The circle (photo by Amanda Daniell)
This Saturday, we held the first Animal Advocacy Camp in Vancouver. 80 people from across the spectrum of animal advocacy in Vancouver came together to learn and teach about being more effective advocates for animals.
The event was organized as “Open Space,” a meeting format where the attendees set the agenda at the beginning of the day. This sort of format removes a lot of the distinction between “experts” and everybody else, and also gives everyone the opportunity to host a conversation about a particular question or topic they are passionate about.
The energy in the room was amazing. I think a lot of the people were just excited to be able to come together to be with other activists and talk about our work. Many people made new contacts and new friends, and conversations got started that will hopefully carry on to successful projects.
The Agenda (photo by Amanda Daniell)
Some of the topics being discussed included:
- How Can I Speak More Effectively?
- Education and Critical Thinking
- Art and Literature’s Role in Animal Advocacy
- Presenting animal issues with creativity
- Media Relations
Many of the attendees have said that they want to do another event of this type. Bringing the community together in this way can serve to share information and knowledge, to plan future campaigns and objectives, to strengthen our personal bonds. We will definitely be organizing some events in the coming months to bring people together again to push forward.
Keep an eye open for announcements!
It was a great event. Thanks for organizing it, Glenn.
This sounds awesome. Can’t wait to steal some of your ideas for our Portland event.
Congratulations on your event! It sounds amazing. I remember hearing about this at Let Live and am excited to see it happen. Keep up the good work!
A lot of new faces to strengthen the animal voice.
This was simply wonderful! Thank-you to all the attendees and Lib BC for all that you are doing in providing a compassionate and effective voice for our lovely animal co-inhabitants!
Just curious where this event was held?
It was held at the Vancouver Public Library, in the big room on the lower level.
Great event. Let’s keep the conversations going. We need to build a strong community. Thanks for creating a platform for it.
Loved it!! Fantastic event!
Sorry I missed it. When is the next one?
I missed it. *arrgh* (stupid work..)
I was certain it was gonna be a lovely event with that aura surrounding the room.
I have this feeling more people wanted to come, yet there weren’t enough tickets. Perhaps it would be good to have a “surplus” of tickets, so that no one will miss out. Yet the thought of having “too much people” and having one person at a time, out of so many people…hahah. Makes me wonder.
=)
The animals thank you! What a great event. My only regret is that I couldn’t be in eight sessions all at once.
I didnt see this event advertised on craigslist. Was it?
I have seen Liberation BC ads there–but not this. Unless the intention is to keep the numbers down. Also, the Earthsave forums would have been a good place to post a message about this(not the liveliest place but Stephen Best dropped by there recently) . I see nothing there on it. They have Sea Shepherd event ads so posting there in the future might be a good idea. Finally–shouldnt there be a summary of the discussion-as in letting the web community know what was discussed, or what sort of conclusions were reached?
I am especially interested in knowing what was sort of conclusions were reached on: Art and Literature’s Role in Animal Advocacy and Presenting animal issues with creativity.
Sorry, we didn’t advertise this even on Craigslist, although that would have been a good idea. I was actually really worried about running out of space because there was so much interest. We’ll be doing a series of smaller, more focused events throughout the year as well, which we will try to publicize as best we can.
You can find notes from the Animal Advocacy Camp here:
http://animaladvocacycamp.ca/index.php?title=Animal_Advocacy_Camp
Thanks! I can understand the concern about tickets. I am just annoyed I missed it.
I do think there should be more online forum interaction though so people who are interested in these ideas can dialogue further(unless there is one already and arent aware of it- facebook?). There isnt a whole lot of BC based forums for such things from what i can see. The EarthSave one is pretty barren most of the time. There used to a vancouver veg group that had an active one but they mainly talked about restaurants.