Hey Nestlings!
You’ve seen a lot of communications this year about event dates. Maybe you’ve voted in surveys, written comments, contributed to conversations… Ultimately the decision was made to shift the dates to the half-term holiday for 2025 and revert back in 2026 to the way we have been doing things, and then reassess for future years.
In this piece, we want to bring you in behind-the-scenes, and share with you the process of how this decision came to be. You might learn something about how the Burning Nest sausage gets made! You may even be inspired to join the organising team yourself.
The Background
The last two years, Burning Nest has run so that Strike Monday (i.e the end of the event) falls on the late May bank holiday. However, this is ever-so-slightly out of kilter with the half-term break that usually starts on that same bank holiday. In 2018 and 2022, the event started on the bank holiday and corresponded with half-term. A common concern is that by not falling during half-term, we automatically exclude families, teachers and the like from ever being able to attend.
Every year we get feedback about the event date. So this year we opened a community consultation.
Community Consultation
We initially reached out to the community asking for thoughts on a Google form. We got a bunch of people engaging which was amazing, but we also realised there was no way for people to see the comments people had submitted... curses. This meant there was a limit to discussion or for people to consider some of the excellent points raised.
So we moved to Loomio. This allows more of a forum-style comment section, and we were stoked that people also engaged with the discussion over there. However, we acknowledge that switching part-way through meant we lost some people, potentially had some double-voting, and it all got a bit confusing. We learnt pretty quickly from this so won't be doing that again!
The Results
Here's where it gets sticky. When we split ourselves across two different platforms, we also found ourselves with two opposing sets of results. The Google form data showed a clear preference for moving, while the Loomio results suggested we should keep the dates the same. Using Loomio feedback from the community we were able to make a consensus decision-making process and not a popularity pool.
From the community input in Loomio we understood the most common sentiments against moving the dates were:
- The likelihood of having less people in the event as it is harder to some get holiday from work
- The event will clash with Fire in the Mountain and Flim Flam therefore won't be able to come
- The change in the demographics of people and ages might inhibit radical self-expression
And the pro movement of the dates were:
- Inclusion, by giving the possibility to more people to attend the event
There were plenty of other excellent discussion points which we'll come back to in a minute, but let's take a second on this one, cos it in itself is a tricky one!
The Debate
The org team had a lively debate on this - especially because ultimately both sides of the coin come down to inclusion. Our theme camps are a really valued part of our event, and we know that they contribute a lot to the energy of Nest. But ultimately we couldn't get away from the idea that the dates as they are automatically exclude those families who might want to attend; by contrast, if members of a camp choose to go to another event instead, this is a loss to us but ultimately their call.
Some of the questions around this:
- Does this apply to all members of any given theme camp?
- Would we make the same calls no matter which camp was attending or not attending?
- Do we have a guarantee that keeping the dates the same would automatically mean any given camp would be present?
- Is there potential for other camps or art projects to arise if an existing one bows out?
- And so on and so forth (it really was a lively debate).
Ultimately, the suggestion was made (and agreed) that we set the dates during half term for one, but not both of the next two years, to maximise the potential for inclusion.
But Which Year??
While changing the dates either 2025 or 2026 next felt like a logical decision, there were still a number of points to address.
We agreed unanimously that while the council have always been happy with our safeguarding and procedures, that if Nest dates fell during half term we personally would like to have more robust measures in place. Starting with a families lead and a safeguarding lead to make sure we assess all aspects of Nest with these hats on.
We discussed testing increased measures for 2025 with a view to moving in 2026, but recognised that it would likely be parents who might take up these additional safeguarding roles, and therefore we might struggle to recruit if the dates weren't during half term to begin with.
We agreed to ask the community for help, and gauge the response. If we got sufficient volunteers, we could proceed with discussions around moving dates for 2025. September meeting was adjourned here with a view to voting in October.
The Response
As ever, you folks blew us out of the water. We got a massive response from people interested in both roles - enough to validate that people were really passionate about the ability of families to come to Nest. And as always, the more the merrier - if this is an area you care about, please do get in touch with our Vols lead.
The Vote
So then to the vote - even though you know how it ended!
We did however, have plenty still to talk about. Including some things we still don't have the answers for! We discussed:
- The importance of clearly communicating expectations to parents regarding caregiving
- Which days of the week to start and end on
- How Temple burn might be impacted on Sunday night, if people need to go back to work on Monday
- Strike volunteer numbers and the risk of these decreasing
- Theme camp build and strike timeline impacts
- And more!
Ultimately, the date change passed with just over 60% of Circle Links voting to make the switch for this year.
Conclusion
Seriously, we put in a lot of time trying to make sure we considered all of the outcomes to try and do the best by everybody. We know it's not going to be foolproof - but we really did our best. Hopefully that shows in this extremely long article too - we're aiming for transparency so you can see how we got here.
The intention is to revert to the usual dates for 2026 and assess how it all went, along with any changes we need to make to our new safeguarding roles and processes going forward.
So if you're keen to be a part of it - let us know! Our Vols team is only an email away 😉