A Look Back at 2014

by nottmbitopia

As we’re approaching the end of December I thought I’d write an entry to summarise the year…and what a year it’s been! We’ve had 12 pub socials at The Lord Roberts, a post BiCon meet up, Christmas drinks and we’ve marched in the Nottinghamshire Pride parade. BiTopia attendees have also gone to other events such as The Big Bi Fun Day and BiCon 2014 together, and several people have had things published in Bi Community News (BCN).

We normally have between 12-20 people per meet up, and about 40-50 people have attended at least one of our events in the past 12 months. This is an outstanding achievement for the first year of a new group, made possible only by the work others have done in helping me to spread the word. I would particularly like to thank uncharteredworlds, the editor of BCN and the person who runs the East Midlands Bi Network emailing list for all their hard work and support in this.

The highlight for me has been watching friendships grow over the course of the year and seeing a local bi community develop.  It’s also been really meaningful to see the group become a source of support for bisexuals and those questioning, exploring or struggling with their sexual orientation.

2015 looks to be another promising year. Thanks to the help of unchartedworlds we now have a date set for our new discussion and workshop based event (BiTalkia) which will run several times a year in addition to the monthly pub social. I also want BiTopia to take part in Pride again and look into creating some sort of display for one of the libraries in Nottingham for LGBT History Month. I will continue to attend the LGBT and KIN meetings run by the local police and encourage others to attend too to make sure we are represented and our voices are heard.

Whether you’ve donated money to us, lent us washing line poles and banners for Pride or supported us in any other way not mentioned in this post, thank you. It really means a lot.

BiTalkia is go!

by unchartedworlds

I am thrilled to announce that we now have our first date for BiTalkia!

Evening of Monday 23 February 2015, at the Friends’ Meeting House (FMH), with an optional pre-meet leaving the Central Library at 7pm to walk up together.

The pre-meet at the library is primarily to address an access concern raised by someone in the survey: not wanting to arrive alone via the quieter streets near the FMH after dark. The Central Library’s probably more familiar as a landmark for more people, as well. Obviously this solution will only work for people who can walk or wheel for about 500 metres, so let me know if something else would work better for you.

The FMH is at 25 Clarendon Street, Nottingham NG1 5JD, round the corner from the Women’s Centre. It’s a beautiful modern building with flat/ramped access and a wheelchair-accessible toilet. There’s some metered parking on nearby streets, which is free with a Blue Badge. We’ve booked the Social Room, which has good acoustics and a small kitchen.

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My apologies to the five people who told us they couldn’t do this date! It turned out that every single date we asked about, five, six, seven or eight people said they couldn’t make it, and this one came out best overall. (good for 14 people, “Yes, but other dates better” for 2 more.)

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Further details in a while, inc more on access and more on who the event is aimed for. I might also post at some point about what else the survey told us and why we’ve made the choices we did.

Last call for survey on plans for BiTalkia discussion group

by unchartedworlds

We’ve now had 23 replies to the anonymous survey about setting up a new bi discussion group in Nottingham! Nine people so far have said they are “keen”, and another 11 have said “maybe” (the other three just wanted to enthuse and wish us luck 🙂 )

If you’re reading this on a non-bi list and wondering “am I bi enough to take part”, the answer is probably yes 🙂 See the Bisexual Index’s excellent “Am I bisexual?” quiz.

My intention is to close the survey on Monday or Tuesday this week and go on to the next steps. The timescale we’ve got in mind is for the first BiTalkia evening to happen in Jan or Feb 2015, and I’m hoping we’ll be ready to announce its date/time/venue/theme before the next edition of QB magazine (copy date 28 Dec), which has Nottingham’s LGBTQ news.

So if you were meaning to put in your 2p and haven’t yet, now is the time.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JBYW3LS

If you don’t fill in the survey, you can still come to the events – it’s just really helpful for us to gather a sense of best dates, preferred venues, access limitations etc. So thanks to everyone who either has given us their perspective or is about to 🙂