Gaia Gathering re-cap.
Wow! What a weekend!
I arrived in Friday afternoon around 3.30pm and waited around until the last of our crew arrived and got checked in before we mosied on over to the University to wander around & check in.
The opening ritual was very active and participatory which was a good start for generating some energy for the weekend.
We could have stayed for drumming but being tired we decided to head back for some sleep to be ready for the weekend.
How little we knew. Apparently the Salsa Bar on the street has a speaker that faces the street and our window. Despite being on the 8th floor, it was as if we were right at front door of the bar until 2am. Honestly, if I'd known that I would have just stayed up partying. :P
Saturday started with Tim Ward's presentation on Men and the Goddess. I will admit I'd never heard of Savage Breast or Tim Ward before the conference, but one of my co-attendees and myself were in agreement that we would love the flip side of this: a "Savage Phallus" if you will for Women and the journey to the God. But I think the best part of this was that Tim Ward doesn't really consider himself a pagan, so much as a man who has come up close and personl with the Divine Feminine as presented through ancient art, representations and sculptures.
Then there was lunch, which wasn't overly exciting, but did involve food which is of course always exciting.
Next was the Organizing Pagan Pride Days Discussion.
There were two participants from Ontario who had been involved with or attended previous PPDs in Ontario. As well as two of us from Calgary and one person from Ottawa who was interested in finding out how to set up an Ottawa event.
Some important points from this talk:
- Hamilton has a regular PPD attendance of 1000+, a budget of $3K, 5-8 People on the organizing committee on a regular basis, and 20-40 volunteers, major fundraising effort 3 months prior to event.
- Focus is on non-internet advertising, and a large portion of helper pool is from the solitary pagan population.
- Publicity for the Hamilton event happens prior, during and after through newspapers, etc.
- Hamilton holds it's PPD in a large park with high visibility and the attendees are probably at least 80% non-pagan.
- Other PPDs in the area, including Toronto have encountered the same difficulties as CPPD. At least 4 other PPDs and a number of other municipalities within 2-3 hours of Hamilton, as well as a very active artist, performer and musician pool to pull draw from.
- Population of Hamilton is less than 500K.
For comparison Calgary:
- Regular attendance of 100 or less, budget of $1000, one person (two people in previous years) on the organizing committee, less than 5 volunteers, our fundraising has largely been limited to garage sale sin previous years.
- We have focused on internet advertising.
- So far our publicity so far has been primarily from the event itself.
- PPDs near Calgary - Lethbrige (?), Edmonton
- Calgary's population is nearly 1 million.
Next I attended the scholar's stream for a few interesting papers from Sam Wagar, Eugene Plawiuk, and unfortunately the one I really was interested wasn't able to attend (The Valkyrjar Remade (and in Canada!)).
Due to the Solutions Panel and the Asatru Path Panel not having anyone other than me at them I attended another Scholars' Stream and heard some very interesting papers from Sian Reid, Rosemary Roberts, and Jane Leverick.
The evening brought along the Goddess Slideshow by Tim Ward and it was absolutely fascinating.
After this evening, we headed out to Perkins' and chatted with some lovely ladies form Winnipeg until 12.30 before wandering into sleep (and there was still Salsa music but I was tired enough to zonk out). It was muchly fun.
Sunday Morning brought a very interesting presentation on our religious rights in Canada, with an annotated biliograhy (woots).
Lunch (yay!) was followed by an excellent panel titled Pagans, Professions and $$$. It was very interesting.
Highlights:
- Value for value - concept presented by Helmut, and certainly an excellent way to look commerce between pagans.
- Business models for pagans businesses.
- Intra-community commerce.
- Referrals to other pagans.
- Poor (permenant state of mind) vs. lacking money (temporary condition)
- The poor pagan myth.
Next panel was Communities issues.
Wow was that a good one. It touched on some of the prejudices in the community, the exclusion of solitaries, the isolationism, inclusion, exclusion.
The last panel of the weekend was the Why Churches.
It was also very good.
Some interesting points:
- We can fight for our equal rights or we can fight to have civic duties taken away from all religions.
This kind of got rather circular after a while.
The banquet was alright considering the options were beef or tofu stir-fry (neither of which I eat lol). But there was chocolate cake so I made up my protein need siwth whipped cream. ;)
The concert was very good, and we had some excellent chats with one of the lovely ladies form Winnipeg, some dancing and some signing.
The final thing was Monday morning with the AGM.
10am - 1pm.
The conclusion? Next year's GG will be hosted at the University of Ottawa, with the academic stream sponsored by the Dept. of Religious Studies.
2009 is tentatively scheduled for Guelph but options are being pursued to re-open the subject of having it in Vancouver in 2009.
And then I had an uneventful flight back. And am I ever glad I flew rather than drove!
I arrived in Friday afternoon around 3.30pm and waited around until the last of our crew arrived and got checked in before we mosied on over to the University to wander around & check in.
The opening ritual was very active and participatory which was a good start for generating some energy for the weekend.
We could have stayed for drumming but being tired we decided to head back for some sleep to be ready for the weekend.
How little we knew. Apparently the Salsa Bar on the street has a speaker that faces the street and our window. Despite being on the 8th floor, it was as if we were right at front door of the bar until 2am. Honestly, if I'd known that I would have just stayed up partying. :P
Saturday started with Tim Ward's presentation on Men and the Goddess. I will admit I'd never heard of Savage Breast or Tim Ward before the conference, but one of my co-attendees and myself were in agreement that we would love the flip side of this: a "Savage Phallus" if you will for Women and the journey to the God. But I think the best part of this was that Tim Ward doesn't really consider himself a pagan, so much as a man who has come up close and personl with the Divine Feminine as presented through ancient art, representations and sculptures.
Then there was lunch, which wasn't overly exciting, but did involve food which is of course always exciting.
Next was the Organizing Pagan Pride Days Discussion.
There were two participants from Ontario who had been involved with or attended previous PPDs in Ontario. As well as two of us from Calgary and one person from Ottawa who was interested in finding out how to set up an Ottawa event.
Some important points from this talk:
- Hamilton has a regular PPD attendance of 1000+, a budget of $3K, 5-8 People on the organizing committee on a regular basis, and 20-40 volunteers, major fundraising effort 3 months prior to event.
- Focus is on non-internet advertising, and a large portion of helper pool is from the solitary pagan population.
- Publicity for the Hamilton event happens prior, during and after through newspapers, etc.
- Hamilton holds it's PPD in a large park with high visibility and the attendees are probably at least 80% non-pagan.
- Other PPDs in the area, including Toronto have encountered the same difficulties as CPPD. At least 4 other PPDs and a number of other municipalities within 2-3 hours of Hamilton, as well as a very active artist, performer and musician pool to pull draw from.
- Population of Hamilton is less than 500K.
For comparison Calgary:
- Regular attendance of 100 or less, budget of $1000, one person (two people in previous years) on the organizing committee, less than 5 volunteers, our fundraising has largely been limited to garage sale sin previous years.
- We have focused on internet advertising.
- So far our publicity so far has been primarily from the event itself.
- PPDs near Calgary - Lethbrige (?), Edmonton
- Calgary's population is nearly 1 million.
Next I attended the scholar's stream for a few interesting papers from Sam Wagar, Eugene Plawiuk, and unfortunately the one I really was interested wasn't able to attend (The Valkyrjar Remade (and in Canada!)).
Due to the Solutions Panel and the Asatru Path Panel not having anyone other than me at them I attended another Scholars' Stream and heard some very interesting papers from Sian Reid, Rosemary Roberts, and Jane Leverick.
The evening brought along the Goddess Slideshow by Tim Ward and it was absolutely fascinating.
After this evening, we headed out to Perkins' and chatted with some lovely ladies form Winnipeg until 12.30 before wandering into sleep (and there was still Salsa music but I was tired enough to zonk out). It was muchly fun.
Sunday Morning brought a very interesting presentation on our religious rights in Canada, with an annotated biliograhy (woots).
Lunch (yay!) was followed by an excellent panel titled Pagans, Professions and $$$. It was very interesting.
Highlights:
- Value for value - concept presented by Helmut, and certainly an excellent way to look commerce between pagans.
- Business models for pagans businesses.
- Intra-community commerce.
- Referrals to other pagans.
- Poor (permenant state of mind) vs. lacking money (temporary condition)
- The poor pagan myth.
Next panel was Communities issues.
Wow was that a good one. It touched on some of the prejudices in the community, the exclusion of solitaries, the isolationism, inclusion, exclusion.
The last panel of the weekend was the Why Churches.
It was also very good.
Some interesting points:
- We can fight for our equal rights or we can fight to have civic duties taken away from all religions.
This kind of got rather circular after a while.
The banquet was alright considering the options were beef or tofu stir-fry (neither of which I eat lol). But there was chocolate cake so I made up my protein need siwth whipped cream. ;)
The concert was very good, and we had some excellent chats with one of the lovely ladies form Winnipeg, some dancing and some signing.
The final thing was Monday morning with the AGM.
10am - 1pm.
The conclusion? Next year's GG will be hosted at the University of Ottawa, with the academic stream sponsored by the Dept. of Religious Studies.
2009 is tentatively scheduled for Guelph but options are being pursued to re-open the subject of having it in Vancouver in 2009.
And then I had an uneventful flight back. And am I ever glad I flew rather than drove!