CREATIVECOFFEE CLUB, 7 SEPTEMBER 2011

At Phoenix Square Film & Digital Media Centre this morning, for the start of a new series of CreativeCoffee Club. This is the first one under the aegis of the new management committee, which has taken over from Jayne Childs, who coordinated these networking meetings for the past couple of years, since we moved to Phoenix Square from the Graduate Bar at De Montfort University. It's also the first meeting run directly by Phoenix Square, as ties with DMU have now been cut due to changes in the funding regime.

We had the first meeting of the management committee last week to agree on how this meeting should go and how we can develop in future. We agreed then that I'd give a brief introduction, reassuring old hands, welcoming new attendees and signposting our direction of travel. Other members of the management committee here today get the chance to identify themselves, say a little about why they're involved and what they hope to contribute to CreativeCoffee Club. There's a good turnout, with at least 25 people here (I know because I'm in charge of the register today).

A few of my own highlights this morning include people laughing at my jokes during my brief talk; confirming that I'm now the sole survivor from the old Graduate Bar sessions; meeting Rosie Clarke and finding out about her social enterprise, Virtuous Bread (and discussing how she might be able to do something with Leicester Council of Faiths related to our 25th anniversary); Carmen Gilfillan (of Stimulus Life Coaching) and I expending fruitless amounts of mental energy trying to figure out where we'd met before; talking with Rhiannon Dalton, Inclusion Development Worker at Leicester City Council, about possibilities for involving people with long term mental health issues.

In the photo above: Rahat Ahmed (left) with Rosie Clarke of Virtuous Bread.