AGM and Programme Planning - 14 October 2013

It was business time for the group on Monday October14 – our AGM and Annual Programme Planning meeting. At the AGM, our Chair, Jill Fricker, reported that it had been a very successful year for the group, with a new website, a new anthology, and a record number of new members joining. Attendances at meetings were also at record levels. In part, this was due to our recruitment of new, professional judges for our internal competitions.  She thanked the Committee for their hard work, giving a particular mention to Amanda Giles who was standing down. The Finance Report from our Treasurer, Pauline Piper was also favourable – the group has built up a good level of reserves and is now able to subsidise further professional judges and workshop facilitators.  The Committee for 2014 will be Jill Fricker: Chair, Kate O’Hearn: Deputy Chair, Pauline Piper: Treasurer, Stephanie Gaunt: Publicity and Membership Officer, Janet Kates: Minutes Secretary, and the newly-elected Mike Rayner as Programmes Officer.

    The group then turned its attention to planning its programme for 2014, including agreeing the nature and number of competitions we wanted, and also workshop topics.  It was agreed that as we now have nearly forty members, events involving small group work would be good to enable members to get to know each other. 2014 looks to be another exciting year for the group!