On Sunday, June 17th, 2012, you can bring your family, friends and neighbours to your local festival. Heck, you can organize your own neighbourhood festival with our help!

If you would like to participate at one of our festivals this year, keep your eyes peeled for our call-out in mid-February. We will be sending out our February newsletter soon with all the details.

The meeting minutes are posted below for everybody to review. You can also download the minutes here [PDF, 733KB].

Agenda

• Intro to Board
• History of CFV
• Values, mottos, etc.
• Review of 2011
• How board runs, sub-committees, how to get involved

Intro to Board

• Maddy, Matt, Charlie, Julie, Ross, Joey

History of CFV and Values

• Started back in 2005, when Gateway was proposed.
• Was a street hockey game on The Drive.
• Expanded to a festival, with a political slant.
• City gave money to organizers to throw more festivals.
• Grew to multiple locations in Vancouver in 2008.
• Also to address problem of people driving to The Drive to attend festival.
• Flat structure.
• Volunteer driven.
• No sponsors.
• Coming up on 5^th year of city-wide festivals.
• Philosophy is that less cars = more community.
• Looking to expand sites and the project.
• Use the goodwill generated by festivals to push forward an agenda. That’s the main function of the board.
• CFV contributed to brining in Mark Lakeman from City in Repair, Portland (at W2 in March, 2011).

Review of 2011

• This year was great. Each fest was successful.
• No police incidents – 21 festivals without any major police incidents.
• This year’s festival was 5 days after Stanley Cup Riot. City was happy that there were no incidents.
• Lots of festivals within the festival: VegFest, LOVE, Demonstration Village, etc.
• Lets people envision what happens when a street is shut down.
• Four sites: The Drive, Kits, Main Street, West End
• Last year we had North Vancouver, run by one volunteer.
• Might be a Yaletown, Comox Valley, Nanaimo and Halifax festival this year.
• We send off a how-to packages to anybody who want to run these.

“It’s not closing a street,
it’s opening a street.”

Financials

• Revenue: $37K
• Costs: $44K
• Ran at a loss of about $7K
• HST had a big impact.
• Need to find ways to offset increased expenses from the city.
• Other costs are rental fees, insurance, etc.
• Need people to help with admin work, financial, writing grant proposals, identify sources.
• We’ve got $11K in the bank.
• Revenue channels
• From merchants at festival time
• Grant from the city ($10K)
• Zone vendors, selling tables
• Kits does block parties instead of festivals.
• 12-24 block parties, varies from year to year.
• Looking to expand around the city

Steering Committees

Board is trying to get a lot of work done, but needs to focus on the vision.

1. Web Crew/Communications
   • Website redesign
   • Email
   • Facebook/Twitter
   • Blogging
2. Community Outreach
   • Build partnerships
   • Presentations at conferences, schools, etc.
   • Use these outlets to achieve our goals
   • Lobbying city with our partners
3. Accounting/Development
   • Looking for different revenue streams to sustain festival costs
   • How can we use grant opportunities to offset costs
4. Festival Organizing Support
   • Helping the festival sites with things like collecting payments from vendors (PayPal), email communication, barricades.
   • Liaising with organizers from each site.
   • Recycling strategy.

Board Positions

• Can nominate yourself for anything
• Core board members are people who have done board work in the past
• 9 people on the board
• 1 board chair
• 4 people who work with sub-committees
• 4 more people who are festival liaisons, 1 from each festival site
• Board Chair – Maddy
• Accounting & Development – Julie
• Web – Christian
• Festival Org Support – Matt
• Community Outreach – Charlie

Festival Liaisons

• West End – Katherine or Kelly
• Main – Joey
• The Drive – Olivia
• Kits – Ross

Board will contact sub-committee members in December (check-in) and then steering committees stat in January.

Ideas

• Main Street was great last year. Love the idea of a year-round political organization. Get back to that kind of a message.
• VPSN – see need to do outreach with youth, maybe pool our efforts.

Action Items

• Send minutes to all attendees, and sub-committee pod heads will contact their pod members to check in.

Get in touch with us at info@carfreevancouver.org and we’ll help you through the entire process of setting up your own Car Free Day. Our experienced organizers can guide you through each step – everything from gathering volunteers to contacting local merchants and getting city permits.

Then don’t forget to get out and vote! Remind your friends, family and co-workers to do so too. You can go here for some quick and easy facts about the upcoming election on November 19th, 2011.

http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/elections/2011election

There’s even a handy iPhone app available for download.

See you at the polls!

Editor Amy Walker has been at the forefront of the utility cycling trend as co-founder of Momentum magazine, which chronicles and inspires urban bike culture and transportation cycling. In On Bicycles, she gathers a wide-ranging group of cycling writers to explore the ways that biking can change, and is changing, people’s lives. From utility bikes that are becoming the primary mode of transportation for entire families to the artistic creations of freak bike riders, On Bicycles has something for everyone who has ever ridden a bike.

For more information, visit www.onbicycles.com

Hurray for Car Free Day!

To-date Car Free Vancouver Society (CFVS) has organized 21 fun filled, incident free, community bolstering festivals, showing Vancouver and other cities around the world that where you have less cars, you have more community!

Many of our 250,000 participants wrote glowing letters to City Council expressing their appreciation for the work we do. We are excited to continue to volunteer our time to bring you more festivals and other tantalizing projects in the future.

We would like to invite anyone out there who is interested in our work to attend our catered AGM onTuesday, November 22nd at Rhizome Cafe.

Vegetarian friendly food will be served, and the kitchen and bar will both be open for any requests.

Come and learn a bit about our history, how this year went for us, and what our goals for the future are. You will have the chance to join one of our sub-committees, join our society and vote for a new board.

We are excited to have new folks join our crew, especially (but not limited to) those of you with a particular interest or strengths in the following areas:

• networking with community (outreach, social media, visioning)
• communication and finances (grant writing and lobby work)
• interweb fun (design, ideas, efficiency)
• event organizing (help organize the CFD festivals)

Pass this on to your friends and networks. The more the merrier!

Hello to all Car-Free Superstars!

Car Free Vancouver Day 2011 will once again envelop our town in forward-looking fun, on Sunday June 19th – Father’s Day.

Now is your chance to get involved, get creative, meet some awesome folks, and help co-create the city of your dreams. If you love Car Free Day, please consider stepping up to take a creative leadership role in this amazing event.

Last year’s Car Free Day brought over 250,000 people out to play in the streets, and to change how they see their city. This year we hope to add more nodes and open more space for more people. This is a 100% volunteer organized event, with over 600 volunteers – and we need your help to make this magic happen.

Photo Credit insidevancouver.ca

Festival Sites

Commercial Drive
Location: Commercial Drive between 1st and Venables
Time:  12pm to 6pm (streets closed from 10am to 8pm)

Main Street
Location: Main Street between 12th Ave. and 29th Ave.
Time: 12pm to 8pm (streets closed from 10am to 10pm)

West End
Location: Denman from Robson St. to Davie St.
Time:  12pm to 6pm (streets closed from 10am to 8pm)

Kitsilano
Kitsilano is doing something different for Car Free Day. Instead of closing off a major street, people throughout Kits are hosting individual block parties with their neighbours

Download the flyer [PDF, 1MB]

Car Free After-Party

Come to the Car Free Vancouver Day after-party at the Waldorf Hotel, from 8pm onward. Entrance will be $5, but volunteers get in for free. Comes early before it reaches capacity!

Check it out to find out about all the happenings this weekend, including maps of each festival footprint and some teasers for the types of entertainment and other activities that will be at each location.

Car Free Vancouver – Main Street is on Facebook and on Twitter @carfreemain (#CFMain)