Chairmans Blog April 2013
Good news re the dark room –with the help of John M, Vince, Dennis ,Brian and Linda we managed to clear the dark room in time for the OTH deadline. Many thanks to these people for their considerable effort –we managed to get most of the regularly used studio items squeezed into the green room cupboard leaving room for all the equipment we have out in use in the Church hall-We will see when we return to the OTH on Monday the 8th April.Please make a note in your diaries of the date we return to St.Marys for the finish of the season and the start of the next season. The date of return to the church hall is 3rd June. We do not know when the contractors will be finished in the OTH so do not yet have a date for our move back permanently –watch this space! Also may I remind you that when we do move back in there will be about 4 Mondays a year when we will hold our meeting in the refurbished cellar –we will tell you the week before a change occurs provided they give us the promised warnings.
The other bit of excellent news is the fact that our Exhibition secretary managed to track us
down some storage space for all the dark room contents which would not fit into the green room cupboard –quite a lot of items including the exhibition stands –picture frames etc. Elaine secured temporary storage for 6 months for £50, grateful thanks to Elaine for a brilliant effort. The town hall are looking to change the now disused outside toilet blocks into storage space, they have promised to let us know progress on this, and if successful will give us back some of our storage space here. Elaine has now booked us a place in the Marlowes centre for our annual exhibition – hopefully in a shop unit like last year –she is also going to organise another photo competition which will bring with it some great publicity for the club again, and hopefully involve some youngsters. The dates have moved away from the main holiday period which hopefully will give us access to more members for manning the exhibition, and be in season, so we can get possible new-joins into the club without delay. The exhibition dates are 3 -5th October 2013-please make a note in your diary ready for Elaine’s enquiry for helpers.
We did think as a committee that we would apply for another lottery grant and we asked members if they had any thoughts of what we needed. We had very little feed- back and have concluded that we were hunting for things to buy when we did not really need anything urgently, so we decided to drop the idea for now.
A more pressing item now is the AGM we have three major committee members who do not wish to carry on with their current roles. So this is an appeal for new committee members, asking regular club attenders to take the opportunity to give something back to the club for a couple of years. These are roles we cannot run the club without, so it is vital that we get some new life into the committee.
The first is the programme secretary-this is an easily learned role and a job you can easily do in the comfort of your own home-there is a full book of instructions and a book is published each year by the Chilterns camera club association with all judge and speaker contacts within it- so there is no big deal in finding people to visit us in these capacities.
The second important role is that of Internal competitions secretary – again there is a wealth of printed information ,labels and competition record sheets already available on disc to help a new person get into the role –again plenty of guidance is available.
Finally we need a new leader for the Tnt group –this is a developing role and has only a monthly commitment during the season-the person who takes this on has a free hand to develop it as he or she sees fit. I fear if we do not get someone for this, the group will break up and it will be a great shame if this were to happen. So please members, please see if you can muster up the courage to give the club a couple of years active support. Nomination forms are available on the treasurers desk as you come into the club on Monday evenings.
Bye for now –see you back in the OTH Monday 8th April
A reminder for all last seasons trophy winners please can you return your –polished- trophy within the next two weeks so we can get them engraved for the year end presentation evening. |
