Support and Kindness

We are very lucky to be so well supported in our venture - setting up this new society. I mentioned previously that other societies at the New Chairmans Day and at the AGM had been really helpful. Programme secretaries have shared their documentation and programmes with us. They have listened to our ideas and enabled us to clarify our thoughts. Our new societies advisor, Andrew, has been really helpful in giving just the right amount of support but helping us to become autonomous in the process. He gives us just the right amount of information so that we are not swamped or overwhelmed by the task.
We have been welcomed to lectures by another local society and had a good experience that enables us to think more carefully about our own society.

Another great source of support is Hilary, from another society, not too far away. She set up her society a few years ago. I have been lucky enough to have met up with her and also talked on the phone about all aspects of setting up the society. She is so positive and enthusiatic and always gives practical sensible advice as well as sharing any paperwork that she thinks might be helpful.

We are very lucky and able to enjoy our task thanks to these people!


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The Annual Directory Meeting in London

What an exciting day at the Annual Directory Meeting in London! However, I had been warned it could be like a ‘free for all ‘ and, to a certain extent, it was. We arrived at Westminster Central Hall Westminster Central Hall  for the opening of the event. Crowds of people, mostly women, were gathering for the conference. I knew I was in the right place because of the amount of beautiful, designer jewelry on show! The hall is beautiful and so are the surroundings, just opposite the Abbey and the within sight of Big Ben.

Central Hall is a new venue for the NADFAS ADM. As far as I could tell it suited the purpose very well but I do not have experience of previous venues. Lecturers were arranged alphabetically on two floors, at desks, in rows and they were able to create a small display to illustrate their interests. At 11am small groups of new lecturers were invited to present themselves and their subjects to an audience of around 500, seated theater style, in the conference main hall.

They were allowed two minutes to present themselves and their specialist subject, and then the microphone was turned off. We were apprehensive about this system because we thought it would be difficult to make such a rapid assessment. However, it was not too difficult at all to decide which ones would be suitable for our society. We marked our papers accordingly with the intention of visiting the chosen lecturers and engaging them on the spot. Next, the established lecturers were given one minute each to present their new lectures. This was also very interesting and we heard a little about Stradivarius, Church stained glass, the Impressionists, and many other interesting topics which thoroughly whet our appetite.

After these presentations, at around 1.15, over a quick sandwich, we made a plan of action. We split up and tried to visit the lecturers we had decided upon with a view to booking them for our society. Fortunately, we had spent some time ringing around before the conference, and some of the booking confirmations were a formality. But we did manage to get ahead on our programme for two years and were mightily pleased with ourselves, if exhausted!

What an impressive event, what organization and what impressive lecturers, with a very high standard overall.

We were also delighted with the way other societies went out of their way to help and guide us. They did this by giving us copies of their documentation, listening to our ideas, making suggestions and just being really friendly.

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Programme Planning

Spent today trying to prepare for the annual directory meeting in London, on Tuesday next week. At this event societies have a chance to assess the standard of new lecturers and, for established lecturers , to listen to any new material they may present. Societies can then spend time booking slots with lecturers as far ahead as appropriate.

We have a diary with dates up to June 2015 in it. However, I believe that this day at Westminster Hall can be quite hectic as there are lots of societies and lots of lecturers!  Therefore, I decided to see if we could book any before going to the session. Succeded in pencilling in some dates with people we had already identified but not necessarily on the date we intended. Not to worry, at least we now seem to have the first four lectures sorted out so that takes us into 2013.
We've got Lowry, The Emperors' Porcelain, St Petersburg and Wedgwood - quite a mixture but I hope it will appeal to a really wide audience.
My poor husband has been answering the phone to a variety of individuals who kindly rang me back. I just had to go out for an hour to enjoy the nice weather and Cheshire countryside on my bike this afternoon.

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Progress on the Jodfas Website

The website  is coming along very well. We employed a local graphic designer to help us produce a nice looking site using the guidelines and templates provided by NADFAS. I am amazed at times when I go on to the NADFAS website and see all the documents supporting societies. There are guidelines for all sorts of activities from dealing with press releases to a checklist for the AGM.

Our website will go live later this month and we will provide links to the main NADFAS website, art associations, local galleries and places of interest, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, the school venue Holmes Chapel Comprehensive School and this blog.   

Of course, we will have some webpages with no content yet as we are still finalising our programme. These pages will display a ‘ coming soon ‘ message.


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Progress in March

Another committee meeting come and gone! Minutes produced and a list of actions as long as my arm…  ah well,  it’s all really interesting and a pleasure to do. Most of the committee members have now been able to attend a variety of lectures at nearby local societies and they are getting more and more enthusiastic about our society. Three people were able to attend the area meeting for the Northwest and they came back with some excellent feedback. It seems we have a good number on our ‘interested list’ which now stands at 140. These are people who have made an initial response to our advertising by emailing us to register an interest. Hopefully, we will be able to convert them to fully paid up members by the end of June.

We have been advertising by putting up posters around the local area. NADFAS house provides some very nicely designed posters and we just added our local details to them.  We are now ready to start a advertising in a geographically wider reach. A local auctioneer has agreed to sponsor some printing for us and we are producing flyers. These flyers are in the form of postcards.  Our graphic designer helped with the layout and our local mosaic artist provided the picture of one of her recent designs. We had one blip when the web address we provided for printing this week does not appear to be correct. We may end up putting small stickers on to the cards to correct the mistake. We live and learn!


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