Anyone can do or set up their own RRFM or FNB group, even in Grand Rapids! No one owns the idea, it's for everyone.
HOW TO START A REALLY REALLY FREE MARKET:
- LOCATION: find a spot that has enough room and is easy to find. You may want to get permission, but that's up to your group's comfort level with living dangerously! You might want to use the same spot over and over, or try out different locations. It can be indoors or outside, whatever makes more sense for your group. Things to consider: bathrooms, water, shade, parking, seating.
- TIME: Pick a date and time that you think makes sense. We've picked Sunday afternoons because that seems to be a commonly free time for a lot of people in our city. Take into consideration that there's a short time of set-up before the event.... and depending on how your event goes, it might be up to 1.5 hours of clean-up after the event (more on this later). You also want to decide if this will be a one time event, or if you want to have re-occurring RRFMs in your community, or a combination of both. (You can always start with one and go from there)
- PLANNING: Some RRFMs are bare bones, and that's perefectly alright. But, after a while, you might want to get more ambitious with the events. You can try to find people who will agree to show up to the event to make it more exciting. This can include, but is certainly not limited to: musicians, dancers, bicycle repair folks, face painting for kids, barbers, professors to give a lecture, clowns, magicians, massage therapist, etc. You can also find people to put on workshops to share their skills and knowledge, some ideas: legal rights for workers, how to organize a protest, someone could do a beginners guitar class, how to brew your own beer... the possibilities are endless! We find variety is best. Try to have something new for each event.
- PROMOTE: This is an important but difficult step for folks who are new. You've got your location and time and planning done, now you need to get people to show up. Word of mouth is always the most effective way to spread awareness of your event. You should also make some sort of flyer or poster to hand-out and put up around town. It can sometimes be useful to create a facebook event, but we've found that is becoming less and less useful as a promotion tool.
- THE DAY OF: Get to your spot early and start setting up. It can be useful to have tables, tarps, clothes lines or something like that to organize all the stuff people will bring. It's also fun to have a table for fliers, zines and other literature to share with people (such as a flyer for the next RRFM and an e-mail sign-up sheet to let people know about the next one). You may find it valuable to take pictures or video of the event. Be prepared for a TON of stuff to come in. We've found that a lot of people are more comfortable with dropping stuff off, than in taking something home with them. This creates a surplus for you to deal with at the end. So, you may want to encourage everyone to take stuff too. It's probably a good idea to find some volunteers to help you clean up after the event, especially someone who has a van or truck for left-over items. We usually sort things into 2 piles: stuff we can donate to a thrift store and garbage. Do a good job of clean-up, because you don't want to get a reputation for leaving a mess and littering is super gross.
- FOLLOW-UP: after the event, make sure you thank everyone who helped make it possible. You may find it valuable to write a reflection or a report-back on how the event did and what could be done differently or better the next time. If you collected names or e-mails, make sure you take care of that too. Also, always look for new people who are interesting in volunteering and helping out with the next one. These things tend to be a lot of work so many hands are good.
Coming soon.
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