Firstly, I help with the Church Stretton Arts Festival. The summer after we arrived we went to many of the Arts Festival events and enjoyed them. While we were visiting the Art Exhibition we got talking to Sue Mabbutt (the organizer) and I volunteered to help. To start off with I helped with just the Art Exhibition. I have the database of exhibitors and am responsible for contacting them each year to invite them to participate, collecting their entry forms money and producing the lists of entries. Then I ended up helping on hanging day and collection day and did a little bit of work in between!The picture on the left is of the flyer I designed for the Art Exhibition last year. We have lots left, so I'm going to stick a label over the date and time so we can use them this year!
This year my work has expanded to the rest of the festival. I'm now a member of the committee and work on the publicity sub-committee. I try to co-ordinate the jobs I do for the Arts Festival with the ones I do for the Food Fayre. I've been contacting web sites that have events listings and have managed to list our events on several. It's good fun. I like the people who work on this committee. They are very hard working and get a heck of a lot done for the good of this area. I think I may have offended one or two because I'm a bit out spoken, but I'm hoping they'll forgive me if I work hard enough.
Because of Sue Mabbutt and her husband Clive, John and I both work for the Church Stretton Food Fayre, also. This year, the food fayre is a two day event, on August 24th and 25th. The 25th is our late August bank holiday (a lot like labour day in the States). We will be setting up marquees in the school playing field and expect over 100 food and craft vendors to show their wares. Along with that we will have food demonstrations - including a very dishy chef called Mark Earndon courtesy of our local Co-Op Society - entertainments including birds of prey, a brass band, circus skills, arts and crafts workshops, face painting and belly dancing and an evening of "golden oldies" in the music/beer tent.
Check out this web page about Mark. There's a You Tube video of his work too.
The food fayre has a large coterie of volunteers who help on the day with everything from taking money and monitoring the carpark to washing dishes in the food demo tent and cleaning the loos! However, we work year round. John is the webmaster and I am the vice-chair. It's not exactly clear what a vice-chair does as we haven't had one before, but I'm trying to fill in wherever there are gaps. I've tried to help Clive with publicity, I've designed the tri-fold leaflet that goes into pubs, tourist centres, libraries, bed and breakfasts, etc., I've been trying to put our information into the various "What's On" web sites and I help out wherever possible. During the actual fair I will probably be helping with getting the exhibitors situated, I might collect up the takings, help out on the gate or do whatever. Sue, Helen and I took a first aid training course, too, so we can be the first people to respond to any emergencies that might arise.
While we were helping at a Volunteering Recruitment day trying to find more volunteers for the Food Fayre I ran across a display about Scrappies. I got talking the Serena there and she said that Scrappies needed a new web person. I immediately volunteered to do that and from there I've ended up doing lots more. I'm still the web master and you can see my efforts by clicking here. From there it was a small step to helping out with computer problems and working to update their membership data base. That led to my volunteering to enter all the data - renewals, new memberships and address changes - and finally to sending out renewal notices and newsletters! So you can see the job has expanded and it continues to expand. I'm now on their management committee and I try to help out in the store when and if I can.
