Newsletter from the Chairman

Dear Members
I am delighted to start this newsletter by welcoming some 20 new members to the Society. I am afraid that some new members have had to wait some time before there was room on the waiting list, but I hope that the wait is worthwhile. There are, at the moment, one or two vacancies for membership, so if you know of anybody who would like to join but has been put off by the waiting list, do encourage them to contact Judy quickly!
This year sees the 50th anniversary of the foundation of what was then NADFAS, and although we have decided as a Society that there is little we can do to mark the event, there are still seats available at the commemorative service in Westminster Abbey on May 16th for anybody wanting to travel to London - see the Arts Society magazine for details
We have put forward 3 works of Art towards the Area's anniversary booklet, of which two, the screen in the Ruskin Library at Lancaster University and the Midland Hotel, Morecambe, have been taken up - many thanks to those who put forward suggestions.
I am afraid that we have had to cancel the scheduled trip to Dublin planned for May - there was not a big enough take up to make it viable. The quick questionnaire which those of you who were at the February meeting completed, suggests that that the proportion of Members who would like to go on overseas tours is relatively small, although such tours have, until quite recently, been well supported - perhaps we are all getting older! The Committee is considering what to do about this, as we are anxious to facilitate such tours for those who do wish to  go, and it may be that the answer is to join forces with another, like-minded, Society, but I will let you know what we conclude in due course. What is clear is that even if we are able to put forward a proposed tour, it is unlikely to take place before autumn 2019. What we shall certainly want to do is to set up an email link with interested Members, so that we can gauge opinion before getting too far down the line. I am very grateful to the Trips and Tours sub-committee, and particularly Mary Ann Hargreaves, for the work they put in, in organising the Dublin trip.
Booking forms and details of the Severn Valley tour in September are now available – please contact Sue O’Brian if you are interested.
Many thanks also to the 6 or so volunteers, firmly led by Mel Winstanley, who have broken the back of producing covers for the furnishings at Townend, Troutbeck. It appears that the National Trust has now got enough material to enable us to finish the job, and we propose to arrange one short day at Tatham to cut out bundles of material for the remaining items, and then leave volunteers to sew them at home in their own time. We could do with 2 or 3 more volunteers who would be willing to help - if you can, please let Mel or Bronwen know as soon as possible
The Young Arts project which Mary Frankland and Bronwen ran at Carnforth High School has been judged a great success by the school, and Mary is in the course of organising an exhibition of some of the finished work outside the school, so that it can be more widely appreciated. We will circulate details as soon as they are available - do take the opportunity to go and look at what we have been able to help these students to achieve, and if you have ideas for further Young Arts projects, do please let us know
The website continues to be somewhat confusing, and until the central platform is completed and made more user friendly we will continue to use two website - I am very grateful to Nick for trying to get to the best outcome as quickly as is practical. As a result of quite a lot of comment at the last Area meeting, where it was suggested that member Societies really had not seen a lot of publicity or news items locally as a result of the Arts Society rebranding, I am wondering whether we should not look for help from any of our members with PR/publicity experience, to help us promote Arts and Crafts locally - if you would be interested, do please contact me
In the meantime, our programme of quite excellent speakers continues to draw a full house each month, for which our thanks are due to Ros Lloyd for her hard work in choosing, booking and organising such a wide ranging programme. She and Angela Pape are now hard at work on the programme for 2019/2020. If you have any suggestions, do let them know
So you will see that your Committee is not being idle - if you have thoughts or comments, please do not hesitate to contact me
Martin Gillibrand
Chairman