Documentary Project- 1st Committee Meeting

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We met at the Villa Victoria Community Classroom on April 2nd.

The agenda for the meeting:

  • Welcome/Introductions
  • Project Description (Codesign)
  • Role of Committee
  • Governance Structure
  • Financing
  • Memorandum of Understanding
  • Programs in the Community
  • Next Steps

So far there are 4 committee members confirmed:

  • Jenny (myself)
  • Omar (IBA staff)
  • Carmen (resident)
  • Rafael (resident)

It was a great discussion where we talked about the goal of the project to be a retrospective documentary on the history of the community as retold by the community residents (young and old alike). At the same time I tried to manage expectation describing the various the project and the need for time and grants. We all agreed that the role of the committee was to function as the decision making body of the project, and that the governance structure would be through a consensus building model. Since Carmen is also a member of the IBA board she is very familiar and comfortable with the process. In order to have a complete committee we agreed that we needed a few more members to complete a 10 person team. The additional members would be- 1 more from the documentary team, 3 staff (gallery curator, youth director, and arts director), and 2 more residents (male and female).

In order to continue to move forward we agreed that we would hold another committee meeting on April 12th to have more of the members present and to review a draft MOU, provide a recap of the 1st workshop (held April 4), provide an update on the fellowship application (summer financing), and determine the schedule for future workshops (good news: we learned that IBA has some extra cameras that we could use to give to community members for the film making workshop coming soon).

We also discussed non residents that we may want to interview for the project because of their knowledge of the S. End or Villa Victoria history, such as:

  • Mario Small http://home.uchicago.edu/~mariosmall/index.html
  • Mel King http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_King
  • Langley Keyes http://dusp.mit.edu/p.lasso?t=5:1:0&detail=lkeyes
  • John Sharratt http://www.jsa-architecture.com/

Just a few words on the financing. Carmen asked me how much I thought the project could cost, I gave her a rough estimate of $30,000 since we have a lot of volunteers on the project, but that we would have a clearer picture if and when we can get summer financing to complete the trailer and apply for grants. We also discussed using the Center for Independent Documentary Fiscal Sponsorship support to help with the managing of project funds if and when we get them (http://documentaries.org/fiscal-sponsorship/). Omar also suggested we look into the Instituto de Cultura de Puerto Rico as another potential financing source. We will certainly have to keep our eyes and options open.

The meeting was about 1.5 hrs but it felt much shorter. The time flew by as we discussed the project, got to know each other, and planned for next steps.

Ok so that’s pretty much it on our first committee meeting 🙂