK

· Regular meetings every 3 months ( the next could be early September)
· Partecipate to each other actions
· Circulate ideas and documents about debates already done in different groups / sharing documents/leaflets
· Website for UK LSF with links to all the LSF ( workgroup with Chad, Kevin, Rob, Mariangela)
· Newsletter from all LSF to be printed as Schnews model every 2 months on A4 to be printed on one side national page on the other side local news ( We don?t have a person who can do it. Is there anybody interested in taking the responsability?). Till then there will be a call for LSF in UK in order to send the news letter every 2 months to the UK list
· Nick has a form to fill to get ideas about what the LSF are doing and how they are working to insert and publish
· The UK LSF mailing list has to be used only to debate or exchange informations about activities/ major events to avoid crosspostings

3. Proposals from the people in the meeting for the presence of LSF in the ESF in London

· The proposal is to put a call for an European LSF open space (sharing responsabilities among all the Eu SF) at the ESF in order to see if other SF in Uk and in Europe are interested.
· Kevin from Sheffield is going to prepare a draft statement about it and the duability of LSF after the ESF
· The tool we are going to use to collect proposals from UK will be the wikie page on www.ESF2004.net which is the horizontal web/site. Go to homepage and click ParallelProjects and then LocalSocialForums
· Proposals will be translated by Diana in Spanish and German, by Julie in French, by Marina in Greek, by Mariangela in Italian. Other volonteers for translating are welcome.
· A proposal for a meeting of European LSF in Berlin will circulate soon on the lists and to the contacts we have at the moment
· The call is aiming to facilitate the merging of proposals for workshops to be held at the Local Social Forum Open Space at the ESF in London

Suggestions from workshops to be held at the LSF open space

· network of actions /partecipatory democracy- consensus, partecipatory budget and consultation- what the role of local SF in the communities, every day an open agenda space, LSF: is it a body or a space?, exchanging expieriences from local and thematic Sf in Europe about experimental ways of doing things, tools: the role of the European website and the structure of it
· The European LSF Open Space has to feed proposal to the assembly of social movements which has to be held not in parallel with other meetings to call for actions and networkings because the ESF is not an event but a process to build strengh in social movents worldwide

4. What are LSF in UK at the moment?

· Nick volonteered to draft a form to be completed by the local social forum in Uk in order to get informations about their structure, methods of work, activities to draw a map of the actual situation

5. Open problems to be discussed in future in UK

· Are we a body or a space?
· Parties in the SF?
· Consensus/partecipatory democracy in the LSF

6. Suggestions for Local Social Forum

· Network with preexisting community groups
· Street theatre actions
· Surveys to involve people
· Space in magazines/local papers/
· Printing the newsletter in A4 with informations from other LSF on one side and local information on the other side
· Go to festival with stalls

Agenda of other events

Sheffield 12 June meeting for the ESF in UK

Leeds mobilizing for the ESF 21st of June

Manchester mobilizing for the ESF 9th of June

End of July Festival in Leeds (stall for local social forum)

Unity festival in Chorlton Park - July the 4th stall for Local Social Forum

Summary written by Mariangela, Manchester Social Forum