September 2024 - AGM, Fuddle and Human Bingo

The 19th September marked the Annual General Meeting for the Manfield Marians, and the opportunity to review the past 12 months and elect a committee President.

The committee and membership thanked Hilary Canham for her time and dedication as President over the last three years. Committee members Selina Turner and Clare Taylor were elected co-presidents and the committee was re-introduced to the membership. Always a highlight, the Secretary Report was read by the Minutes Secretary, Margaret, to share a recap of the year.

Mansfield Marians Secretary Report - written by Tracey Watson (Secretary), read by Margaret Hodgkin (Minutes Secretary)

The Mansfield Marians consists of: 20 members and 1 dual member.

We have 7 committee members and this year we have had 10 committee meetings.

This year has been very productive, this is a summary of what we have done:

September 2023 was last year's annual meeting – a new committee was elected.  We enjoyed a fuddle and then tried piling matches up on top of a bottle.  I think we were all surprised how high it went before it toppled over.

We also held a Coffee Morning and Table Top sale in September, which raised a small amount of money for us to use for speakers and crafts.

October 2023 – We had a presentation from Nigel Lowey about St Pancras station, taking us through the history and different stages of the build of the station and hotel, the amazing engineering and world-class architecture.

The 2023-2024 Programme of Events shared at the 2024 Mansfield Marians WI Agnnual General Meeting.

It was decided at this meeting that we would create a Christmas tree out of knitted and crocheted hats to display in our meeting location and then donate them to a charity, the Beacon Project, for the homeless in the new year.

November 2023 – Guided by Hilary, we made some lovely (no-sew) cushion covers from felt, cleverly plaiting the edges to hold the pieces together.  A nice relaxing evening, getting to know each other better.  Hats were handed in and Paula showed us how she would build the display – it looked great, an article about the tree also appeared in the Mansfield, Ashfield & Sherwood News Journal.  We also all brought in donations for Butterly, a local charity helping abused partners and their children.

December 2023 – After the success of December 2022’s Taskmaster evening, we recruited Ali again to ask us to do her bidding.  The winning team received a Marians bauble, some members adding to their collection from last year. This was followed by a fuddle.

We also had a Christmas meal at Refined at West Notts College, an excellent meal and great service, as always.

January 2024 saw us being instructed by our Treasurer, Yasmine to guide us through some chair yoga exercises, stretching out the stresses from the Christmas period.

February 2024 was a fun evening of painting stones, which were to be used by the Nottingham Literacy Volunteers to help children with reading and making stories.  We didn’t realise what great artists we all were.

March 2024 gave us a presentation from the Nottingham Forager, Lucy Buckle.  Everyone enjoyed finding out what can be done with some of the vegetation around us.

April 2024 brought us a presentation by Sandra Robinson about sixties fashion. Sandra showed us her collection of outfits from the period. This was followed by resolutions and a reminder of membership renewal. A Marians Social evening was arranged to see Calendar Girls – no, we’re not going to be releasing our calendar any time soon!

May 2024 – We learned a new craft, quilling, thanks to Sarah Manton for introducing this new addiction to some of us.  Some beautiful shapes were made with this papercraft, including one member creating an amazing dragonfly, a great achievement for a first go

June 2024 brought us the return of Norman Hodgkin, this time to talk to us about the Berlin Wall and what it was like to live in and around Berlin while the wall was up.  

This was followed by a sale table where we all brought in a little something that others just might like.  A small amount of money was raised to help us pay for future meetings.

July 2024 – we had an interesting talk about Fraud Prevention, Dale, a Fraud and Cyber Crime Officer gave us some insight into the ways people are getting caught out, some members also shared their own experiences.  It’s a scary world out there.

There was no meeting in August.

We continue to use Facebook and our own website to promote the Mansfield Marians.  We also have a private embers group on Facebook, which is regularly used for chat by the members.  The website generates regular enquiries from potential new members and speakers.

The Marians owns its own equipment and art and craft supplies and we have continued to update our inventory of these so that we know what we have and where they are stored.

Future plans…

We have a planned programme up until December 2024, to include a talk about the Nottingham Literacy Volunteers, some Christmas clay craft with our resident Artist, Clare, then of course, the Christmas party games and fuddle in December.

Thank you all for a great year.