Find out about planning and review meetings, and tips for scheduling and structuring them
Planning meetings
Once you have your members confirmed, invite everyone to a planning meeting. This meeting will help get a consensus on how the group should run and agree some basic processes.
For in-person meetings, pick a venue as close to everyone as possible and find a date that works. For online meetings, find a date and agree what platform you will use. Make sure everyone has the right link for the meeting in advance. You might use Doodle to schedule this meeting. Sending a calendar invitation on email will help to remind everyone automatically about the meeting.
Make and send a list of things to discuss – an agenda – to explain what you want to talk about. Ask anyone who can’t attend to email their thoughts. This will help members understand what decisions will be made and help keep the meeting to time.
Agreeing these practical things this at the start means that future meetings can focus on everyone’s work, rather than the administration.
Key things to decide at a planning meeting are:
- Who the organiser will be and what they’ll do
- What members want to get out of attending – feedback on their work, practical support, building a network of visiting speakers etc.
- How many meetings the group will have before a review
- How often the meetings will take place
- How long the meetings will last, how they will be structured, and any feedback models that will be used
- Set the dates and times for the meetings
- Any preference to meet online, in-person, or what mix is best
- When a meeting might be cancelled. Is there a minimum number of members needed for them to go ahead?
After the meeting, compile the decisions into an email and send it to all the members. Tell them when you will all review what’s working and how the group is run.
Review meetings
After a few meetings, when your group decides, have a shorter meeting to review how things are going. A review meeting can look back at the questions asked in the planning meeting and ask members to reflect and review what’s worked and what hasn’t. Use this meeting only to talk about the administration of the group, how people feel about presenting, or other organisation issues that have come up. Agree together what changes people need.
This can be a good moment for some members to leave and others to join, or to decide that the group does not need to meet any more. Bringing in new voices by inviting new artists or visiting speakers is a good way of keeping members engaged.
Scheduling meetings
One of the biggest challenges to scheduling a peer mentoring group is getting consensus on dates and times for meetings to take place. Not everyone will be able to attend every meeting and this is unavoidable.
In your planning meeting you will decide how long your peer mentoring group will meet. You will also decide how many members will present their work at each meeting. From this, you can work out how often each member will present their work. A group meeting monthly for 12 months would give 10–15 members the chance to show their work about twice, for example.
Find a balance to meet often enough to maintain momentum, but not so frequently that its hard for members to attend. Around once a month is often a good balance, but ask members what would work for them. Some groups prefer to meet more often (such as weekly or fortnightly) over a shorter period once or twice a year.
It can be very useful to decide on a regular date and time when for meetings, such as on the same day or date every month. This helps members plan around it and prioritise meetings as much as possible.
Structuring meetings
Plan a regular structure for your meetings to help everyone know what’s expected of them and how often they will have a chance to speak. Make sure you leave enough time for discussion and feedback.
Provide enough time for artists to present and get feedback, but keep meetings short enough to not be too demanding. Consider any access needs your members have for in-person or online meetings to help decide how long they should be.
3-4 hours for a meeting, with breaks, is often best. In this time a couple of artists can present their work and get feedback. You can also have a meeting with visiting speakers or discussion around wider issues in this time.
A schedule might be something like:
- 10–20 mins presenting time for each artist
- 30–40 minutes feedback for each artist
If members get a couple of chances to present their work over the life of the group, they can show progress on their art work.
Consider in advance whether the group will use any feedback models and choose someone to make sure that artists don’t run over time. You can remind presenting artists of the time they have left by holding up a sign, for in-person meetings, or sending a chat message for online meetings.
In-person and online meetings will both need breaks to let people rest between sessions. These also leave time for informal conversations, which can be in open breakout groups for online meetings. These can be just as useful as more the carefully managed group feedback. Having some time for informal conversation at the beginning works well too, as well as letting people arrive a little late.
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