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Thanks everyone. I am now buzzing with ideas for the next issue and want to get some conversation going about Birth in the Balance.
I think that’s more than we asked before… I seem to think it may have been as low as £100 for a small outfit. We did a reciprocal arrangement with someone.
Sorry for the late reply – we could ask Soo but we now have Hannah, Mavis, Sheena, a woman called Clare Goggins, Katherine, plus a surprise speaker about media manipulation. Plus amazing workshop leaders. As we had Soo for Wigan not sure if we should ask her to speak at BITB? And I still haven’t approached anyone to chair. Was going to ask Lesley Page – what does everyone think?
Hi Charlotte,
It’s great that you’ve joined! I’ll ask our lovely membership secretary, Irene Walton, to check who is in your area. You are certainly doing a very relevant PhD!
I do know that Phoebe Pallotti in Nottingham has done some work I think may be of interest and I’m sure she would love to learn about your work. :bye:
Hi Charlotte,
It’s great that you’ve joined! I’ll ask our lovely membership secretary, Irene Walton, to check who is in your area. You are certainly doing a very relevant PhD!
I do know that Phoebe Pallotti in Nottingham has done some work I think may be of interest and I’m sure she would love to learn about your work. :bye:
Ok, this is the latest version of the new ‘objects’ for the new constitution. I’ve tried to incorporate all the suggestions. I’m now feeling it may be a bit unwieldy – can we get it a bit tighter? or is this ok (it doesn’t really matter if it’s long, I think it’s up to us).
A couple of useful documents about ‘Birth in the Balance’for the SG to peruse prior to the meeting. I’ve included a list of speakers who are, at this stage, just suggestions. I’d like to finalise who we’re asking at the SG. I think we only need four or five main speakers plus a chair as we’ll have workshops in the afternoon.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rbkcSUfFCnCioGV2EK_ykRWgBmPVMcUneoI8AKkefho/edit?usp=sharinghttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1FWdJaflwloRk2KrYu66G-DH5w6izwHecBeLO2Qi8-YU/edit?usp=sharing
What’s Ishbel’s phone number? I’m sure I had it but can’t seem to find her in my contacts. I think she offered for us to come to hers first and drop our bags off and then drive to Irene’s?
And can Irene please confirm your address – I believe we are starting at 6pm.
Sorry about the American Midwives link on Facebook, it was FB not me but I changed it. Well spotted Becky.
Catherine has done an amazing job sorting out fantastic speakers. I think I may be on-call though maybe I can get away with it – I’d love to be there.
Can everyone kindly check the Event on the website and the tickets on sale in the shop. The description is a little light – and I got the description for Michelle Quashie’s bit from her blog so Catherine, could you check with Michelle what description she would like on the events? In fact you could ask all the speakers for a sentence about their presentation? And if you’d like to add anything to the description, please let me know.
Ooo thanks Margaret, Irene has once again very kindly agreed to do the exhibition so that would be fantastic.
Ooo thanks Margaret, Irene has once again very kindly agreed to do the exhibition so that would be fantastic.
Following our discussion at the Skype meeting, I made an executive decision (encouraged by Katherine!) to book my choice of venue which is the Village on 1st December 2018. As Linda said, it has been upgraded and is still cheaper than the Jubilee even with the 20 per cent saving (which I hadn’t realised when I made my original post). I did a FB poll on my independent midwife group and everyone who voted preferred the Village on 1st December to the Jubilee on 24th. So we have to get some amazing speakers and plug it like mad!
I have a conference committee group on WhatsApp – have 6 or 8 local ARM members on that (mainly students) which is great. So I have Linda and Irene from the SG who have volunteered for the conference committee – can I ask does anyone else want to join? There’s a Doodle poll for the first Skype meeting on the Whatsapp group so hopefully we will have plenty to report at the SG meeting on Friday 15th March at Wigan.
I am so excited. I think having lots of local students to help will make a big difference to recruitment of delegates!
Thanks Katherine. The Village is booked on 24th November but free on the 1st. They charge £35 per head (not including VAT) plus some other charges for extra rooms, AV, tech support etc. VAT at 20 per cent would be added to the bill at the Village.
The Jubilee charges £37 per head but … they can do a VAT exemption for us as a charity! Apparently it’s because the Jubilee is owned by the University that they can do this (not sure why that makes any difference). The Jubilee is free on 24th November and I’ve arranged to view the rooms on Monday at 3pm with some local ARM members who have offered to help organise. The VAT exemption is a huge discount.
I’ll try to work out the exact charges made by each venue – it’s quite complicated as they all charge slightly differently – the Jubilee doesn’t charge for AV (that’s included) but they do charge extra for the room itself. The Village does charge for AV and a technician but don’t charge for the room!
Yes we must agree on charges for the exhibitor tables.
Ok I’ll ask the Village and one or two others this weekend if they’re available and prices. Need to get cracking.
Oh sorry I didn’t respond to Lisa-Marie’s post – we did look at the Birmingham retreat venue (Woodbroke?) It can’t accommodate our size of conference I seem to remember. I did look into the Birmingham University before as a venue – it’s a nice green campus but I think it gets very booked up but could check it out if you like. Have a look at Peterborough too maybe Lisa-Marie?
I didn’t actually make it to the door of the Manchester venue, but for driving it is not brilliant as it is in central Manchester and parking is expensive. Can we try to tick some boxes for any potential venue – that it is easily accessible via road and public transport, that it has parking. I’ve been looking in Nottingham and would suggest either the place we used last time (East Midlands Conference Centre) or (my current favourite) Jubilee conference centre https://www.phcompany.com/de-vere/jubilee-conference-centre/meetings-events/
or the Vine conference centre (a community centre – cheaper) http://www.thevine.org.uk/venue-hire/
The Vineyard conference centre http://trentvineyardconferencing.co.uk/documents/tvc-promo-card-v6-screen.pdfPros of the East Midlands conference centre:
The conference looked amazing and was a great venue – the exhibition worked really well
We got a lot of very good feedback
Good access via road and not bad for public transportCons of East Midlands conference centre:
Is it a bit too ‘swank’ for us?
I thought the Friday evening do wasn’t great and would want to organise that somewhere else.
Cost? (I think the cost was reasonable though I know some people didn’t)Pros of the Jubilee conference centre:
It’s a lovely venue, I’ve been to a conference there. The food is very good.
Excellent accessibility for cars and public transport
It has better facilities for the Friday evening ‘do’ than the East Midlands conference centre
It has on-site accommodation which is cheaper than the Orchard (where we stayed at the Oxytocin conference)Cons I don’t know if it’s available
It probably costs similar to the East Midlands conference centre as it’s in the same chainThe Vine community centre
Pros It MAY work out cheaper. I’m not totally convinced – the venue is definitely cheaper, but we would need to provide quite a few extras ourselves that are included with professional conference venues.
We would be able to sort our own catering – we wouldn’t be able to rival Wigan! but we could make sure we sourced really good food (always an obsession of mine as that’s what people remember from conferences)
It is not quite as good for driving access as the other venues though it’s accessible just off the ring road (no need to drive through the city centre). There is some on-site parking (not much) but plenty of free on-road parking nearby. There’s great public transport accessibility as it’s on the tram route.Cons Not a ‘wow’ venue – a little battered round the edges! But not bad …
More organising involved that at a pro conference venue
We’d need to organise the Friday evening ‘do’ and accommodation separately.I don’t know anything about the Trent vineyard, but have contacted them to see if they’re available and what the costs are.
Hi Katherine
I admit that I feel concerned that decisions, agendas and actions that were made at previous meetings have not been acted on, indeed many of the things we agreed have been forgotten which I can’t understand – it’s as if the conversations never happened!
For instance it was agreed that the public campaign would be much broader than a ‘campaign for better midwifery regulation’ and hence the ‘Save the Midwife’ campaign (not just hashtag) was agreed – firstly at the RCM then at the Peterborough meeting. Very very little has happened this year regarding the ‘campaign’apart from the fundraising – in fact I don’t think we can be said to be running a campaign. (As ARM hasn’t been involved as an organisation with the IM insurance issue I’m not sure why this would made any difference to us getting our message out …)
For a reminder of what we agreed, please see our website campaign page https://www.midwifery.org.uk/getinvolved/campaign/
I am not saying that we should keep the ‘Save the Midwife’ campaign aims and I agree we probably do need to refocus more narrowly as it doesn’t seem possible to run a broad campaign with our current resources but why have the decisions that were made at these meetings been forgotten? How can we keep better records and make sure that decisions are acted on?
