How-to’s

List an event on this website
Meetings
Venues
Make images in blog posts accessible
Find the FAC mailing lists online

How to list an event on this website

Write a blog post about the event, and make sure to select the ‘Events’ category* – that way the posts will turn up on the Events page as well as in the blog feed.

*On WordPress ‘categories’ are different from ‘tags’ – to add a blog post to the ‘Events’ category you tick a box, you don’t have to actually type the word ‘Events’.

Meetings

Here is the info I have about organising meetings. If you want info about venues in Cambridge, then go to Venues.

Venue

We have the Ann Docwra Room, downstairs at the Friends Meeting House, Jesus Lane, Cambridge, booked for the 4th Wednesday of every month from 8pm for the rest of the year (apparently the Wardens will get in touch at the end of the year and ask if we want to continue our booking). It’s £21 for the room for up to 3 hours if booked as part of a series of bookings, slightly more for one-off meetings, and if we want tea or coffee and to use the kitchen it’s another £4.50. This room is fully accessible for people with mobility-based access needs. While the Friends Meeting House does have a lift, some wheelchairs (including a wheelchair user who occasionally comes to our meetings) don’t fit in the lift. Therefore, when we have meetings open to the general public it’s good to use the downstairs room. However they have lots of other rooms of different sizes available which are also pretty cheap.

Email the wardens, Bea and Chris Doubleday, on wardens@jesus-lane.cambridge-quakers.org.uk . They are very friendly. We pay for the room on the night at the moment, and they usually don’t mind if we collect the money during the meeting and pay them afterwards (go up the top of all the flights of stairs and knock on the wardens’ door, if they’re not around).

Publicity

I have been asking the people who facilitate to do the publicity. On Facebook, it’s important to note that rather than just creating an event, you need to go to the FAC facebook page then click on ‘create event’ from the FAC facebook page, then it will automatically invite people from the facebook page. Otherwise, you can’t invite people from the FB page.

Also anyone can email the general list with announcements. People have said they like to have a lot of notice, so the earlier you can send around notification of the topic, the better, then I usually try and send a reminder a couple of days before.

Facilitation

What is it and how do I do it? Check out this awesome guide by Seeds For Change:

http://www.seedsforchange.org.uk/free/shortfacilitation

And look here for more useful information about how to facilitate, organise and run FAC meetings:

http://www.seedsforchange.org.uk/free/resources#facilitation

Pub

We’ve been going to the Champion of the Thames on King St afterwards, which is good because they have backgammon players who finish at 10pm so there’s usually space for us afterwards. We tried the Maypole one time and it was horrifically noisy and busy.

Venues

1. Venues for meetings
2. Venues for gigs/social or cultural events

1. Venues for meetings and similar

Note – we have been trying to avoid using colleges of the University to meet as it puts off non-university people from coming if meetings/events are held in colleges. But of course this is flexible. When you email a venue, say you’re from FAC as we may have used them before.

Friends Meeting House, Jesus Lane.

We are currently using this for our monthly discussion group meetings. it’s good because it’s central, accessible and affordable, and friendly! I’ve put more information on the meetings page. Email wardens@jesus-lane.cambridge-quakers.org.uk for bookings.

The Bath House, corner of Gwydir St and Mill Road

Email Malcolm@lifecraft.org.uk. They have a fully accessible room which fits 24-25 people seated, which costs £5.50 per hour to use. There’s only a kitchenette with hot water available for tea and coffee but no kitchen equipment/tea and coffee, so you have to bring your own. At weekends it’s regularly booked on Saturday mornings till 12.30pm but free in the afternoons, and there is a regular booking on Sunday day time but this can occasionally be moved, and it’s also busy on Sunday nights from 7pm.

Romsey Mill, corner of Mill Road and Hemingford Road (bottom of Mill Road)

For bookings email Sally-Anne on sa.micallef@romseymill.org. We were meeting there for a while in the second half of 2011, and they gave us a deal on the larger downstairs room, the Jordan Room, so it was about £30 for an hour and a half (although we could go over) and this included tea and coffee. They are very friendly and happy to help. However this venue is not central (bottom of Mill Road) and although it’s accessible, with a lift, it’s apparently difficult for wheelchair users to find parking/drop-off points close by, and then they have to negotiate the big iron gate to get in which is not possible without help.

They also have smaller upstairs rooms available for 12-15 people.

Central Library in town

The Central Library have reasonably priced meeting rooms available. The big drawback here is that if you want to use them when the library is not open, then you have to pay for a staff member to stay while you’re there, which makes it uneconomical. So it’s only really useful while the library is open. Opening times from April 2012 are Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday: 9am-6pm Wednesday: 9am-7pm, Saturday: 10am-6pm, Sunday: 12noon-4pm

For more information and bookings go to http://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/leisure/libraries/about/policy/room_hire/library_meeting_rooms_for_rent.htm

Humanitarian Centre

The Hum Centre, on Gresham Road just off the south side of Parkers Piece (same building as Fenners Gym, the University gym), have let us use our meeting room sometimes. However, they changed their policy in Sept 2011 and now they are prioritising people who are linked to the Hum centre, I think, or similar. They said we can use the space if no-one else is using it, but this means that they can’t tell us till the Friday of the week before if it will be free, so we can’t plan in advance. Also, we have been allowed to use the space because Anne works at the Hum Centre and so is the link between FAC and the Hum centre.

Email claire.hancock@humanitariancentre.org to arrange. They will charge us £10 for room usage. It is fully accessible and fits max 25 people.

Ross St Community Centre

This link has info about all the community centres in Cambridge. Ross St Community Centre is in Romsey so it’s the only one I’ve been to. It tends to be very fully booked up, especially the large room, but the smaller room is a bit more available and still quite big. It’s fully accessible and reasonably priced and has a kitchen if you book the larger room. This would also be good for social/community events.

Asda meeting room

Cambridge Asda (Beehive Centre off Newmarket Road) has a FREE meeting room which can comfortably sit 10 to 15 people. There are also tea, coffee and snack facilities available. This is all part of a new Community Life programme where Asda are trying to help as many people as possible.

If you would like to know more, please contact Claire, the Asda Community Life Champion 01223 531600.

2. Venues for gigs/social and cultural events.

Portland Arms

The Portland is a pub off Chesterton Road and has a room that is dedicated to gigs etc. I have doubts about it’s accessibility – will need to check. It’s busy probably 5 nights a week so we’d have to book in advance and be flexible as to days. http://www.theportland.co.uk/

The Emperor, Hills Road

The Emperor has an upstairs room (quite small – max 25 pp) which can be used for gigs/events. Not accessible I don’t think. http://www.theemperorpub.com/

The Labour Club, Mill Road

This is a bar and community venue which will let people hold events/gigs there, as long as they don’t mind the bar being open to the public as well. Go in and have a chat to the ladies who run it. It’s quite big.

How to make images in blog posts accessible

Some people who are blind or have vision problems browse the Internet using a screenreader, which reads out the text in websites. Unfortunately this leaves out the information conveyed by images. To solve this problem, all the information conveyed in images should also be conveyed as text.

The really quick and easy way

Add an image to your blog post as usual, and underneath it add a description, like this:

Image description: A brown cupcake with white frosting and multi-coloured sprinkles.

That’s it. However if you want to make your image description available to screenreaders, but not visible normally, read on.

If you use the ‘Visual’, point-and-click way of doing blog posts…

Unfortunately WordPress gives you way too many options when you add an image, but the only one you need to worry about is ‘Alternative Text’; paste your image description here and it will be available to screenreaders but invisible otherwise.

Annoyingly there is an asterix beside the ‘Title’ field that makes it look like it’s a required field, but it isn’t, and you can leave it blank. Titles are not considered to be good for accessibility.

If you use the HTML editor…

Then you probably already know how to do this: