Hi.

First of all, we’d like to send our apologies for not being able to attend the meeting you are having to revive imc Manchester on the 5th December. We have been trying to sort out a good time for everyone to come over for some time, but things have been a little busy on this side of the Pennines. Hopefully, we can work out a date as soon as possible around the new year that we can come over and meet you all face to face.

We’re sending you this letter to offer you our support, and to give a few offers as to ways we could help you revive Indymedia in Manchester. When we merged the Leeds/Bradford and York collectives, we stated that one of our aims would be to help groups in the North of England to set up autonomous IMC’s all over this region. Naturally, in the case of Manchester it is a bit different as you are discussing reviving an existing project, but here are a few ways we could help you if you wanted to add them to your discussion:

• space on the northern indymedia server to get a new site up and running if this is the route you decide to take

• face to face meetings and a common online forum somewhere (such as the imc-northern mailing list) where we can work out a good working relationship for mutual support

• the use of the northern-indymedia.org site whilst you get your collective process in motion, so you can start working as an editorial collective straight away without having all the necessary redecorating that comes with getting a new site going.

• full and active participation in the northern indymedia collective whilst you get set up, or indefinitely. This could take several forms and we could work this out as we go along (eg a subsite such as a separate group if you wanted it to be distinctly manchester only news, or contributing to the main site in the same way as the rest of the northern collective). When we designed the Northern site, we changed the system on hyperactive that was previously called ‘neighbourhoods’ into ‘localities’ quite deliberately so that we could help to incubate new alt-media projects that were just starting up. So for example, you can see that some people have been posting Manchester news & events by looking at northern-indymedia.org/search/by_place_... . Of course if you don’t want to use this in its current form, you can take a feed – this is already implemented for events, and will be for news in the next hyperactive upgrade). Or you could redirect another URL to point to this page, or use it as a frame in another site… the possibilities are endless…

• technical support and help with server admin should you go it alone

• a streaming radio server for radio projects you may wish to get involved with

• a good line of communication and mutual support whichever route you take.

We’re really excited to see our neighbours talking about reinvigorating an imc project, and will be happy to help out in any way we can both short and long term. We also extend an invite for you to get involved in imc northern england if you so wish for as long as you like.

All the best, we look forward to popping in for a cuppa soon.

IMC Northern England