New ideas at WEA AGM in Cambridge

I was at the WEA Eastern Region's AGM today in Cambridge.

Detlev, the chair of one of their many branches, met me at the station. We'd got talking the previous week at Conference in Nottingham and we arranged to chat before the meeting. 

I'm going to a different AGM each Saturday this month. Good turn out, more than 100 there. I was quite surprised at how many people I knew. Several new staff there, too. 

I enjoyed hearing the reports on the Biennial Conference from staff and volunteers - seeing the events on both days from their point of view. Lots of comments on the Spirit Level and Community Learning Champions as well as the excitement and tension of Conference decisions. 

One idea I liked was their early preparation for the region's Centenary. They are circulating a digital flip video camera around their branches (over 130). Someone from one branch goes to another, makes a short film and then shows someone there how to use the camera. They then leave the camera with them and ask them to film and pass it on (both the camera and how to use it) to another branch.

 I described some of my ideas for membership, volunteering and marketing and we had a brief discussion. Here's my presentation Download AGM presentation 

I'm using my visited to AGMs to develop my thinking and feed it back to a reference group. Newcastle next week.

Comments

[Peter]

thanks for coming to our AGM .With the number of volunteers in our Region I hope we can tap into their expertise to enhance our "offer " to all parts of our programme strands