Committee Report
2011
The Committee is pleased to report that the Society
has had another successful and enjoyable year.
We have welcomed 14 new members and have 35 on the waiting list. This means that the time spent on the waiting
list is between 2 and 3 years. Our
thanks are due to our Membership Secretary, Liz Moore, who spends much time and
effort keeping the membership list up to date and organizing the collection of
the annual subscription as well as ensuring that we all record our presence at
each lecture.
More lecturers have converted to digital
presentations and we are glad to be able to offer them use of our new digital projector
and computer. Many lecturers have
congratulated the Society on the quality of the digital equipment and more
importantly the support, which they are given.
The Society is very fortunate to have Stephen Gillam-Smith, who devotes his
time and experience to setting up, and maintaining our audio visual equipment
as well as helping the lecturers. There
is also a team of volunteers who help with all the hard work at each lecture of
setting up the screens and positioning and helping to operate all the
equipment. We are most grateful to them
all. The team, however, needs additional
volunteers who are technically and computer inclined as well as being prepared to
do the physical work of moving equipment.
Lectures in the past year have covered a wide range
of subjects and have been well attended.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank those of you who fill in
(anonymously) assessments of the speakers and also make suggestions for future
subjects. We are very grateful to
Marjorie Tarring, our Programme Secretary, for choosing the lecturers and ensuring
that they arrive safely on time and unflustered. We are also grateful to Jo
Collinson-Jones and the car-parking attendants for the smooth running of car-parking,
the Hall and meetings.
During the year we ran two very successful Special
Interest Days at The Riverhouse Barn. Jeremy Barlow gave an informative talk on “Musical
and Cultural Life in Shakespeare’s
This
year we have visited Westminster Abbey with 74 participants, Knole and All Saint’s
Church Tudeley and have just been to Eton College and
Chenies Manor House. We had an extended visit
to Northumberland and
WDFAS
Volunteers Activities have been co-ordinated by Carla Bounds and we are
grateful to her for the time and effort, which she has put in so willingly. We are continuing for 2011 with a grant of £250 to Send Family Link, a charity which
supports families visiting women in custody at Send Prison. This grant will fund a Young Arts project for
the children of prisoners, who will share the activity with their parent in
order for them to enjoy extended time together.
Much interest is being shown by West Surrey Area and NADFAS House in
this project.
Heritage
Volunteers
Unfortunately
the Museum has imposed a moratorium on volunteer work. The offers of help from members are very much
appreciated and hopefully they will still be available when it is the time to
continue.
We
would like to express our thanks to
You
will see from the Accounts that after the recent large expenditure on a digital
projector and a computer we have begun to re-build the reserves in a
satisfactory manner. With regard to
these Accounts the Committee believes that they show that the Society is
soundly based financially, in a robust state and well placed for the future.
Margaret
Waghorn is the Treasurer and we are most grateful to her for the time and
support she gives us. Stephen Hayes is
the Secretary and in addition to his work as Secretary has devoted much time to
putting in a web-site www.weybridgedfas.org.uk,
which is the envy of many other societies.
Unfortunately it would appear that very few of our members have visited
the site. Although existing members find
little use for the web-site, we will continue updating it as we believe that
newcomers to the area may use it and thereby join the waiting list.