On Monday 15th December you can get help, practical advice and encouragement about
a) public speaking and/or
b) video-making.
The next meeting of the People’s Environmental Scrutiny Team will focus on these two skills from its list of 11 that it is trying to nurture and spread. It takes place at the Friends Meeting House, 6 Mount St, from 7pm. There is no need to 
book.
If you feel that you are a “practitioner”, “expert” or “ninja” at either public speaking or video-making and can attend the night, please get in touch. (And if you want to help, but can’t come, please have a look at the “bluffer’s guides“ for public speaking and video-making and tell us what’s missing).
The format is yet to be decided (anyone want to help design this meeting?) but will involve a brief intro and then work in small groups. Nobody will be filmed without their consent, and footage of people who do consent to being filmed will be given to them so they can see what they look and sound like while doing their public speaking.
PEST has three goals
a) increase the skills, knowledge and connections of those who are involved
b)lobby the council (principally by example) for the creation of a seventh scrutiny committee (on the environment)
and as of 2015, c) help people prepare for unpleasant changes ahead
So far PEST has held some interactive meetings and released a whole bunch of reports
- The Case for an Environmental Scrutiny Committee
- The Scrutiny Mutiny: Things Manchester City Council could do to really strenghten scrutiny, democracy and resilience
- That’s gotta SMART: the environmental sustainability subgroup recommendations
- Total Carbon Footprint: Time for a Second Step?
- A proposed implementation plan for the Council’s recommendations of its Environmental Sustainability Subgroup (this lengthy, detailed and useful report inevitably snubbed and smeared)
- What have ye done? Manchester City Council’s performance against its own goals from the Annual Carbon Reduction Plan 2013-4
- What IS a low carbon culture?
The next report (help is needed in project-managing this) will be on the subject of “What can we do to help each other be less unready for unpleasant surprises (Flu Pandemics, Extreme Weather Events, power cuts etc).” It will be released in January. Help is needed on all aspects of this – researching, writing, proof-reading, choosing a snappy title.
