Okay, I've got a little more information on some of the venues I've looked into and I think I can propose a semi-permanent venue for meetings on which I'd love to hear feedback.
The venues that I was looking at included community halls, church halls, CERES and Loophole in Thornbury. A lot of these turned out to be not possible: looks like 'Loophole' has closed (pity, they were selling a few of my zines). CERES appears to have a lot of community stuff going on, but they're in fairly heavy demand and venue hire there looks to be relatively expensive. Northcote Uniting Church Hall may be a possibility (they have a fairly eclectic range of events going on), but venue hire will probably cost a bit there too. Various pubs are good for one off meetings but are probably not good long-term venues because they seem to have legal problems with the sharing of home brew on site, and are also in fairly high demand (and often can be quite loud - hard to talk!)
Then on Friday I chanced to contact a rep from
Eagles Nest Theatre Space in Brunswick, and I've talked to him on the phone since then. He seems pretty positive about the idea of us having semi-regular meetings at their venue and doesn't even seem to fussed about payment or meeting times - night-time rehearsals aren't that common, apparently.
The space has several advantages:
- quiet (unlike a bar, there won't be much music or excitable patrons to interrupt the scintillating flow of our conversation).
- they're relaxed about the sharing of home brews on site.
- venue hire doesn't seem to be an issue (I've suggested we could make a contribution of our finest brews to the fridge in the green room and they seem in no way averse to that suggestion!)
- Fairly flexible about dates and times (they're going to put my suggested dates to the other theatre users but don't think there'll be a problem with them.)
- Though of course we'd have to take good care of the space while we use it.
I would therefore like to suggest that we hold our AGM at Eagles Nest Theatre Space on Tuesday 22 April or 29 April. I have suggested these dates to the goodly proprietors of the theatre on phone (and will shortly do so in an email).
So what does everyone think?
Linky!