Last week was our Print & PDI of the Year night. The results will be announced at the Presentation Night on 27th April.
Also last week our General Secretary, Anne Peck, issued all members with Annual Reports from our Office Bearers along with details of how members could place topics on the Agenda for our forthcoming AGM. These reports give Club members details of the myriad of tasks involved in running our Club. At F.C.C. a regular meeting place must be found and agreements made with our landlords, someone assembles a programme of events, internal and external competitions need to be organised, finances need care and someone deals with general administration and decision making. The Web Controller has an increasing workload and then there are a few particularly valuable individuals who sit on committees and associated groups able to help out in many different areas.
As we approach our A.G.M. it’s worth remembering that Falkirk C.C. is a member of Falkirk Arts Network, the Glasgow & District Photographic Union, the Scottish Photographic Federation and is affiliated to the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain and the Fedération Internationale d’le Art Photographique. We often contribute to their operations, are guided by their conventions and regulations, participate in their exhibitions and competitions and provide and have access to lecturers, competition judges and tutors. This all provides a significant resource for our Club members.
Membership and community groups like ourselves exist because people volunteer to get involved and learn about the structure in which an organisation operates. The numerous tasks involved require skills transferable from, and to, the workplace so as we approach the end of our season Club President, Bob Black, has been taking the opportunity to thank everyone who has volunteered their services over the past year.
Some arrive an hour or so before the start of any event to help prepare the hall, others look after potential new members, volunteers take care of catering and people stay behind afterwards to tidy up. Similarly valuable is the knowledge of more experienced, sometimes longstanding, club members. Their experience and knowledge often brings in new members and passing on their knowledge is an opportunity to give something back to a club, set its standards and create the team spirit which differentiates a club from a resource. Work, family and personal commitments are obviously paramount but an interest, photography in our case, and the ability to make a contribution to a group brings its own rewards.
Before 2009 we were able to stage exhibitions of Colour and Black & White prints occasionally. Since the creation in 2009 of an Exhibition Gallery within Falkirk Town Hall we have staged exhibitions there annually, much more frequently between 2018 and 2020. The closure of Falkirk Town Hall deprives us of a valuable facility. Exhibitions were curated and promoted so we look forward to resuming that activity in the future. We also have a President & Vice President co-ordinating all functions, managing change and new processes while respecting and modernising the traditions that exist in most organisations. We can trace our history back to 1889 so yet more voluntary work maintains and adds to that archive.
We maintain relationships too with other local and national organisations and with their own voluntary, or professional, people.
Take care and thanks for looking in.