How to Start a Meeting
Like creating a piece of art in any medium, the process of bringing a new A.R.T.S. meeting into being requires a little bit of inspiration and a good deal of tenacity, patience and perseverance. We encourage you to approach this process in the same way you create a piece of art – one step at a time, one day at a time. We hope this website will provide you with the tools you will need to take you through this process.
"How to Start Your First Meeting" Handbook
We have prepared a downloadable guide to starting an A.R.T.S. meeting. This handbook is divided into two main parts. The first part gives you all the information you’ll need to set up a new A.R.T.S. meeting, including an action checklist, sample request for meeting space, sample press release, definition of the A.R.T.S. service positions you will need covered in order to run the meeting and a glossary of terms often used in A.R.T.S. meetings.
The second part of this handbook tells you how to conduct your new A.R.T.S. meeting once it has begun by taking you step-by-step through a sample format of an A.R.T.S. meeting. The sample meeting format includes the various tenets of the A.R.T.S. program: the A.R.T.S. Twelve Steps, Twelve Traditions, Traits, Talents, Tools, Attitudes and Meeting Etiquette, Opening Prayers, Preamble, and Closing Prayer listed in order in which you might encounter them in the course of an A.R.T.S. meeting. Reading through these materials arranged in the enclosed meeting schedule, will give you a deeper understanding of how the A.R.T.S. program works.
Types of A.R.T.S. Meetings
The format of any new meeting is, of course, up to you and the others attending your meeting. You can create it or evolve it as you see fit. We have chosen to include five formats because they are relatively simple, straightforward and have been proven to work.
- Personal Qualification Meeting: A member shares their personal before and after recovery story in A.R.T.S. The sharing time for the qualification is determined by the group conscience. After the qualifier shares, the members of the group share. They can either relate their own experiences to what was just shared or simply say to the qualifier “thank you for sharing” and then speak about what is going on in their artistic life.
- Topic Qualification Meeting: A member picks a topic and qualifies on it. Their sharing time is determined by the group conscience. The other members of the group then share on that topic too. Many topics can be found in the A.R.T.S. literature.
- Step Meeting: The meeting reads one Step Essay each week, or each month. Each Step Essay takes 11 to 14 minutes to read except Step Eleven which takes two meetings to read through. The members of the group then share their thoughts about that Step.
- Step Qualification Meeting: A member who has worked through the A.R.T.S. Step Workbook for that Step shares their experience, strength, and hope with that Step. Their sharing time is determined by the group conscience. The members of the group then share their thoughts and experiences with that Step.
- Literature Meeting: The group chooses to read one piece of A.R.T.S. literature and then all share their thoughts on that piece of literature.
- Artshare Meeting: All the members of the group bring in their art and share their creative process with the group. Their sharing time is determined by the group conscience.
- Leader’s Choice: A particular topic might be chosen by the meeting leader and the members then take time to write, draw, read, or improve on that topic before sharing what they did with the group.