Chairman’s Address – AGM 2010
 Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the AGM of Handbell Ringers of Great Britain. You should all have received information about the content of today’s meeting and as you will see there what appears to be a fairly complex proposal to be considered at this meeting. Hopefully we will be able to guide you through the proposal in such a way that it is easily understood and therefore will allow you to make a balanced decision.
The statutory purposes of the AGM are to receive the reports from the Officers, to receive the accounts, to elect Officers and an Examiner of Accounts for the coming year, to consider motions proposed and to elect Honorary Life Members. In addition, there is an opportunity for the holders of appointed positions in the Society to report on their various activities.
I am pleased to be able to report that HRGB remains in a healthy financial position and John will expand on this later. Sandra will report on the activities that have been undertaken by HRGB over the past year and Margaret will update you on the Membership position. It falls to me to put the position of HRGB into a more global perspective and to give some thoughts to the direction that we may pursue in the future.
Legislation continues to be a headache for small Charities. The procedures that we follow to prepare, submit and examine accounts continue to be complex and are currently different in England and Scotland, and although we have assurance that there will be alignment of the two systems this is not expected to come into force until after 2011. John continues to keep us up to date on these changes and his vigilance on accounting procedures is appreciated by all members of the NEC. The revisions to the laws for the Protection of Vulnerable Persons make it a legal requirement under certain circumstances for organisers of events to ensure that the correct procedures are in place. We have provided some guidance on these requirements but there is still some uncertainty in the interpretation of aspects of the legislation (for example only 3 months after the introduction of the new scheme there were changes introduced on the interpretation) and your Officers will continue to monitor the developments and provide updated guidance to members where required.
Of course our main activity is playing music. It has, since the very early days of HRGB, been a dogma that the Society will not promote competitive handbell ringing within its activities. This concept, which was much debated at AGMs and in the pages of Reverberations in 1977 and 1978, came from the founders of HRGB who saw the effects that competition had on some of the activities in the villages of Yorkshire. I have also seen from some historic documents the effects that were generated between teams. However, HRGB cannot and would not prevent any team from participating in a competitive music festival – several teams in fact participate successfully in local festivals. This does raise the question of how an individual team or an individual ringer can assess a level of competence. We have made initial contact with an examination board that provides the basis for assessment of ensembles that we believe could be applied to handbell teams, and we will try to develop something for individual ringers that will provide a recognised music qualification. Developments along these lines will not introduce competitiveness but will give both teams and individuals a measure of their ability, an incentive to improve and may also encourage younger ringers to continue ringing. It may even provide young ringers with a recognised qualification that will assist with their application for further education.
We now have two charitable funds within HRGB and available to members. The William Hartley Memorial Fund is still able to provide loans for teams wishing to overhaul or extend their handbell sets. I believe that under the terms of reference of the WHMF, we are also able to assist with other projects. I would like to investigate the use of the Fund to assist with training of conductors within HRGB. There are few trained conductors within HRGB and I believe that development of these skills would enhance the improvements in musicality that we all strive to achieve in our handbell ringing. The Vaughan Evans Bursary has been created to support young ringers who wish to attend national training events. This is an opportunity for HRGB to engage our younger members in a more advanced handbell ringing activity and environment and perhaps stimulate them to become more involved, thus ensuring the future of HRGB.
This year a small but dedicated group of HRGB members will be travelling to Osaka for the 14th International Handbell Symposium. This promises as always to be an invigorating experience for all of us as Handbell Ringers of Japan host the event in their usual gracious way. The conclusion of the event in Osaka will mean that there is less than 2 years before HRGB host the 15th International Handbell Symposium in Liverpool. And I stress that it is HRGB that is hosting – not the Officers, or the organising committee, or those who have become Symposium ‘groupies’ – but all of HRGB. I hope that wherever possible, HRGB members will welcome our guests from overseas as friends with a common musical desire.
HRGB, like many relatively small Charities is not growing in terms of membership – the situation is not critical but is one that the NEC keeps under consideration. There is a similar situation in other UK societies and our colleagues in the American Handbell Guild are having the same experience. Only in the Far East does there seem to be a growing level of interest in tune ringing on handbells. What are the reasons? If we knew all these we could perhaps resolve the situation. The NEC has spent time debating this subject and will continue to do so. HRGB is a society of individual members and although we collect membership fees through your team correspondent, everyone is considered to be an individual member of the society. The register of team names as contained in the Society Directory is a means of knowing which teams are affiliated to HRGB. Would it be more acceptable for each individual member to pay their own membership fee? What effect would this have on membership? How would this affect teams that pay team subscriptions? These are all questions that we continue to discuss.
Whatever the reasons for the lack of growth in membership, there is one very important point to make, and I make no apology for taking the tag line from another handbell guild on this - Membership Matters. It matters to us as Officers, because without the Membership there is no HRGB. It matters to you as members (and I know that all of you at this AGM are members of HRGB), but perhaps in more ways than you realise. Membership of HRGB brings you into contact with fellow handbell ringers; it allows you to attend the National Rally, NRRW, UK Bronze, regional rallies; it leads you towards new music and the sources of that music. All these you will, I’m sure, be aware of. But membership of HRGB also gives access to many hidden benefits. HRGB is a member of Making Music and this organisation is a source of contacts with other amateur music groups, groups with which we can combine to present concerts. For the Officers, Making Music is a source of information and guidance on many of the aspects of legislation to which I have referred above – and we have all had cause to use this source at some time. That is why MM have been here today – promoting the links between our organisations. We are members of the Voluntary Arts Network, an organisation which again has provided us with guidance on the interpretation of legislation to ensure that we provide you, our members with the right guidelines to remain within the law. And we have a web-site – not unusual in the modern age of electronic communication. But did you know that the web-site provides an access point for overseas handbell ringers, for the media and for many organisations looking for handbell ringers for an event. The web-site has provided the link for TV appearances, performances at major functions, and ringing at weddings, Christmas parties, switching on Christmas lights and many other functions. And you and your team as members of HRGB have access to this source – even if your team is not mentioned on the site or does not have its own web-site, contact made with Sandra or myself, or any of the regional secretaries can lead to an opportunity to ring before an audience. So HRGB membership does matter – to you, to your team and to the future of HRGB. So if there are members of your team who are not members of HRGB or you know teams that have not joined, tell them that by joining they can have access to all these hidden services as well as the opportunities to ring with like-minded musicians, and in so doing they are contributing to the well-being of tune ringing on handbells through HRGB.
I’ve spoken for long enough – we have business to complete, business which has required input from regional secretaries and treasurers, but which has ultimately fallen on the shoulders of my fellow officers to present today. To them and to all the members of regional committees I offer my thanks for your help and support during the last year.
Alan Hartley
Chairman
17th April 2010
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