Annual General Meeting 2017-2018.
The first item on the agenda where apologies for absence from David Seddon, Daisy Kane, Martin Tomes, liz Barber, Alex Swyer, and Peter Picthall
I then started the meeting with my last job as joint Chairman - the presentation of the Cups which were won as follows:
The Rowling Cup, which was a new cup awarded this year for the first time to the member joining in the last two years who has contributed the most value to the club as decided by the Committee, and this was awarded to Kevin Harwood, who has done very well in our competitions with his brilliant wildlife images and has represented the club therewith as well as taking on the role of Publicity for the club with outstanding results.
The Picthall Cup was another new award decided by the Committee for the person making a valuable contribution to the club both photographically and in other ways, and this was deservedly won by Audrey Grey. Well deserved Audrey for your reporting on the competitions and also for your humour!?
The Petworth Cup for the best PI of the year went to Liz Barber.
The Emmet Challenge Cup for the best print of the Year also went to Liz Barber - what a fantastic result for Liz winning both those two.
Then the Taylor Cup for the best PI worker of the year was won by Kevin Harwood. Another cup for Kevin - brilliant.
The Dixon Cup for the Print worker of the Year was won by Janet Brown
The Anonymous Cup for the photographer of the year was also won by Janet Brown. Again, a brilliant result for Janet winning two cups.
So three members got two cups each; the rest of us will all have to work harder in future to stop that happening again. Seriously, very well done to all our cup winners.
Then it was time for my report which I have copied here for the records.
Chairmans report for season 2017-2018
‘We've come the end of another season and another month as well; so it will soon be Christmas!
For the second season running we have had joint chairman (myself and Paul Hayward) which was never going to be an ideal arrangement, but as we had no volunteer for the job, I hope you will agree that we have made a half reasonable job in keeping the club going.
Janet has been taking meetings to give her training as our next Chairman, but really because I was not comfortable doing that job. I would like to thank all the members of the Committee for their work and help. I will not single anyone out because they have all done their separate jobs brilliantly and work hard for all of us. They must all be on holiday recovering!!? We do however need a Vice Chairman, so please think hard and let us know if you think that you would like to carry out that position.
We are losing David Seddon as our Program Secretary, but he will still be a member so he will come from time to time to amuse us. We are delighted that Chris West has agreed to take over that job. He has done it before, so we will be assured of some great events going forward. I would like to thank David for all the work he has done in arranging programs over last few years with such commitment, and for thinking up some interesting Members evenings.
Due to some very good publicity we have seven new members: Martin Baker; Andrew Caswell; Vince Mason; Terry Millward; David Perks; Brian Simmons; and Graham Westlake. We welcome you all and hope that you enjoy being members of our small but beautifully formed club.
During this last season we have had some very excellent speakers including Richard Peters with some stunning wildlife; Astrid McGerchon giving us new ideas for landscape photography; John Staples who gave us a history of Eastbourne camera club; Peter Whielden an enthusiastic photographer of wildlife events; Viveca Koh talking about urban photography and fine art: Tony Worobic who told us to go out in bad weather to produce good photographs and finally Robert White talking about Marine and Solar photography.
We have had five competitions this year (and also he Best of Year comp) which will give us a larger choice of photographs for our entries in the County competitions. We did pretty well in them this year being First in the Sussex Federation Print competition development section and Third in both the Regnum Crouch print and PI competitions. Being a very small club compared with most of the opposition, particularly Chichester and Steyning who have at least three times the number of members, we do very well indeed and we do enjoy a great reputation. We have several members who belong to other clubs, but their first loyalty is to Storrington. They do bring new ideas from their dual membership, which is great
Other ongoing events are our Coffee mornings which Jane organises so well and the Flickr competition organised by Janet and Liz. Janet with help from other members of the committee are now organising regular venues for photo shoots. Our thanks are due to all of them.
Paul and I retire leaving the club, I believe, in very good shape, particularly with our new Chairman Janet who will bring new ideas and initiatives which we will all enjoy. Thank you.’
Then we had the Treasurer’s report from Sarah when she reported that the club finances were in very good shape and therefore we did not need to increase the annual subscription. However she thought that we should increase the attendance fee for non members at our meetings and so we agreed with that and in future the charge will be £5 which is about the same as other clubs.
There followed the Print Secretary’s report when Anne told us the numbers of entries for the competions and said that she hoped more people would enter in future. We had no report on the PI competitions as Alex sadly could not attend.
We then had the election of the officers for next season.
Janet Brown was a voted in as our new Chairman.
We have no nomanies for Vice Chairman as yet, so the search is on.
We have a new Programme Secretary in Chris West who is most welcome back.
Without exception all the other Committee members have agreed to carry on with their positions, which is very good news.
At this point I stepped down and Janet took over running the meeting.
She started by telling us about the Summer programme. Chris West and Mrs Mannering have Kindly asked us back to have our Summer Tea party in their garden. That event will most probably be on Sunday July 15th. The next photoshoot will be at Fort Nelson on Friday 15th June. And of course the coffee mornings will carry on.
Next Chris West quickly went through next seasons programme as it looks at the moment.
This was followed by Kevin Harwood telling us about his ongoing plans for publicity.
Finally, Andy Jones suggested that we have a regular ‘Question Time’ session where members can put forward any photographic queries that they have. This will be something for the Committee to consider.
We had a request that the subjects for the Flickr competitions could be announced sooner than at present to give time for planning in advance. That will be done.
There being no other business, we concluded the AGM and had a cuppa.
After the break, Paul assisted by Janet auctioned the items that members had brought in for that purpose. Unfortunately, as there were so few members present we only raised about £100, which was a pity as the quality of the items was better than usual. Sarah kept a tally on who owed what and once the cash was handed over we all went home.