"you're talking shit"

1) Have some larp advocates write a constitution of what society's purpose was. This went through some iterations with feedback from the community.

2) Get together enough people to sign the constitution and allow us to encorporate a legal non-profit entity by lodging it with the government. Being a legal entity is useful if you want to apply for grants from anyone, and it also lets you form a bank account here.

3) Sign up everyone who wanted to join the society for a small fee, and then have these members nominate and vote in the committee (the roles of which were outlined in the constitution).

The result is that people with enthusiasm compete for committee positions and the society as a whole votes in a new committee yearly at an AGM. In my opinion voting has been based on the nominees reputations for getting things done and their ability to communicate how they'll be useful to the society.

It's a pretty good system for creating a committee that the majority of society members are happy with. 

But the society as a whole is only as useful as its goals. Which are specific to your local needs. In our case, we thought that a lot more larps would start if people didn't have to worry about the up-front money. So we created a system where the larp organisers create a budget, and if we approve it (based on whether we think the larp will make its money back) we lend them the startup money they need for booking venues, etc. Also, the society owns a lot of larp gear and lends it out to larps, and is accumulating services to provide to larpers. We've just spent a grand on a colour duplex laser printer that will be made available for larps to print high-quality material much more cheaply than from a print shop.

Where we get the money from is another kettle of fish, and perhaps less suited to independant-minded UK larpers. Basically the society "owns" the non-profit larps (and larp-related projects like New Zealand's larp forum Diatribe) that it lends money to, and the society retains the profits from those larp events. These profits are used to lend money and buy equipment. The organisers have complete creative control, they just don't own the gear or any profit and they need approval on budgets. Which isn't an issue for non-profit larps that believe the society has something to offer them. We also lend equipment to non-society larps and provide services to them, but we only lend money to larp projects run within the society. It's a way of minimising risk and ensuring we have capital to spend on promoting larp.

A lot of larps have started up using the society. Our main problem now is finding enough new larper blood to play all these events.

However I did spend a few years BMX'ing in my youth, I was rubbish my brother was British Champ one year and raced in several world championships. My Mum and Dad were both involved at our local club to start with and eventually my Dad was chairman for the South West Region and represented Devon and COrnwall at the National Meetings. This was for EBA, English BMX Association. As it's a sport, committee's are often needed to arrange the competions etc. There was the usual amount of poloticing going on etc. The EBA was in turn a member of the National Cycling Federation (can't remember the actual name). It all worked quite well, as a member you got your individual insurance, clubs that were members got insurance for their race tracks and it was easier to get St. Johns ambulance and you took part in the structured regional and national events gaining rankings etc. Plus they lobbied for National Lottery grant money to host the Worlds one year. This was all run by volunteer adults, most of whom did not race but had kids that did or used to.

The only issue was that there was also the BBMXA which was the British BMX Association which did exactly the same thing for the same sport but held completly seperate events. I don't think they were in the World Wide organisation but it just goes to show that if you set up one UK representative Committee for LRP there is nothing to stop anyone else setting one up for LARP. Although I do believe that the 2 BMX groups have now teamed up and are one big happy family

It could be very useful to have an organisation that affiliation to means you meet certain codes of conduct on sites etc, have insurance, have first aiders on site, abide by laws such as smoking and licensing laws. (Also this body could get and give out clear guidlines on such issues as well as keep an eye on issue such as replica weapons). But if currently organisers aren't having any issues with this then is it needed? With the internet now it's much easier for people to access good information about any hobby so do you really need an organisation to be a first point of contact?

Any organisation like this should only enhance and help with what people are doing and not make life harder or exclude anyone and that can be hard to achieve, looking at good working examples would be a great place to start.

Hope this is helpful and not just waffle

"What..who...where?"

If the government out-lawed anything resembling a weapon then fine. We're setting up a committee to campaign to have that over-ruled. But they haven't

We don't have competitions (for the most part). I dont see what promotion we'd need to do, and I can't see that we'd be able to get better deals by being members of the group

RyanPaddy's situation is fine, as they have a purpose (to support up and coming events by financial and kit loans) but I think the UK LRP scene is sufficiently well developed that this isn't as necessary here

So I still don't what would the activites of the committee would be (as opposed to the aims). We're all in agreement that promoting and supporting LRP as a hobby is good, but how exactly would this committee acheive that?

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Brighton Below : Organiser

Serenity: Capt Tom Crowson

RL: Simon / Trez

I do support having a group but think we'd need to have very clear and specific intentions on what we're trying to achieve.

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Brighton Below : Organiser

Serenity: Capt Tom Crowson

RL: Simon / Trez