Creative Industries Zone (14th March 2014)

Apologies Read.

SUSUtv Station Manager Elect - Joanna Sheldon was present as a non-voting member.

Surge Radio Station Manager Elect - Hannah Mylrea Hemmings was present as a non-voting member.

Identify people who are interested in organising the media ball - Megan Downing [MD] and Jamie Barker [JB] are still working on this. 

Bring restructuring proposals for the next Creative Industries zone committee - This will be completed via email over the next few weeks.

Add the agenda item: Creative Industries budget discussion to next meeting's agenda - Complete (Item 6)

To ask their committees if they want to get involved with the Sports Relief event - Ongoing, committee to inform Charlotte Cloud [CC] of people who show interest.

Resend CI Careers Season schedule to JB and Catherine Darcy [CD] - Completed

Inform CC of any events that they are doing in March - Completed

The final awards night for the Captain America spoof trailer competition will be on 13th March - Completed

 Contact David Martin [DM] if committee find anyone interested in taking part in the Elections Coverage - Completed

Laura Ellis [LE] reported on behalf of Performing Arts:

Everything is going well. Dance has done really well in competitions. LE will send a list detailing this to Jamie Hemmingway [JH] and CC. 

Sam Everard [SE] reported on behalf of Wessex Scene:

The Wessex Scene has had the busiest fortnight of the year with elections and Varsity. Both of the events went well despite a few issues at the beginning of elections. The Wessex Scene is currently reporting on a stabbing that has recently occurred in the Portswood area.

MD reported on behalf of The Edge:

The Edge has sent off issue 6 with an illustrated cover which was one of their aims. They had a festivals meeting allowing them to set up a process on how to apply to work at festivals. There will be a festivals sub-committee set-up within The Edge to fairly determine who will get to go to what festival.

Nick Tinsley [NT] reported on behalf of Union Films:

The Disney event went well; they had 150 people turn up to the event. The Captain America competition was also successful; there were a total of nine entries. The awards ceremony happened last night resulting in three people winning tickets to the Captain America premiere.

Chris McGeehan [CM] reported on behalf of Student Groups:

He reports that all groups seem pretty happy at the moment. Photosoc covered the Varsity and it went fantastically well. Photosoc are currently discussing how their events team works. We have had some more interest in the exhibition on 30th April and still trying to get people involved in the event. He has spoken to the guild of change ringers as they want some new equipment and has had some ideas on how to incorporate them into the exhibition. They are currently trying to rent a mobile ringer.

Committee members want to discuss the arrangement that they currently have with the Soton Tab. DM wants to give main involvement to the SUSU media groups, but the Soton Tab is an external media group and therefore SUSU gives them information on request (in the same way it would with any other external media). DM wants to have a discussion with the committee to see how they feel about working with the Tab so that the committee can move forward unambiguously.

SE states that he made his issues clear early on in the elections. His main issue was that affiliated groups and external groups were getting invited to the same meetings. The Tab is an external group and therefore should only get information when they request it. It was felt that there was no differentiation between affiliated and non-affiliated groups during the elections coverage.

CM feels that the distinction is necessary between unaffiliated and affiliated groups because it is good that they are outside of SUSU.

The committee then discussed the issues that occurred with the “Fit Candidates” article published by the Soton Tab as well as “is this a sport?” comment while covering Pole Dancing’s competition in Varsity. They later discussed.

JH notes that the Soton Tab should be assessed as an external business started by students rather than a SUSU affiliated group.

CC agreed but added that they still need to abide by Media law and that they should get training on this. Although the tab is not a SUSU affiliated group its members, as students of the University of Southampton, are affiliated to SUSU.

DM wants to discuss how this committee is structured. He asks if anyone on the committee has an issue and if so, how would they go about solving this issue?

LE raises what she feels is the main issue of the committee structure; the media heads can vote on funding applications but these applications do not affect them. Therefore it is unfair that they can outvote LE and CM.

MD suggests that it might be worth having one media head nominated to speak on behalf of the other three departments during funding discussions.

CM argues that there should not be any media heads in that role at all and that VP DCI should represent the voice of the departments during funding discussions.

LE states that the PA officer, Sabbatical officer and student representatives were the group who used to allocate funding. This essentially still occurs, as she and DM vet PA applications before bringing them to the Creative Industries committee. LE feels it is unnecessary to then get these choices further approved by a committee consisting of members who have no invested interest in the matter.

SE states that if the media funding stays the same next year, which DM confirms, then he is in agreement with LE.

DM suggests they could make a funding subcommittee involving CM, LE, DM, the PA representatives and maybe another member of the committee.

CM notes that if this were a sub-committee to decide on all of Creative Industries funding then he would be heavily out-weighted by committee members representing PA.

JH suggests that the union councillor could be incorporated into this sub-committee to add support for the Student Groups representative.

DMW suggests that the Creative Industries committee should decide how much money gets allocated to PA and then the PA committee will decide how to allocate the money to their groups.

DM adds funding sub-committees can still bring funding to the Creative Industries Committee for approval. This means that applications that require more attention can be open to discussion in the Creative Industries Zone committee. He presents what he feels are two different options to take: allocating block grants or creating a funding sub-committee.

The committee decides to give out two blocks of funding one to PA and the other to the groups in the Creative Industries Zone. All funding decisions made by the two sub-groups will be finalised at the Creative Industries committee.

A few people wanted to bring up a budget discussion from the last meeting.

NT states it would be useful to have a balance sheet to know how much money has been spent and how much is left.

MD mentions that it is possible to have a balance viewable online.

DMW suggests that the committee action DM to show the balance of each department each month.

CC states it does takes a lot of time to work out what each actual budget is due to the amount of sub-categories each department has, but if a balance sheet system is implemented it would be very useful.

DMW notes that it will be important, especially as of next year, to know how much is in the development budget.

CC informs the committee that this might have to be implemented over the summer perhaps linking this balance sheet idea with Sage.

DM to post the balance of CI departments, PA and groups monthly.

LE briefly ran through the restructure for PA.

PA restructure approved.

CC states that this idea came from the Edge asking for a camera when SUSUtv were too busy covering two main SUSU events. It is not practical to always go to SUSUtv to get audio-visual equipment as they might be busy with other events. CC wants to know how the committee feels about having general audio-visual equipment.

MD thinks it’s a really good idea.

CM states that there are four societies that have audio-visual equipment, but people don’t really use them. There are so many DSLRs being unused in different peoples’ houses.

DMW suggested that the equipment is stored in Student Activities rather than keeping it at different locations.

MD added that it might be useful to set-up a sign-out system in SUSU for the Creative Industries groups.

CM notes that different societies’ have different requirements for people to use their equipment.

JH thinks that it would be good to have equipment just for Creative Industries rather than relying on a handful of societies.

CM thinks that it’s worth identifying who has what in the Creative Industries Zone. He is not against the idea of Creative Industries Zone equipment, but suggests that it’s worth knowing what is already available before buying duplicates.

Committee decided to make an inventory, store the equipment in student activities and help manage a borrowing system where owners of the equipment would still get priority usage.

This item was added because DM wanted people’s thoughts on the events so far as well as an update from CC. There will be a full debrief of the Career Season after the event.

MD states that the publishing panel was really good. They’ve had really good feedback about the events people said it was really beneficial.

LE reports that someone mentioned they wished the event was longer even though it was two hours long. The launch event was really good, but heavily tailored to TV.

The committee feels that the launch event was TV orientated but they understand that this was the first time this event has been done and that people from TV were the only people available.

CC mentions that there will be further feedback once the Career Season finishes. CC also states that all students who attended any of the sessions will be sent resources relevant to the session (or sessions) they attended as well as a feedback form for them to fill in. Once the more detailed feedback is collated it will then be fed back to the committee.

DM informs the committee about what the innovation fund is and that the first and second round of funding will be on the 21st March and 16th May respectively.

The committee will read the policy and send any questions and/or issues to DM.

This is a handbook, for groups in Creative Industries, that contains instructions on how to do different tasks across the SUSU departments. This handbook will allow new members to quickly get a handle on their role in the media groups.

DM reports that The Edge section is now complete. DM will be in contact with the rest of the committee to add their sections to the handbook.

CC reports that she is finding it difficult to communicate volunteering opportunities to students. She wants to create a mailing list of volunteers who want to perform, take photos and generally help out at events. This volunteering list can be for individuals as well as groups. She wants to know if the committee thinks this is a good or bad idea.

The committee thinks it is a good idea.

LE adds that she finds it difficult to get PA to do volunteering events because the PA groups are self-sufficient when wanting to volunteer. Therefore whenever she approaches them with an opportunity they are not that interested as they are already volunteering at other events or too busy.

CC also reports that she wants to express the achievements made by Creative Industries groups within SUSU. Currently the trophy cabinets are full of sports achievements and she wants to have trophies won by Creative Industries groups added to these cabinets.

JH adds that he would like to have Creative Industries achievements in the student groups newsletter. The committee are to inform JH, as well as CC, about any achievements that they want to be advertised in the newsletter by 21st March.

The committee assessed the funding applications.

TBC (will be after the Easter break)