Published on 12, July, 2020
I’ll make a poll for this later when I’m on my laptop. However the question I put to you is this. Should there exist local organisations in the major cities patterned like student unions but with the specific aim of serving autistic adults.
such organisations would:
notes:
I think acquiring buildings like that takes a lot of funding. What you need to do is start small groups in places like church halls or other cheap facilities, which you can build up and each member makes contributions to cover costs.
Things like this grow organically. It all starts with one person with a vision but it takes time and effort. If it's something that you want and believe in, then maybe you could be the one to take the first steps to get it going.
What you seem to be suggesting would be running a kind of reverse booking agency. Whereas the average booking agency would book a venue on your behalf and you would pay slightly more for the Service of having them make the booking arrangements for you The charitable booking agency would make a considerable loss by massively under charging you for the fees for the booking of the venue. I think doing things that way it would very soon end up being cheaper to just lease a building
Sorry, I seem to have misunderstood. I was thinking about a union as the people involved, not the building itself. My suggestion was to set up one of the groups or support services that you want to see and try to help it grow.
It's the people that get things like this going, not the buildings. All the groups you mention like student's union, working men's clubs, even the church started off with a few people somewhere small, and as their numbers grew they gathered more resources until they had enough to get their own facilities.
I've got to say I never paid for membership of my student union while I was a member and membership of a club was something like 5-10£ for a year with most events being free, certainly the weekly ones hosted in SU venues were. So I'm not sure what you are talking about. You understand student unions are separate organisations from universities right? Universities do give them charitable grants but this is not a legal obligation. The student union isn't, directly, getting any tuition fees.
Glitter said:You can hire a community hall for 10 pound an hour. That's less than the price of a drink each if you get 4 people to join your club.
The cheapest I found was £43.50/h and that was a 20 person function room with out a bar. Maybe some village hall in outer suburbia or a village charges £10/h but If your community hall isn't in a city centre near good transport links its a bit of a non starter.
Some clubs try striking deals with bars near the university to run extra events in bars function rooms for free on the assumption that the students will buy lots of drinks. But you can't persuade a bar of that until you are an established club. And bars outside of student areas don't seem to offer these sorts of deals.
Glitter said:If you have a special interest club you'd like to do, there are plenty of places that you could set one up on the cheap.
Believe me I have looked, there is not. There is almost nothing I'd like to do more but all my attempts have failed. I'm sure there must be many other autistic people like myself who have tried and failed to set up clubs because they didn't have the support in place.
But all the students pay money to become members. So it's not exactly a free service. Plus the money that people pay for drinks etc goes towards the running costs.
You can hire a community hall for 10 pound an hour. That's less than the price of a drink each if you get 4 people to join your club.
I don't think a venue such as you describe would be a good use of tax payers money. It's just not efficient or cost effective. The problem is, I believe, not due to a lack of space, but more due to a lack of people willing to run the clubs. If you have a special interest club you'd like to do, there are plenty of places that you could set one up on the cheap.