We had our first meeting!
I’m writing this recap amidst baby bedtime, wherein the child plays in her crib until she tuckers herself out, so I might forget details. But it was a good first meeting!
It was just three of us in the meeting space, and also the local councillor called into the Zoom for a moment but only to wish us luck—she’s currently on holiday.
What a great discussion though! We talked about big plans for the future, and small plans for the immedIate future. One direction we may go is taking care of a cemetery near me that’s falling into disrepair. We had some amazing conversations about land and culture and ancestry, and we think getting the cemetery to a place where we could run tours of it for tourists and locals alike would be a great starting point.
An important note here is that I live in the Scottish highlands. We have a lot of tourists who come here to discover their ancestry, and simultaneously, a lot of Scottish people who want to get back in touch with an ancestry that has been erased by English colonialism. We discussed how we want to uplift Scottish Gaelic (Gaidhlig) and other Scottish languages like Scots and Doric. Basically, we want to integrate the culture that already lives here and lived here before back into new green space.
(It helps that one of my friends, who was at the meeting, is a native Gaidhlig speaker and very in touch with the cultural intricacies as a result)
(They’re teaching me Gaidhlig too)
After the meeting concluded with some discussion of future meeting plans, that friend and I walked to the cemetery and checked it out with our plans in mind. I worry about the logistics about building on that space—both in the sense of we morally can’t break ground to build anything new and community-esque, and might even struggle with putting in new benches/paths, but also it’s more a job of hiring professionals to fix some broken headstones and clean moss from other ones. I’d be afraid of the liability associated with having a volunteer group clean up around headstones even in case one is damaged.
But, I think the cultural significance is undeniable, and it would get us in the good graces of the city— both people and officials. I need to do more research.
In the meantime since the meeting, a friend from the local queer group messaged me to say, essentially “hey did you know my job is getting people out into nature?” Answer: I did not! So we met up at a cafe this past Friday to discuss his thoughts on my ideas, and for him to suggest people to talk to. One idea he mentioned was that there’s a “green health week” coming up May 3-11, a week I conveniently have off work for unrelated reasons of ageing. The idea of green health week is to signpost outdoor activities happening for folks to participate in. We’re thinking I should organise a litter picking group for that week. He also organises a group for getting LGBT people active and outside, and is happy to share details of my events with that crowd.
I mentioned that I might do this litter pick on Facebook, and the councillor (who is my FB friend now) said I might be able to get Waste Management to pick up what we collect. Hooray! I’ll need to look into that.
Anyways. Our next meeting is in a week. I look forward to reporting back even more after that!