Minutes of meeting – 12th July 2021

The Friends of Moseley Road Baths Committee meeting minutes – Monday 12th July 2021 at 7.30pm, via Teams.

Present: Joe (Chair), Rachel (Secretary), Mark (Treasurer), Polly and Viv

Apologies: Philippa, Zhor, Damian and Sarinder

  1. Minutes of the meeting of 14th June
  • Minutes approved, all items to be addressed during this meeting.
  • Polly’s draft plant protocol will be presented to the next CIO meeting.
  • Viv will create the Steve Beauchampé memorial board and get quotes from a framers.

2. Reports from MRB CIO and management

  • Joe gave a funding update.
  • There have been some strong applications for the role of Chair of Trustees of the CIO.
  • A new member of staff has been interviewed and will begin soon.
  • As part of ‘MRB Alive’, young people held a live streamed event featuring 10 presentations from ‘Little Ambassadors’.  The group had learnt about the history of the building and prepared presentations to advocate for the building for a live audience.
  • Splash and Scream event took place on 27th June, at least three local schools and pre-schoolers involved.  There may be scope for school tours in future.
  • Women & Theatre have been having conversations with the Women’s Only group and Chat and Splash group as part of a project to create short films addressing myths and misinformation about Covid-19.  Rachel has been working with them as the project’s Film Maker.  The films will be shared publicly within the next week.
  • MRB Comms meeting taking place on 13/07/21.  Viv and Rachel will be in attendance.

3. Moseley Road Cultural Activity Zone (CAZ)

A consortium of seven organisations on Moseley Road Baths have been successful in a bid for £45,000 to create a CAZ.  They will seek a part time manager to run it and organise monthly social, public facing events between August 2021 and March 2022 on the Moseley Road.  It may involve a road closure of Lime Grove.  Joe to circulate the document outlining the plan.

4. 2021 Birmingham Heritage Week: Open Day, 12th September 2021

  • Joe to request all FoMRB members attend if possible.  All in attendance at the meeting are able to attend on the day.
  • Open to the public 12pm-5pm
  • Joe will create a list of roles (including tour guides) and will assign people to roles.
  • The Gala Pool toilets will be available to the public.
  • Rachel to set up Eventbrite for bookings – possibly liaise with the CIO.
  • Maximum of 12 people per tour.

5. FoMRB finances

  • Outstanding amount due to Rachel for the FoMRB website domain name and hosting.
  • Comms – decided against purchasing a Zoom membership.  Polly, Joe and Ellie to try out the ‘Telegram’ platform. (N.B. Following meeting Rachel checked if Telegram has a video chat function for multiple members and they have recently introduced the service.)

6. FoMRB constitution

Discussion about the role of the ‘Committee’ and ‘Friends’ as laid out in the Constitution.  Need to build support and relationships through activities.  Will use the Comms meeting and BHW tours to build more support and invite new people to join FoMRB.  Important to remember that plenty of people ARE active in supporting the Baths already in other ways, particularly through the CIO’s activities.

7. Any other business

  • Niki as Volunteer Co-ordinator is building a list of volunteers for regular CIO activities.
  • CIO to send direct requests for support and help to members of the FoMRB Committee. All Committee members to e-mail Rachel to state if they are happy to be included on the CIO volunteer e-mail list.

8. Date of the next meeting

Joe to contact regular attendees to see if there is a better day of the week / month to meet.