1. How would you describe your committee in three words and why?
Assertive, experienced, fun.
Above all, the Weekend Committee is very assertive. When a fire breaks out somewhere, it is put out right away. For example, during the City Trip a phone was stolen and the whole committee was busy trying to solve it together. So as commissioner, I often didn’t have to give them any guidance on how to do things. They just did it on their own or came up with their own ideas. This brings me to my second point because many of my committee members also know what to do because they are very experienced in Flow. But above all, our committee is very fun. Before the drinks, we often sit together to have a few drinks beforehand. Unfortunately, this is often so much fun that we sometimes arrive too late at the drinks, oops….
2. What is it like to be commissioner of the Weekend Committee?
I especially enjoyed doing new things with our activities this year. Often it is pretty much set in advance what the Association Weekend and City Trip are going to look like, and this year we wanted to do it a little differently. We came up with and implemented a lot of new things. I was able to be creative within my function and our activities. That’s what I liked most about being commissioner of the Weekend Committee this year.
In addition, it was secretly quite busy at times. Fortunately, I had a lovely committee that stood by me even though I was still prone to taking on a lot of tasks myself sometimes.
3. Which activity were you looking forward to the most?
We were able to put a lot of preparation into the Association Weekend. This is of course because the City Trip is very early which gives you less time to look forward to that activity. However, this was the case for the Association Weekend and we took this time to put together a lot of fun things. Because we came up with new fun ideas every time, I was very excited for this. Flowchella kind of became the baby of the Weekend Committee, which was a lot of fun. The posters, the Instagram account, the preparations, everything built excitement for an incredibly fun weekend.
4. How do you look back on the City Trip and the Association Weekend?
Both had very nice moments and unforeseen difficulties. I think this is also really characteristic of the Weekend Committee. You can want to prepare everything to perfection, but you just can’t prepare for everything. We had spontaneous trips to the police station and to the dentist, but fortunately, we worked everything out. In the end, you learn that what matters most is the camaraderie of the group. I am very proud of how the committee dealt with setbacks. We often persevered together. The Association Weekend also confirmed to me once again that Flow’ers can drink a lot. The next morning when we were in the toilet with our bucket to clean up, we would have preferred to be somewhere else, but you forget all about that when the next activity starts and everyone is going crazy again.
5. How is this Weekend Committee different than the one from last year?
I think this year we tried to be more creative with things like promotional materials. For example, we created an Instagram account for the Association Weekend. We also tried to let go of some traditional things sometimes. Among other things, we decided to replace the traditional cantus on the Association Weekend with a new activity. I think this year’s committee was not afraid to think outside of the box. Sometimes this gave us really great new ideas, and sometimes we did fall back on previous plans. But it was not that activities were fixed in advance because they were in the playbook.
6. What were your goals for the committee?
My goals were simply to just organize two really fun activities. After all, that’s what Flow is all about. Of course, we also wanted to try to do that in a new way. I think that in general, this worked out quite well. In addition, of course, one of our goals is still to win the Flowmission. Even though I have to admit that we have a good competitor in the Sports & Games Committee. But we are going to see how this will end up….
7. If you didn’t have to consider time or money, what would you want to organize?
I think it would be very cool to organize a City Trip to a bigger city. We are now often tied to Belgium or Germany. It would be fun to organize a City Trip outside of Europe. Super unrealistic, but a City Trip to for example Sydney would be very cool. Who knows, maybe one day we can organize an actual Flowchella festival for the Association Weekend. Then we’ll turn it into a real festival weekend with food trucks and artist performances. That seems like a lot of fun.
Gwen Cox
Commissioner Weekend Committee 2022-2023
Weekend Committee 2022-2023
f.l.t.r.f: Gwen Cox (commissioner), Joost van Driel, Tijn de Lege, Rianne van Zijp (board buddy), Jennifer Steenkamp & Lynn Willems
