Happy New Year to all our members and welcome to the first newsletter of 2023.
Annual General Meeting
The Club held it’s AGM on December 17th. This was well attended and covered a review of the year’s activities, club finances, exhibitions and the election of the committee. Key points from the AGM are summarized below:
Evelyn Howson presented the Chairman’s overview of the last year. Evelyn noted that it had been a different year as we tried to put Covid behind us and get back to normal.
- The Club finances continue to look very healthy and has been stable through the year, ending just £10 higher overall. This situation was helped by both a £900 profit from the two exhibitions and the income from subscriptions remaining at a stable level.
- Membership remains at a consistent level. The Membership numbers now stand at a total of 89. Post Covid we lost around 20 members but have been very successful in attracting new members to replace these.
- Evelyn Howson and Lynda Merritt were reappointed in the roles of Chair and Publicity/Social Media respectively.
- Lynne Mumford has stepped down from the committee and the role of Talks Organiser has been taken on by Nikki Stait.
- Leanne Courtney Crowe has also stepped down and the role of managing the Club’s website has been taken on by Barbara Jeffers.
- A resolution was passed to simplify the membership arrangements and to have just one class of member. Under this proposal associate membership will disappear and members who wish to exhibit will no longer be required to submit examples of work for acceptance by the committee. In the future members wishing to exhibit will be required to contact a member of the exhibition team who will explain the required presentation standards for exhibiting.
- A resolution was passed removing the role of President and to incorporate any duties into the role of Chair.
- Val Myatt and Marg Northmore kindly volunteered to help Heather Woodward with the teas at future talks.
Commitee Members
A reminder of the current committee members and their roles is as follows:
- Chair: Evelyn Howson
- Secretary: Paul Johnson
- Treasurer/Membership: David Hooper
- Exhibitions: Debby Hooper/Patty Lee
- Talks: Nikki Stait
- Publicity: Lynda Merrett
- Website:Barbara Jeffers
- Others: Ray Grobler
Coffee Mornings
Our coffee mornings proved to be a popular innovation but were one of the victims of the Covid pandemic. We are pleased to announce that we have now arranged to restart these and are planning to hold them on a regular basis in
2023. We have made arrangements to use the facilities at the Whaddon Bowls Club to hold our coffee mornings. The first one at this venue will be on Saturday 14th January 10:00 – 12:00 hrs. Please come along and join us.
The address is:Cheltenham Whaddon Bowling Club, Whaddon Road, GL52 5NA
Exhibitions
We held two exhibitions last year.
The exhibition at Lower Slaughter Village Hall was our first post Covid and we did have an issue with having sufficient exhibitors to cover the originally intended 2 weeks. The exhibition was reduced to 1 week but in the end was successful.
The second exhibition was at Frampton on Severn which was well supported by exhibitors but saw a reduced footfall and sales from our previous exhibition at that location.
For this year we are looking forward to the opportunity to exhibit at the National Trust’s Hidcote Manor Gardens. We have 30 exhibitors lined up for this, the maximum we can accommodate, and entries are now closed. The Hidcote Exhibition will run from 3 June to 10 July.
We have also booked an exhibition at the Victoria Hall in Bourton-on-the-Water for 7 – 9 August.
Saturday Talks
The Autumn series of Saturday talks were well attended. The New Year series starts on 21st January with a demonstration by Paul Weaver.
We have agreed with The Pavilion to have use of our normal room, rather than the café, for future meetings. This should address concerns raised at the last talk about layout of the room and visibility of the demonstration.
The schedule for the rest of the year is as follows:
- 18th February Mike Skidmore Portrait – Oils
- 18th March Valerie Briggs Animals – Graphite/Pastels
- 15th April Val Ridler Light & Atmosphere – Gouache
- 20th May Richard Crabtree Dogs
- 17th June Cheryl Clayton Animals – Pastels