Author Archives: April Walker

A note on Covid safety and arrival at Spring 2023

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Leading up to spending lots of time laughing together, we’d like to encourage you to be careful about Covid. We are coming together from all over and all want to stay healthy. Some of the folks attending have a lower immune response or a different risk profile, and we ask that you level up your caution for the next few days to lower the overall risk to the community. Consider wearing a mask inside public buildings and stores, or skipping that crowded restaurant, or generally just being over-cautious a few days before.

When you arrive, head to the registration table and Covid testing station in the Art Barn (the barn that’s right in front of you when you come in the driveway). Please go to the Art Barn directly after you park your car to check in before you enter any other buildings. We’ll ask to see your vaccination card, and you can either show a photo of a negative rapid test result from earlier that day, or you can take a test there in the barn (we will have a few on hand, but if you can bring your own that would be awesome). 

After you’ve tested, we’ll get you signed in and give you your info packet. If you’re new, there’ll be someone on hand to show you around and answer any questions you may have.

If you arrive after 6:00 pm and no one is in the barn, please wear a mask when entering the building and ask someone to find April to check you in.

We also ask everyone to re-test daily at the conference. These precautions are in place so that we can have a maskless Spring the rest of the time. If you are more comfortable wearing a mask indoors, please do. The hope is that together, we’ll facilitate an environment where we all find it easy to do what we need to feel safe.

2023 marks the return of Spring!

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Spring 2023: Thursday, June 8 – Sunday, June 11

Spring 2023 will be different from past Springs in two major ways:
– First, it’s a long weekend, not a week.
– Second, the planning will be bare-bones.

What does a bare-bones Spring mean? Spring staff will provide the space (Camp Glen Brook) and food (cooked by Dalia) and background logistics needed to make the conference happen, but will not plan any programming.

This means that it will be up to attendees to volunteer to make Workshops and Rings and Evening Activities and every other thing that happens at Spring happen. It will be the most DIY Spring has ever been! If no one volunteers to run any things, then we’ll just all be hanging out in a lovely spot with some lovely food and our lovely selves and making it up as we go along.

The estimated cost for the long weekend will be $360 per person, and we plan to open registration in late March or early April.

To keep everyone safe, vaccination and testing will be required to attend.

If you have any questions or are interested in helping make Spring 2023 happen, contact staff at staffofspring@gmail.com

Spring Community Forum 2017 results

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At the Community Forum held during Spring 2017, a decision was made to separate the role of staff from the role of the Board. (In previous years, the staff and the Board were the same group of people.) Staff will now essentially function as a logistics group, tasked with planning for and putting on the conference on an annual basis. In contrast, the Board, which will have staggered multi-year terms, will be tasked with long-term vision and community-based decision-making, utilizing input from the community and from various committees and working groups.

Below is some relevant information that was presented by the Governance Committee and ratified by the community and the Board during the Spring 2017 conference:

We the Spring Community Form ratify the following operating procedure changes:

  1. The Board Members shall cease to run the actual conference, and instead shall create and oversee committees at its own discretion or at the behest of the Community Forum, and shall give those committees a specific charge at time of creation.
  2. The Board shall appoint a standing committee, referred to as staff, to run the actual conference using the current election process.
  3. The Board shall elect the next Board, with the understanding that Board members shall serve for at least two years and rotate out in such a way as to provide continuity.
  4. When any committee runs into something out of the scope of their charge, they shall inform the Board, who will deal with it appropriately.
  5. The board shall convene a Community Forum yearly at a conference
  6. The Community Forum shall select issues for discussion brought to it by the Board or by a community member, and the Board shall abide by decisions made at the forum.
  7. When the Board determines that an issue requires the input of or a decision by the greater Spring Community, the Board shall, when the Community Forum next convenes, present that issue to the forum.
  8. Board members may serve on various committees when practical and convenient.
  9. No committee shall have authority over any other committee. Any conflicts between committees shall be resolved by the Board.
  10. When the Board creates a committee, it shall create a liaison process between itself and that committee.
  11. Any committee created by the Board shall include at least one community member, with the recommendation that committees be comprised of at least 50% community members.

Welcome to Spring 2017, and what to bring!

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Hello everyone!

Spring is just a little more than a week away and we’re all super excited to see everyone!

Arrival this year starts at 5pm, although if you’re interested in coming earlier in the day to help with pre-site setup, please let us know — we could definitely use the help! Opening Circle will be at 7:30 pm on Friday. If you won’t be arriving by 7:30 pm, that’s totally fine, but please let someone on staff know (you can just reply to this email). We will leave some food out for you in the kitchen.

When you arrive, head to the registration table to get signed in and get your info packet. If you’re new, there will be someone on hand to show you around and answer any questions you may have.

New things we’d like to draw your attention to:

* Our Conflict Resolution Policy draft document can be seen here: https://www.springsummercamp.org/spring-conflict-resolution-process-visioning-document/. If you’d like to volunteer for the Conflict Team, please either send us an email or contact Will or Coran onsite.

* Ideas and topics for the Spring Community Forum on Sunday afternoon. Details about the forum can be found here: https://www.springsummercamp.org/spring-community-forum-proposal/.

If you need help finding a ride to Spring, or if you have room in your vehicle to offer someone a ride, send Coran an email (cnewland@live.com) and he’ll help you get it sorted out.

Here’s a list of important things to remember to pack. It is a long list, so hopefully this newly-categorized version will help make it a little more easily readable!

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Spring 2017 Workshops

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Craftypants! with Kelly T

Most of my Real Grownup Job is making stuff with kids. In this workshop, I’ll have supplies & expertise to make a variety of toys, journals, catapults, hand-cranked proto-TVs (https://youtu.be/mA3Qw3KiEtk), hand-held portable sundials, 8-16p mini-zines (out of 1 sheet of paper!), leather/fabric pouches/tool-holders, and all sorts of cool stuff. I’ll hang out in the Art Barn & lead one particular project per day. I’ll have a list and/or examples of stuff to make! You can come in for one that sounds good & skip the rest, get your materials together & split, whatever works for you!

Playing with Plays with Samantha

We’ll spend one or two sessions reading some short plays aloud as a group. We’ll then choose our favorites to act out in both serious and silly ways, and see if we feel inspired to design costumes, build set pieces, make props, or otherwise create the elements that go into a full production. Some or all of the participants may want to present a scene at Coffee House, but this is not in any way a requirement for joining the workshop. If you have a favorite one-act or scene, bring copies to share with the group!

An Examined Life with Will

Everyone has a philosophy. Philosophy is a big word that encompasses hundreds, if not thousands, of subdisciplines. At its core, though, Philosophy is about big ideas and questions that are foundational to virtually everything else in a human life: What is happiness and how do I find it? Do I have a soul and if so, how does that even work? How should society be organized?
This workshop is about revealing – often and especially to ourselves – the contents of our own philosophy, questioning and examining them directly, so that we can make choices about them.  Each day we will tackle a different philosophical proposition or question; the facilitator has a pile of default options but we will decide together what we’re discussing.  An optional element of this workshop will involve larger community involvement, details discussed at our first meeting.
This is a discussion, not a lecture, and not a debate.  No prior knowledge of philosophy or philosophical concepts is required.

Art and Chat with April

Do you have an creative project you’ve been meaning to start? Or finish? Would you like a little motivation to do so in the form of other folks doing creative things and chatting in the same place? Or maybe you don’t have a project at all but want to knit or doodle with company. Bring your own project or start something new with the art supplies we have on hand. While we art we’ll talk some about creativity, what it means to each of us, and how we can make more space for it in our daily lives, and maybe work on some collaborative projects.

+1 Fun!

Do you like dice!?  Do you like cards!?  How about tiny colored wooden blocks that are supposed to represent you in some abstract way in a competition that would never actually play out like it would in real life!?  Well I have the workshop for you!  Come on down to play some games!  Bring your +1 sense of adventure and your potion: suspension of disbelief and join me for some fun.

Note: Any experience gained in game not necessarily transferable to any real world application.

 

If the workshop you want isn’t listed, this is a DIY conference, so email Coran and tell him about the workshop you want to run!

Spring Conflict Resolution Process Visioning Document

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(v1.0 4/18/17)

This document is intended to illustrate and explain the envisioned conflict resolution pathway for general attendees during the Spring conference.  The essence of the envisioned system involves establishing a corps of volunteer mediators who are identified ahead of time as people who may be approached by attendees for assistance with interpersonal conflicts that may arise during the normal course of the conference.  This document will outline the envisioned processes, explaining each in detail, and then address the design constraints given to the Conflict Resolution Working Group by Staff as of December 2016.

Because of its attention to detail, this document will make the process feel more bureaucratic than it will feel in execution.  The vast majority of the working pieces of this process will be seamless parts of a natural conversation.  What rules and breaking points that do exist are important to protect the participants in the process from obvious failure modes.

Figure 1 – Conflict Resolution Pathway (see pdf for graphic)

The Conflict Resolution Pathway

It is an unquestionable fact of life that people can come into disagreement.  Many of these disagreement, no doubt, resolve immediately or as a result of the interpersonal skills of the parties involved.  Not all disagreements that occur, however, fall within this scope.

In the event that individuals at Spring find themselves in a conflict that damages their ability to enjoy the conference and that they are unable to resolve on their own, a group of volunteers shall have been selected and identified at the start of the conference to be available for counseling, coaching, and mediation.  For the purposes of this document, this group shall be referred to as the Spring Conflict Team or ‘CT;’ members of this group as Conflict Team Members or ‘CTM’s.

For the remainder of the discussion of this pathway, a hypothetical disagreement is assumed to have occurred between two people: A and B.  A is the individual seeking assistance/intervention.  The details of the disagreement are unimportant, and if both parties seek mediation together, the process is the same regardless of which is considered A and which B.

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Spring Community Forum Proposal

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The Issue

There are a lot of decisions that need to get made in order for the Spring conference and community to exist. Every year, some of the members of the community volunteer to dedicate their time to help make those decisions and to work towards making this community and conference happen.

Though it’s not the only way to help, certainly the biggest volunteer time commitment is joining staff. However, dedicating a half dozen weekends or so over the course of the year and many hours outside of that doesn’t make staff’s opinions more important than other community member’s opinions, or mean that they are the only ones who can help and/or work to shape the conference. Lots of people who feel strongly about the community and who want to help can’t join staff for a large number of reasons.

A lot of the work of staff was originally intended to be for the very specific purpose of making logistical decisions – the organizational grunt work of running a weeklong event. In reality, however, an ever-increasing amount of staff’s time is being used to attempt to address a range of highly challenging, emotionally charged, community-wide social issues.

So there are two problems. First, the staff simply doesn’t have the time to handle all of the policy making and setting of community standards and priorities that is currently needed and wanted by the community. And secondly, major decisions about the whole community really need the input and buy-in of more than just the few who have the time to volunteer to organize the conference.

The solution we’ve come up with is to hold meetings to which the entire community is invited, to discuss issues and vote on actionable proposals. Although we have considered holding the meetings during the year, a major concern is that only a small percentage of the community would be able to attend, often only those who happen to live closest to the meeting location. It is also difficult for community members with children to attend meetings. Therefore, in order to include as broad a swath of the community as possible, we plan to hold at least one of these meetings at the conference itself.

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Spring is a nonprofit, what exactly does that mean?

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As some of you may already know, for some time now, Spring staff has been working to make our legal structure properly match what it is our community is actually doing. The goal was to smooth staff’s interactions with the great piles of paperwork out there in world, as well as to codify some of what our intentions and basic understandings are. If you’d like to know about what what we look like on paper in the eyes of the law, keep on reading!

While Spring is now a nonprofit corporation (legally speaking) we are still the same old Spring at heart.

In December 2015 Spring Forum for Alternative Community, LLC changed into Spring Forum for Alternative Community, Inc. We are now a nonprofit in the State of New Hampshire that is applying for IRS 501(c)(7) status. This FAQ will hopefully answer most the questions you have about it.

What is a 501(c)(7)?
A 501(c)(7) is a ‘social club’—one of many categories of nonprofit defined by the IRS. They do not have to pay federal or state taxes on income BUT donations to a 501(c)(7) are not tax deductible. A 501(c)(7) exists for the benefit of its members and its events can be for pleasure, recreation, or other purposes.

How is this different than a 501(c)(3)?
When most people think of a nonprofit, they think of a 501(c)(3), otherwise known as a ‘charitable organization.’ They exist for the public good. Groups such as the Red Cross and many homeless shelters are in this category.

What is membership about?
Since 501(c)(7) organizations exist for the benefit of their members, Spring has to define who these members are. Details are in the Bylaws, but generally, attendees automatically become members once they arrive at their second conference. Membership is renewed every year when attending the event. After three years of not attending membership lapses.

For the sake of new membership, if you attended Spring in 2015 you became a member when you arrived at Spring 2016.

Other than the fact that Spring is run for their benefit there are no special privileges or discounts reserved for members, but we may work on a secret handshake in the future.

Does this change the role of staff?
Staff is the board of directors for the 501(c)(7), with three officers: secretary, treasurer, and president/executive officer. (The position of executive officer has no special powers and is required to fulfill the guidelines of the 501(c)(7) documents.). But staff still operates as it always has. The new structure actually better represents what we have always been.

If I give money to Spring, will my donation now be tax-deductible?
Sadly, no. Although Spring does not need to pay State taxes, and will not have to pay Federal Taxes once we obtain a 501(c)(7) designation, those benefits do not apply to individuals giving to the organization.

Why not stay a LLC (Limited Liability Company)?
LLCs are usually intended for groups of investors that form a business partnership. The LLC isn’t taxed; instead revenues flow to the individual partners who have to claim income from the LLC on their individual tax forms… it isn’t really a good fit for Spring.

What about Sputnik?
Sputnik was the first to become a nonprofit. Spring and Sputnik staff’s were able to share knowledge and resources as they went through the process together (thank you Sputnik staff!).

Does this mean we’re forming an umbrella organization?
Staff’s priority was to find a more appropriate legal structure for Spring. Whether or not to pursue an umbrella organization will have to be taken up later, but becoming a nonprofit doesn’t rule out or hinder the possibility of forming an umbrella organization in the future.

How can I learn more?
The two documents that define Spring (or more accurately Spring Forum for Alternative Community, Inc.) are the Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws. Links to these documents are below:

http://www.springsummercamp.org/docs/Spring_FFAC_Articles_of_Agreement.pdf

http://www.springsummercamp.org/docs/Spring_FFAC_Non-Profit_Bylaws.pdf

If you have any questions that aren’t covered here or would like clarification on anything send us an email at out shiny new Spring staff gmail address staffofspring@gmail.com.

Best fishes,

Spring staff
(Aleks, April, Bryce, Coran, Josh, Lorraine, Lulu, Reeve)

Note: this was drafted, for the most part, by Spring 2016 staff but not sent out until now.

Spring is becoming a non-profit, staff wants your feedback

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Hello SPRINGERS, Spring community, People who are awesome!

As you may know over the past few years Spring staff has been working on making Spring a non-profit. A lot of time, thought, and energy has gone into transforming boiler plate documents into something that will work for the Spring Conference and still meet the requirements as legal documents for a non-profit. And now we have reached the final stages!

We have put the most recent drafts of both the Articles of Agreement and Bylaws in Google drive (links below) to give you all a chance to look them over and comment before we start the incorporation process. So, if you are so inclined, please take a look at both documents and make comments or suggestions directly in the Google docs.

Articles of Agreement: https://goo.gl/MxHr0M
Bylaws: https://goo.gl/p7Phn5

We hope to be able to take the next steps with this after the Open Staff meeting on Nov 15th and officially be a non-profit by the end of 2015. In aid of this if you plan to comment please do so by Nov 14th. Thanks to everyone who takes the time to read them both through. Your input is greatly appreciated!

If you have any questions about the process as a whole feel free to contact April directly (april@morefrogs.com)

Here’s more info about the Open Staff meeting: http://www.springsummercamp.org/?p=353
Please, RSVP [ https://goo.gl/oMlM9Z ] if you are thinking of attending, it’s helpful for us to know how many people are attending or hoping to attend.

Also, if you haven’t filled out the Kids at Spring survey you can fill that out here: https://goo.gl/3TCpUF

Thanks and thanks for being awesome!

Much love,

2016 Spring Staff
April, David, Jake, Kelly, Lorraine and Thor

New Open Staff meeting date, Nov. 15th

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Hello Springians!

We have a new date for the Spring 2016 Open Staff Meeting: Sunday, November 15th, and it will be at Parts & Crafts in Somerville, MA.

We are hoping that with more notice more of you all with be able to attend. So, if you are planning to attend, aren’t sure but are considering it, or know you can’t make it but still want to help or have something you want to say, please let us know via this RSVP form: https://goo.gl/oMlM9Z

The full details of how this Open Staff meeting will go, which is different from how they have been in the past, are below.

Much love,

2016 Spring Staff
April W, David W, Jake A, Kelly T, Lorraine G, Thor T

P.S. Please let us know if your contact information has changed recently, so we can make sure you don’t miss out on any important future communications!

______

The details:

This year the Open Staff Meeting will be a bit different than in years past. We’re holding it early in the year to solicit assistance and feedback from the community before the bulk of the planning is done. Only six of last year’s seven staff re-applied, and we received no new applications, which means this year’s staff will need a lot of help from the community to make Spring 2016 happen.

The main agenda item for this meeting is to find volunteers to take on the planning and execution of individual tasks and events. Volunteers won’t necessarily need to attend future staff meetings but they will need to be in regular communication with at least one member of staff.

In aid of this we began brainstorming a Big List of Tasks that are needed to make Spring happen that we feel will would work to be handed off. You can see it here: https://goo.gl/0r34Eb

If you are interested in working on any of these things either by yourself or with a partner or committee please come to the meeting and help us out. And if you are interested but can’t make it to the meeting let us know that too and we’ll work out how to get you involved. Also, let us know if you think there are things that should be on this list that aren’t. Maybe you’ve got an awesome idea we haven’t even thought of?

The goal is for this meeting to be more a conversation with the community, working out ways to make the best conference ever with involvement from much more of the community, rather than the more presentation style Open Staff Meetings that we’ve had in the past when it takes place much later in the process.

The meeting will start at 10AM with a ring-style check in, and then move on to the list and figuring out how to get everything done. At some point in the middle we will break for a potluck style lunch, so please make sure to bring something yummy to eat or drink (but no alcohol, please, in keeping with the Spring spirit).

Spring 2015 workshops

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Here were the workshops for Spring 2015

Daring Greatly with Sarah
In this workshop, we’ll dive deep our personal relationship with fear, our fears themselves, and how we want to transform them. We’ll use the safety and support of the group, Glen Brook, and the Spring community at large to stretch our boundaries, expand our comfort zones, and question our assumptions while compassionately engaging with what scares us. Through discussion, group activities and challenges, and extraordinary feats of derring do, we’ll figure out what it means to be courageous, and hopefully come away with heightened self-awareness and some badass new superpowers we can use in our everyday lives.

 

Let’s Write a Book with Bryce
Write genre fiction, (Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Steampunk, Post-Apocalyptic, etc) with a fun group dynamic. We can plan the whole piece together and write some each day, adjusting the plan as we go. We likely won’t finish the whole thing, but if there are 5 of us writing two pages a day for 7 days that’s 70 pages. After Spring we can continue working on it over the internet.

 

DIY Canvas and Leather Adventure with Thor
Tips and tools to create personalized bags, pouches, backpacks and the like. There will be a limited stock of canvas, leather, Velcro, snaps and zips on hand, as well as old bags, leather jackets, and backpacks to deconstruct. Create something new or re-purpose something old.

 

A Pattern of Patterns with April
A discussion group centered around noticing patterns and habits in our lives, and working to create new patterns and/or change existing ones. This will be a largely informal discussion where we share strategies for changing and creating patterns and habits, talk about changes we would like to make, and encourage each other to follow through and keep the changes up after Spring. Drawing and doodling patterns during the discussion is strongly encouraged. (If this sounds familiar that may be because this workshop also happened at Spring 2014.)

 

Building Things and Walking in Funny Ways with Lorraine
Stilts and slack line (more description to come).

 

TableTop RPG’ing with Anthony
In which we explore the collaborative storytelling possibilities of table top role-playing games, in this case using the D&D 5th edition core rules. The workshop will involve character creation (this will be completed on the first day of the workshop), some mini-quests (playable in one session), and ideally a longer quest to fill out the week. Accessible to long-weekenders and full-week Springers, this workshop should serve as an introduction to tabletop role-playing games for the new gamer, and as an exploration of collaborative storytelling for all players.

For those interested, there is some helpful introductory documentation online at dnd.wizards.com (not required reading, but it might help move things along). Also, a snarky webcomic (see alt text) for perspective. I will bring several sets of polyhedral dice, but those who have dice are encouraged to bring them, too.

 

Games! with Tashin and Will
Inside games! Outside games! Board games! Card games! Frisbee golf! Play all the games! (more description to come)

 

Be-in with Jake
Not quite sure what to do? Want to do different things every day? Why not do it together?