👫 Paint the Streets Planning and Meetings

[ManicMax (Max)]

Next meeting: Thursday 14th of May

(going on a fortnightly schedule so that group members have time in between to work on things and fit in a bit of regeneration - hope that is ok).

I would like the next meeting to focus on forming some functional working groups / roles to work on the moving parts of the project.

Reasonable groupings would be (I think):

• Arts: Working on all artistic creation, helping arts groups around the country mobilize for paint the streets.
• Infrastructure: Establishing the infrastructure that will safely and effectively hold and communicate the paint the streets project and supporting materials.
• Rollout and Mobilization: Engaging with regional, local, and affinity groups across Australia, designing and facilitating an escalating Paint the Streets campaign.
• Media & Messaging: Working on messaging frames and guidelines, engaging with M&M groups and the media across the country to maximize the impact of our Paint the Streets message.
• Social Media: Organizing the social media presence of Paint the Streets.

Ewan suggested that we could have some of these roles done by existing working groups - e.g. the national Media and Messaging working group could do the Media and Messaging work. I think this would be good, as long as we have someone in a link role who would be part of and accountable to the Paint the Streets project group (so we can trust the communication with the group will be good and the work will be done).

With this in mind, I want to invite rebels to self-nominate to attend the next meeting with the intention of being part of a paint the streets working group.

I think the agenda should be:

• Acknowledgements (3 mins)
• Check-ins (3 mins)
• 2 minute updates on project areas (maximum 10 minutes)
• Split to breakouts (25-40 minutes)
  • What work are we already doing?
  • What work should this group do?
  • Who should do what?
• Report-backs.

[caroline (caroline walker)]

Hi
Caroline from Bris West . XR - I’m currently co-ordinating interested members in my group
and one of the main questions is, “What is the time frame, is there a ‘go’ date?”
Please can anyone shed any light on this topic regarding deadline for action
cheers
Caroline

[JaneM (Jane Morton)]

I’m pretty sure no date has been chosen, but it would indeed be good to have one.

[caroline (caroline walker)]

thanks for your response Jane, we are a little behind on preps here at Bris West 'cos I didn’t join in the planning until later.

[RosariaRebel (Rosaria Burchielli)]

Hi Caroline, it has been agreed that the launch of PTS would be at the close of the Digital Rebellion on May 20. I can see that it hasn’t yet been widely advertised on our social media. But Max announced it about a week ago here:

Strategic Directions for Paint the Streets

Copying this across from mattermost from @the-river-jordan I told him to give them a go-ahead for launch of Paint the Streets on May 20th, with the following provisos: It would be good if XR NSW / Sydney could provide local advice on the legal risks of paste-ups / stenciling, keeping in mind the changing recommendations around COVID-19. We will try to have some general guidelines ready by then for how groups could best direct their energy in the launch week. We will try to plan a good escala…

[ManicMax (Max)]

Yes, there’s a launch on the 20th - but that’s just to direct rebels to start putting lots of energy into this.
We need to work on frameworks for rebels to work with for escalation of Paint the Streets.

Here’s the message I sent to Caroline as she also emailed me:

Don’t worry - there’s no strict timeframes yet. We were waiting for more info on how the state governments would be relaxing measures for coronavirus before formulating a plan of escalation.

For the moment, getting your arts kits together, making stencils, posters and other arts - as much as possible - is the goal.

Your groups could also be mapping out areas and scoping out areas that you would like to do paste-ups and stenciling for getting the XR image and name out as much as possible. If it works with your context you can start doing paste-up and stencil runs, or chalking, or other street art. And you could be organizing and forming the affinity groups that will do the paint the streets actions (small units of 2 to 6 people per group which will then work in tandem to cover lots of ground or blitz certain locations).

When the time comes we will burst out and paint the streets.

At the next meeting on thursday we will be putting together a few working groups - one of which will be working on mobilization and escalation.

[jess]

A proposal for regenerative action cycle scheduling: Paint the Streets - The 1st Wave
Launch being about 8 o’clock.

[ManicMax (Max)]

Love this.

[JaneM (Jane Morton)]

Is there a meeting tonight? If so, where might I find the Zoom link please?

[ManicMax (Max)]

Nope, no meeting tonight.

[jess]

Lets set an end date for PTS 1st Wave and plan the after party.

[jess]

Lets leave a good amount of time to plan our actions and action our plans in honour of the #3rd

[ManicMax (Max)]

Next Meeting: Reflection and Learning, 5pm AEST Thursday 11th June

Apologies that I haven’t called any meetings for a while - I had a bit of burnout and some trouble at home.

Luckily, my role coordinating this project has not been very important the last few weeks, as there have been plenty of stencil and poster makers, paste-up groups and the Adelaide high-risk affinity group getting to action.

In fact, I know there were at least 4 paste-up groups simultaneously pasting up in Melbourne last friday night, as well as groups in Sydney and elsewhere.

The Adelaide high-risk AG painted up Unley Council who had refused to declare a climate emergency, and were interviewed on ABC radio the next day!

I would suggest that on the regenerative action cycle we have moved through a flurry of action and so now we should have a meeting for celebration, reflection and learning.

Please RSVP Here - See you then

[ManicMax (Max)]

Zoom Details (5pm Today):

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[ManicMax (Max)]

Reflection Meeting (11 June 2020) Summary

What’s Happened

Paint the Streets kicked off on the 16th of April with a visioning meeting, and has gone through a broad decentralized cycle of visioning, planning, preparation, and then some decentralized action. Arts guides and videos as well as a regular sunday stencil session on zoom have been created to support rebels to create artistic stuff, and small stencil and poster-making groups have popped up around Australia. There have been paste-up groups operating in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra and Adelaide, and the high-risk Affinity Group formed in Adelaide for Paint the Streets has spray-chalked and pasted up on 3 council buildings, netting themselves an ABC radio interview.

We held a reflection meeting to go over what has gone well so far, what hasn’t gone so well, and what we might do differently in the future.

The Attendees

Where	What they’ve done
Adelaide	Painted up 3 council buildings with an affinity group
Sydney	Putting up posters with tape, risk-averse
Adelaide	Doing Paste-ups
Mornington (Vic)	Is a postering machine
Adelaide	Set up the council-painting high-risk AG group
Melbourne	Thinking about organizing high-risk actions and media stunts
Central Coast NSW	Paste-ups around Sydney and Central Coast
Westside Melbourne	Made a mistake of publicly sharing paste-up plans which caused group to be met and followed by a large group of cops. Been doing lots of paste-ups and stenciling
Melbourne	Been making posters and stencils and working on M&M
Melbourne	Sharing arts resources online and sharing arts know-how
Sydney	Postering and making stencils and posters. Enjoying solo postering.
Bondi (Sydney)	Made lots of posters. Been putting some up, looking for paste-up crew.
Melbourne	Making arts resources available, holding sunday stencil sessions
Melbourne	Been doing some coordination work with Vic actions group and been doing paste-ups and stenciling with local group

What Went Well

General Feedback

• Great
• Loved it
• Could eat it for breakfast

Artistic Support:

• The guide was super handy
• Sunday Stencil Sessions
• Love the designs / stencils available.
• Good messaging advice provided
• Developed new skills

Artistic production:

• Impressed with the creative versatility with poster printing.
  • Customizability
• Making posters is fun / relaxing / addictive
• Enjoyed synthesis of creative and intellectual experience

Mobilisation:

• Reactivated local group - made them excited and active
• The campaign has activated lots of rebels
• Able to get involved in multiple disruptive actions with Adelaide high-risk AG while being a completely new rebel. Enjoyed that every member of affinity group brought their own strengths.

Decentralisation

• Impressive potential of spontaneous decentralised actions
• Autonomy encouraged
• Being part of a big decentralized nation-wide action
• First experience of good national collaboration
• Making connections with people across the country
  • Meeting new people
• Sharing of inspiration from the collective

Timing

• Framing of phases of project (pre-production, emphasis on preparation)
• Not rushing led to effective action
• Putting time into helping others has helped with purpose and how

What Didn’t Go So Well

Match-making:

• No clear way of connecting with other people - need a callout system.
• Struggling to find people to help
• Didn’t get to experience high-risk action because of lack of AGs ready to take on action
• (Sydney) Have 200-300 posters, 10 big banners - need people to help put them up

Too many people:

• Having too many people doing paste-ups together - small groups worked better
• Some meetings too big and unwieldy

Don’t tell the authorities:

• Going public with postering plans (via Facebook) summoned police and ruined a paste-up run.

Timing:

• Timeframes and phases were unclear.
• Cycle was not synchronized and well-communicated
• Did we go to reflection too early?

What We Might Do Differently Next Time

If risk averse

• Can use sticky tape to reduce legal risk
• Nervous people can make / prepare the posters

Need MORE

• Stickers
• Reverse Graffiti - not illegal, good for learning to handle stencils
• People
• Affinity groups
  • Strong, agile, form identity

Paste-up logistics

• Having a good place to meet and debrief away from target site.
• Having a lookout to watch for aggressive bystanders.

Amp up the Messaging

• Go back to basics - get more serious

Coordination

• Separate meetings by purpose - core organizers vs all-ins.
  • Separate meetings to fulfill different needs
• Need more coordination
• Adelaide coordinated within its own area, but would like to coordinate with other cities

Mobilisation

• Create pathways to engagement via poster making and poster pasting.
• Matchmaking between people who want to do the above.

Share the model

• The decentralized model of the Paint the Streets campaign would work well for other projects.

Targets

• Specific campaigns could guide creative production

Technical Support

• Support to use the Base

[ManicMax (Max)]

Paint the Streets Planning Meeting (June 24 2020)

Minutes available here.

Summary and Key Decisions

We had quick check-ins and then talked about some messaging for stickers.

The bulk of the meeting was about planning some projects to work on and assigning rebels to them, as follows.

Projects:

Brad (@brad333) & Jay (@extinction1234567) : Stickers

Kate S (@kate_s) , Brooke (@Brooke_Thompson) , Anna(@AnnaR) : Arts Crew

• Reworking Arts Resources - including how to work in the Regenerative Actions Cycle
• Consider arts resources for targeted campaigns -> talk with Rosaria about that

Rosaria (@RosariaRebel) : Establish M&M Group

• Incorporate messaging docs and guidelines with Paint the Streets
• Consider targeted campaigns -> talk with Arts crew about that

Beth (@bethal), Louis (@rhinolouis) , Jay (@extinction1234567) , Costas (@costasmaniatis) , Cate: Actions Crew

• Beth: Apprenticeship actions
• Louis: Arrestable Actions
• Jay and Costas: High-Risk AG in Vic
• Cate: Mass participation PTS Action

[AnnaR (Anna Russell)]

Hi Rosaria, Do we have any legal info on the risks of paste-ups yet? I get asked about it but haven’t followed up with anyone in Sydney. Anna

[costasmaniatis (Costas)]

Paint the streets - legal info

Hi AnnaR

Legal doc for paste ups in Victoria might have some crossover
Hope that helps you

[RosariaRebel (Rosaria Burchielli)]

Hi Anna,
Im not aware of anything apart from what Costas sent you. So, it would be good to find some Sydney based XR legal people to comment on the document that Costas sent & whether there’s additional information for Sydney. However, I would start by assuming that paste-ups are considered ‘damage to property’, and comprise varying levels of risk, probably depending on where the pasting is done. Get local advice!

Here’s something I found online: https://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/live/report-local-issues/bill-posters