March 2007 Business

1) Moderator for the open discussion/sharing portion of the meeting
“C” will be the moderator for April, with “F” as backup. We need a moderator for May and beyond. (Can be two people: one to keep time, one to moderate.)

2) Moderator for the organizational issues portion of the meeting
“R” is the permanent moderator for this portion of the meeting.

3) Before-the-meeting setup
“R” is the permanent volunteer for the meeting setup—chairs, etc. Anyone else who comes early and wants to help may also participate (this has happened for the past few months).

4) Website: www.new-landscape.com
a) Art Forum:
The group agreed that not all submissions had to be positive or uplifting, though none could be “over the top.” We agreed on the wording of a warning statement. It is: “Caution – Some images could be triggering to some people.”

b) Write-up of “Group Format & Structure” portion of the meeting:
Two issues were discussed about the write-ups:
1) Some members would like their names used in the write-ups, and some prefer to be mentioned by initials only.
2) We sometimes get feedback on the write-ups from people who don’t come to meetings. We agreed to post the following notice on the website:

“In this section, we’ve posted the organizational issues brought forward during the “group format & structure” portion of our monthly meetings. Here we discuss the direction of New Landscape and the nuts-and-bolts of keeping it going. Some members wish their names to be used in the write-ups; some prefer to be mentioned by initials only. We have honored their preferences. Anyone wishing to comment on the issues in these notes may send feedback to contact@new-landscape.com. Your comments/ideas will be discussed at one of our future meetings.”

c) How far back should the “Group Format & Structure” write-ups go?
We agreed that we would post all the write-ups, from the very beginning. The reasons are:
1) We often get inquiries from people who want to start groups in other states. They ask what our process was like. Instead of writing long answers to each one separately, we could point them to the website.
2) The archive is helpful for therapists who are considering referring patients to New Landscape; it gives them a better feel for who we are and how we operate.
3) The write-ups are also important to people in New Landscape; they are our history, the archive that describes how we evolved.

d) Add a fundraising window asking for donations?
We agreed that we would like to do this. We will discuss the wording of it at a future meeting.

5) New York City Voices:
One person who sent in feedback about our website suggested taking out an ad in New York City Voices (www.newyorkcityvoices.org). We agreed that we did not want to take out an ad, but that we might be interested in having their website post a link to our website. Since no one at our meeting was familiar with the New York City Voices website, we agreed that we would take a look at it some time during the next month; at our next meeting, we will decide whether to ask them to post a link to our website.

6) Art therapy program:
The same person who gave the feedback in item 5 suggested we might have an art therapy program—someone to work with some of us in person to explore dissociation through art. We agreed that this would be a worthwhile program to consider sometime in the future, but at present, we are not ready for it. (If and when we are ready, the art therapy program would not be something that would replace a regular meeting; it would be an additional meeting.)