ORGANIZE MEETUP
NO COMMUNITY NEAR YOU YET?
You don’t need an existing group to join – you can just start one! A meetup can begin with one person picking a time and place and inviting a few others; it doesn’t take experience, funding, or a formal setup. Below are some tips to help you get the first one off the ground.
GETTING STARTED
Start with Meetup.com. It’s the easiest platform to get going on – the free plan lets you organize up to two events a month at no cost. How quickly people join depends a lot on the city: Meetup is more established in some places than others, so it might take a bit longer to build momentum in yours. Another option is opening a local chapter of a larger organization, such as Urban Sketchers, Repair Café, or Let’s Do It World – that way you get an existing name, format, and network to build on instead of starting from zero.
SPREAD THE WORD
Once your group is up and running, let us know – if it’s open to everyone, free to join, and related to our scope (community building through creativity and/or care for nature), we’d be happy to add it to our list. You can also spread the word locally: post about it in your town’s Facebook group, or leave a flyer or poster at a library, café, or community center.
MEETUP IDEAS
Not sure what to actually do at a meetup? Here are a few formats to try:
Drawing circle. Participants take turns posing, one at a time – for 10 minutes, or for the length of one song (you can take turns building a playlist for future sessions, or just meet at a café with decent music playing). Everyone else draws. You can also prepare a set of pose cards to draw from – cut out of magazines or hand-drawn – ranging from easy to impossible; the harder ones add a bit of humor to the session.
Land art walk. Take a walk in nature and build compositions together out of leaves, sticks, and whatever else you find along the way. Bring gloves and a trash bag and pick up anything that doesn’t belong there – plastic and other litter – as you go, then use only the natural materials to make something temporary.
Mend and remake. Bring old or broken things – clothes, bags, tools – and fix or rework them as a group, swapping materials, thread, and know-how. Works well paired with foraged or scrap materials instead of buying anything new.