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Outgoing Chair Philip de Glanville (left) welcomes new Chair Sam Allen to the role
At Saturday’s SFD AGM Philip de Glanville stood down as chairman after three years at the helm and Sam Allen, was duly elected to succeed him. Philip had announced his intention to resign in the annual report where he wrote, “I am amazed to realise that three years have gone by since I was elected in September 2014, and remarkably that it is 30 years since I first got involved with this remarkable organisation. I think the SFD is in a good, stable condition at the moment and that the time has come to hand over the reins to a new Chair, who can bring a fresh perspective and energy to the role, so I am stepping down.”
At the AGM Philip added, “My decision to stand down at this AGM, after just three years in post, took some people a bit by surprise it seems, though I have always said publicly that I think three years is enough for anyone in a voluntary job. I reckon the danger is that you lose momentum, and although we are sailing along nice and smoothly at the moment, unless the sails are kept trimmed it is easy to drift off the wind and find yourself in the doldrums. I think the time has come to hand over the helm to someone who can bring a new perspective to the task, and invigorate the SFD with renewed energy.
In accepting the role of Chair, Sam Allen paid tribute to Philip’s work and said that it was great news that Philip would be remaining on the committee. Sam said, “I am so pleased that the committee will continue with so many strong and experienced people as that will make my life easier. The fact that the SFD is in a strong position is down to the leadership Philip provided in sailing this ship, as well as the hard work and dedication of the whole committee, the moderators and everyone else who contributes so much to the organization.”
New Chair Sam Allen addresses the AGM
Some Twenty-nine SFD members and society representatives gathered in the village hall at Burrowbridge for the AGM. Things got under way with tea, scones, cake and a good old natter as people gathered from all over the county. The formal proceedings began at 3.45pm as outgoing chairman Philip de Glanville called the meeting to order. In his address he said that it had been a fairly uneventful twelve months with the Fellowship sailing along on an even keel, secure financially, with experienced people in all the pivotal roles on the Committee, and with all three major competitions in the hands of able and effective adjudicating panels and extremely hard-working co-ordinators.
He said, “I think we have achieved most of the goals we set ourselves 3 years ago. The first was to raise the profile of the SFD among its 3000 or so affiliated members by morphing our monthly magazine Spotlight into a new blog-type facility on the SFD website which we called ‘Spotlight Online’. This would still be managed by Sam Allen, and would be directly accessible via links from our Facebook page.
“The second goal was to move away from a reliance on the £10 subscriptions paid by individual members and to get groups to contribute a bit more financially to the SFD by increasing group subs from £15 a year to £25 a year. Inevitably the number of individual subscribers has steadily decreased.
“Our third goal was to recruit more people to help keep the SFD wheels turning. To this end we appointed 4 Member Reps – people who were well known and influential in their part of the county, whom we could call upon for advice and help. Hilary May has been representing West Somerset, David Jenkins North Somerset, Mike Linham East Somerset and Ann Brolly South Somerset over the past 3 years.
“Apart from these three main goals, in 2016 we set out to clarify and settle the Pro-Am issue in relation to competitions. And this year we held a very successful meeting of all three Moderators and their competition Co-ordinators at which a number of issues, like Succession and Conflicts of Interest, were thrashed out and mutually agreed.”
Philip went on to thank Mike Linham for helping to get our Facebook presence firmly established, and Ann Brolly for stepping forward at last year’s AGM as Membership Secretary
Outgoing Chairman Philip de Glanville addresses the AGM
But there was one disappointment for Philip this year. “I was keen to see us doing more than just sailing smoothly along, and so I was very excited when, at the end of last year’s AGM, Alison Haines approached me and said she’d be interested in taking on a County Production. As a committee we very much liked Mike Linham’s idea of doing Nick Warburton’s adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby. We booked theatre venues in four areas of Somerset for the first week of September, we approached every drama Society in the SFD and we got as far as setting up auditions, but that’s where we came unstuck. We had lots of female actors keen to get involved but only two males, for a large-scale production which would need 20 adults of whom at least a dozen had to be men.”
Following Philip’s address Treasurer Nigel Strawbridge reported that the society was in rude health financially with all competitions operating within budget. There were no questions from the floor.
After that Philip formally stood down and Sam Allen was elected as the new Chair. After thanking Philip for his work, the formal proceedings continued with all the existing committee members being re-elected by bloc vote with the exception of Lyn Lockyer who stood down after three years running the County Drama Festival. Philip de Glanville was reinstated in the role, a function he had been carrying out before becoming Chairman.
Every year at AGM two important awards are made: The Pat Hudson Trophy for a significant contribution to Youth Drama and the Sybil Thorndike Trophy for a significant contribution to amateur theatre. This year’s recipients were Malcolm Young and Gerald Eyers and there is a more detailed report about them both in Spotlight Online.
Proceedings concluded with a healthy discussion about trophies, which is discussed in detail in a separate item in Spotlight Online.