Spiralheart Witchcamp

Greetings!

Our December community meeting will be Sunday afternoon, December 10th (9:45 AM gather, 10:00 AM Start-5 PM end) (eastern time) and we would love to see you there! (Please try to sign on a few minutes early so we can begin promptly.) Community meetings are where we have discussions about and make decisions for upcoming camps and SpiralHeart as an organization via consensus process.

One agenda item for this meeting is the Path/ RAT selection process proposal. At November’s community meeting, we went over the working group’s proposal and made some adjustments to it. You should have received an email on November 27th detailing that document. (I will paste it below)

The Due date for Path / RAT forms was December 5th, so that the packet can be prepared for the January 14th meeting.

We found a new site for camp! (In New Hope, PA) That necessitated a shifting of dates, so camp will be in June this year. (June 17-23)

If your working groups or cells have any reports to present, please let us know. If you would like to send a report to be read at the meeting, that is also an option.

The meeting will be held via Zoom.

Please note that the agenda is not finalized and items may be moved around before the meeting.

Proposal:

Proposed RAT/Path Selection Process

The motivation behind these proposed changes is to enable people to express concerns that an applicant or a path is likely to cause harm, and to allow for a more flexible response to those concerns. We’ll consider this proposal at our December 10th meeting. The Complete Process Proposal below merges the changes into our current process; the Summary of Changes describes those changes informally.

Summary of Changes to Our Current Process

Proposals and applications are due four weeks before the meeting which selects community-created paths and Ritual Arc Team members. The Anchor Cell will send out the packet of Path proposals and RAT applications at least three weeks before selection meeting, with a cover sheet listing the names of all applicants, and the position(s) for which they applied (RAT and/or name of proposed path); email contact information for the Response Team (response-team@spiralheart.org); and a statement that if you believe an applicant or the contents of a proposed path is likely to cause harm, you may contact the Response Team with those concerns no later than fourteen days before the date of the meeting.

If a camper contacts the Response Team, the Response Team will take steps to set up a conversation with the person expressing concerns. In any case, they will take whatever action is in their judgment appropriate, ranging from setting up a facilitated conversation to recommending to the Board that someone be banned from camp.

We will change our pre-filter process to consider whether RAT applicants, prospective path facilitators, or path content is likely to cause harm. Everyone, including applicants, stays in the room for this pre-filter step. Only if we have more applicants / proposed paths have passed the pre-filter step will we send applicants out of the room while choosing RATs or paths.

Complete Process Proposal

What Paths Do We Need?

The September community meeting issues the calls for paths and path proposals, considering the needs and desires of the community as expressed in camper evaluations, the Future of Camp meeting, reports from the various camp teams, and the observations of participants in the meeting.

The meeting decides how many paths to aim for overall, considering the projected size of camp and what particular paths we would like to see, keeping in mind our commitment to try to offer Reclaiming core classes, along with continuing ongoing skill-building arcs, such as music and ritual priestessing skills.

In making these decisions, the meeting balances values and criteria including

the expressed needs and desires,

the specific skill-building commitments we’ve made, and

the skills and talents we have within the community.

Call for Path and RAT applications

The meeting also tasks a small group to send out calls for community-created path proposals and applications to be part of the Ritual Arc team.

These calls are sent out at once following the September meeting, indicating the camp story and intention, and the number and types of paths sought. Prospective path leaders submit proposals in pairs (or triples).

Proposals and applications are due four weeks before the meeting which selects community-created paths and Ritual Arc Team members. The Anchor Cell will send out the packet of Path proposals and RAT applications at least three weeks before selection meeting, with a cover sheet listing:

The names of all applicants, and the position(s) for which they applied, taken from their applications;

Email contact information for the Response Team (response-team@spiralheart.org); and

A statement that if you believe an applicant or the contents of a proposed path is likely to cause harm, you may contact the Response Team with those concerns no later than fourteen days before the date of the meeting. [Include the deadline date in the statement.] The Response Team will make every effort to resolve the concern. If your concern remains, and you inform the Response Team of that, you may bring the concern to the community meeting, knowing that the person you have concerns about may be at the meeting. The Response Team will notify them of your concerns before the meeting.

Response Team Actions

If a camper contacts the Response Team, the Response Team will take steps to set up a conversation with the person expressing concerns. In any case, they will take whatever action is in their judgment appropriate. Some possible options are:

Recommending the concerned person speak directly with the person they are concerned about, offering to hold a facilitated discussion, if that is requested.

Recommending that the concerned person bring their concerns to the community meeting.

Offering that the Response Team will bring the concerns to the meeting so the concerned person can stay anonymous.

Recommending to the Board that someone be banned from camp.

Path and RAT selection

Requirements:

All applicants must have attended at least one Reclaiming Witchcamp and have taken Elements of Magic (or have equivalent life experience).

Paths must be facilitated by two or three facilitators, and at least one facilitator must have attended two or more Reclaiming Witchcamps. It is recommended, but not required, that path facilitators have taken the 5 Reclaiming Core Classes. (The Reclaiming Core classes are Elements of Magic, Iron Pentacle, Rites of Passage, Pentacle of Pearl, and Communities.)

Pre-Filter

We start with a pre-filter step, during which all applicants stay in the room. That step considers:

Does the applicant or path proposal meet our requirements? (The meeting could, by consensus, make an exception to those requirements.)

Is the applicant or path proposal likely to cause harm?

For path proposals: is the proposed path simply unsuitable for SpiralHeart?

If a concern is raised about an applicant or a path proposal, we’ll ask for a consensus decision to accept that specific applicant or proposal. After those decisions, we’ll ask for a consensus decision to accept the remaining applicants and proposals.

Path Selection

After the pre-filter we select paths. If the number of remaining path proposals are equal to or less than the number of paths the September meeting called for, we accept them all. Otherwise, everyone who has submitted a path proposal steps out of the room — but if that leaves fewer than five people, everyone stays. We’ll use the following process:

We’ll do our best to reach consensus. If there are (say) five path proposals and two path slots, and we agree that two of the five are the best fit for camp, then we’re done. (Yay!).

If we can’t reach a consensus on the entire decision, we’ll do our best to reach a consensus that some proposals are better aligned with this year’s camp than others. For example, maybe we agree that three proposals out of five received are a better fit for this year’s camp than the other two, in which case we set aside the two proposals that aren’t as well aligned, and need to agree on which two of the three more-aligned proposals we’ll accept for the two slots. Or perhaps we agree that one proposal is very well aligned, but have no consensus on the best-aligned of the remaining four. In that case we accept the very well aligned proposal, and need to decide which of the remaining four proposals to accept for the one remaining slot.

If we reach a point where we have more proposals than slots, and can’t reach further consensus, we’ll fall back on random choice. At this point, we should have a set of solid proposals that we can’t easily choose between. If we have one path slot to fill, then everyone will write their choice on a piece of paper, fold up the paper, and put it in the hat. Then we’ll draw one out. That will be the path accepted. (Online folks can privately message a designated recipient whose screen is not public.) If we have more than one slot to fill, we’ll repeat the process (removing the just-accepted path from the choices, since it now has a slot.)

Dedicated slots: We might have specialized path slots. In the past we’ve explicitly asked for a community music path, and in the past we’ve asked for Elements, or for an advanced Reclaiming Core Class. If we had such specialized slots, we’d choose (for example) among music path proposals for the music path slot, among Elements proposals for the Elements slot, or among core class proposals for the advanced core class slot.

Ritual Arc Team Selection

After paths are selected, we’ll select the Ritual Arc Team. If someone has been accepted as a path facilitator and had also applied as a RAT, their RAT application will be automatically withdrawn. If we have more than 8 RAT applications, we’ll choose 4 team members at random, and select an additional four to balance levels and kinds of experience on the full eight-member team. Again, if we need to choose, the RAT applicants step out of the room unless that would leave fewer than five remaining people.