Collective Meeting
With the exciting news regarding having an official collective meeting space at the collaborative arts venue Summerhall, our group 11:11 decided to host a preliminary meeting to discuss initial ideas as to how to use the space. For reference, here is a reminder of our collectively decided manifesto as well as our core beliefs as a group. These were decided in our allocated Wednesday meetings, in which either myself or fellow group member Emily Geary were nominated to lead the discussions and scribe. 
One of the biggest struggles we have had as a collective has been engagement, with members often being silent when asked a question and not raising opinions, resulting in myself or Emily leading the group. The same occurred in this meeting, with not all members attending, myself asking most of the questions and leading the conversation so that we weren’t just sat in silence, and Emily taking minutes as a recording of the session. Despite this, the meeting overall was productive. As suggested in our initial introduction to the space, I suggested that we use Summerhall as a sharing location in which we can all use the time as a group to better explain to the collective what our projects are about and what curatorial theories we are interested in. In our first slot in the space I gave the idea of holding a group film screening which would allow us all to contribute, enabling our belief in equal contribution so that the responsibility did not continue to fall on myself or Emily. It also allowed the session to be joyful and less academic than another conversation based meeting would be, as we have found that this for our collective is less effective. As there were no other suggestions for this meeting slot, we decided on the group film sharing. The collective liked that this was a less formal way to spend time as a group.
The same conversations occurred for discussion the following weeks’ uses of the space, so for now we said to do a similar event to the film screenings with readings, in which everyone presents something that they found valuable either to curation or regarding their own personal projects. As there were no further suggestions for the last we, we approximately discussed having myself hold one of my craft workshops as a way for people to do something practical which we can all engage with. I think that these first ideas are worthwhile in giving our collective an aim for the space, so that we do not waste the time we have in it. It was nice that people felt grateful for Emily and I’s organisation of this meeting. It also allowed us to have an in person conversation regarding our collective expectations of the space and what we wanted from each other.
Trip to Summerhall
From there, we then had our first collective trip to Summerhall in which we were told some ground rules about our access to the space, and introduced the the In-Vitro Gallery. Immediately I knew that I wanted additional time beyond our weekly allocated slot in the gallery and so myself, Harry Mayston, Emily Geary and Katie Garramone booked additional sessions. The gallery has a lot of potential for events, making me think of the ways that we can use independent arts venues turned almost white cube spaces, but the context and the history of such venues prevents them from having an artificial and sterile feel to them. The tall ceilings and large volume of natural lighting makes it an excellent performance space, as well as having the back room for meetings. Thinking beyond my project, I want to experiment as much as I can in the space whilst we have it.
Our collective additionally used this time to confirm our use of the space in the first week. We decided that having a formal meeting in the space would be best, so we can all feel how it is to work in the space and discuss the practicalities of what we would need to supply in order to do our first film screenings. Unfortunately due to a lack of attendance and engagement from some members of the collective we were unable to discuss anything further than that. This is however giving me valuable insight as to what it means to work in a group setting and what qualities are required to work in this way. Seeing the space in person has massively encouraged me to work beyond the collective as well as still within it to utilise the space and begin to experiment with holding events. This experience will help me figure out what my proposed workshops require and how I can best manage them.
