Annual General Meeting Minutes
MERCIA CINEMA SOCIETY
MINUTES of the ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING 2007
held at the Prince of Wales’ Theatre on Saturday 1 December at 1.15
1 Chairman’s welcome: The chairman welcomed all present, and thanked everyone for coming. She said how much we had enjoyed the tour of the wonderfully re-furbished theatre, and thanked theatre General Manager Graham Sykes for the free hospitality.
2 Quorum & Proxies / apologies:
Present were: Kate Taylor, Frank Manders, Frank Wright, Paul Smith, Ian Grey, Philip Hollins, Mervyn Gould (committee); Victor A. S. Behrman, Dave Biscombe, Barry Chandler, Ray Deahl, Ryan Jefferies, Richard Norman, Ian Patterson, Philip Roberts, David Simpson, Fred Fullerton, Neville C. Taylor, Sebastian Weber, Nigel Wolland (members); Jeremy Buck, CTA Sales (observer). (21) Valid proxy forms have been received from: Maurice Brader, Patrick Butler, Richard Cooper, Jack de Coninck, Victor A. Edwards, D. Gammage, Brian Hornsey, Ian Houseman, John A. Hunt, Ian Meyrick (e-mail), Roy Pack, Ant Phillips, Ian Van Ryne, Peter Sagar, Terry Simmons, John Slater, Robert E. Small, Frank D. Snart, D. T. Swaffer, Victor Welland (19). These represent, together with attenders, far more than the minimum 10% of membership. Apologies from Edwyn Gilmour and Gerald Glover, and David Trevor-Jones and Harry Rigby of the CTA.
3 Reading/adoption of minutes of 2006 meeting: Printed on the agenda sheet. Their adoption was proposed by Paul Smith, seconded by Ian Grey, and the meeting agreed they could be signed as an accurate record.
4 Matters arising from 2006 minutes: No items were raised.
5 Reports:
Chairman : (see below)
Membership : In the absence of Colin Sanders, the chairman announced that membership now stood at 204. We had gained 36 members, but lost 19, including Len Davies, Gil Robottom, and Ken Osborne through death.
Sales : A total of 518 items were sold, including 320 Fuchsiaprint booklets, 88 Medway, 32 York, 15 Swale, 13 Essex, 11 Wakefield, and other titles in single figures.
Treasurer : Printing expenditure is down, as the year before we had published York; subscriptions and donations up. We are grateful to members for their donations.
Administrator’s report (see below)
6 Elections:
Chairman: Mervyn Gould assumed the chair. He had no nominations, and there were no proposals from the floor. He proposed Miss Taylor to the meeting, and she was elected nem. con. She then resumed the chair.
Officers and committee: re-elected en bloc. The chairman asked for volunteers to join the committee, but none were forth-coming.
7 Publications: We had published nothing except the Bioscope during the financial year, but Basingstoke Entertained was shown to the meeting as the printers had just delivered it. Kate Taylor’s Barnsley was still imminent, Frank Manders was working on Cinemas of North Tyneside, Mervyn Gould had resumed work on Crewe and Nantwich and Burton-on-Trent, and Paul Smith had started work with Peter Berry on Huddersfield.
8 Publicity / web-site: Ian Grey said the web-site is now hosted by a United States server, at better terms and much larger storage. We can have more photographic galleries. The url is now www.merciacinema.org .
9 Membership recruitment: We repeated our thanks to the PPT and Jim Whittell for the successful advertising for new members.
10 Any Other Business (by permission of the chairman): The chairman asked if anyone had a suggestion for next year’s provincial AGM. She wondered about an independent multiplex, such a Cleethorpes Parkway. Fred Fullerton suggested Liverpool, the chairman added Lutterworth, but the Administrator said it was inaccessible by train.
11 Close of meeting: The Chairman closed the meeting at 2pm., and Basingstoke Entertained was on sale at the member price.
Chairman’s review of the year
This has been a good year. Thanks in particular to the efforts of Mervyn Gould in placing advertisements in Rewind and The Veteran and in writing to former members our membership has passed the 200 mark. There have been some losses and we greatly regret the death of a very loyal supporter, contributor and committee man, Len Davies. The Bioscope has been issued each quarter, again with admirable quality and promptness, and we have seen an interesting range of contributions including the invaluable recollections of people like David Simpson and Dennis Hurst, who worked in the cinema industry. We remain grateful to the editor, Paul Smith, and designer. Mervyn Gould, for its interest and quality. Other than the Bioscope, we have published nothing further this year but Mervyn’s work on Basingstoke cinemas went to the printer in November and both Mervyn and myself have further near-complete manuscripts. As the major publishers nationally of picture-house history we should, as always, be pleased to consider well-researched work from other members and, indeed, non-members.
Our web site, maintained by Ian Grey has been a further source of new members and is now not only attractive and regularly updated but a very useful source of extensive information with the addition of Mervyn’s exhaustive compilation, the cinema gazetteer. Colin Sanders continues to build up an archive of more detailed accounts of cinemas across Britain and is another source of information not otherwise easily available.
The Society’s finances, now securely handled by treasurer Ian Grey, remain sound with a greater income from membership subscriptions, but book sales have been rather disappointing this year, perhaps because we have had had no new publication. We have benefited again from Brian Hornsey’s great generosity in giving us both his new and past Fuchsiaprint booklets to sell for Society funds. Most orders remain, as in the past, from private individuals rather than bookshops and our Sales Officer, Stuart Smith, has again responded promptly and efficiently to every request.
We have continued to deal with requests for information from students and from the media and some of us remain in demand for talks. Digital projection equipment and the Powerpoint programme have meant that these can now be easily and well illustrated.
Our experienced team of officers has remained dedicated to furthering the interests of the Society, giving much of their time. They have met as a committee once, in mid-March, in Birmingham and members have remained in contact regularly otherwise by telephone, letter and e-mail and, once or two of them, once or twice in person. We are most grateful to them. And we are grateful, too, to Philip Hollins for again examining our accounts.
Kate Taylor
Administrator’s report
You have heard that it has been a very successful year. For the first time since I joined the committee in 1992, membership has crossed the 200 mark. Being such a small society, one of our problems is the lack of advertising, but now, at least, we know that many more people have heard of us. Bill Stephenson and friends at the PPT circulated our handbill with an issue of Rewind, and Mercia life member Jim Whittell, then President of the Cinema Veterans, arranged and paid for an advertisement in The Veteran, which is still bringing in members. Amongst the cinema history ‘trade’, there seems to be an enormous groundswell of support for us. Our recent books have been much improved by illustrations from the enormous CTA Archive, made available by Clive Polden, and from the late Tony Moss’ collection, by the kindness of Richard Norman and his scanning helpers: the latest proof of this fruitful collaboration being Basingstoke Entertained. In addition, Harry Rigby, Editor of the CTA Bulletin, is ever-ready to send his photographs for the Bioscope, and Allen Eyles is also guaranteed to help with information and illustrations. We are grateful to them all.
The Bioscope, ably edited by Paul Smith, goes from strength to strength, and we are indebted to the contributors for what we hope and intend as a useful, informative, and entertaining journal. We have only published one work other than the Bioscope this year, but there are others in the offing. In my own case, work due to be resumed by visits to Crewe and Burton were postponed because of the poor summer – not, I felt, a time to stand around on railway platforms – and was over-taken by later projects. I used the kindlier autumn weather to resume work on these towns. Another project is rural Leicestershire, and this was given a fillip by attending David and Diane Simpson’s meticulously-organised CTA Easter trip, which also gave an opportunity to meet many well-known names.
We welcomed Kate’s work on Wakefield and district for Tempus Publishing during the year, and look forward to her Cinemas of Barnsley for us. Ian Grey’s web-site work draws attention to us: statistics show an average of 5,000 hits monthly, and some of those send contributions we use in the Bioscope. Some get in touch about my Gazetteer or one of the galleries; making queries, feeding information, and (occasionally) joining the Society.
We keep afloat by your subscriptions, but our publications bring in money to publish more – when we get the scripts. We thank Stuart Smith for so ably keeping trade and individual customers supplied. Ian Grey, as well as tending the web-site, also keeps the books – a time-consuming and essential task mainly unappreciated by us. Philip Hollins donates his time and professional expertise to our audit, while, in the background, Colin Sanders keeps membership records abreast of the times.
It seems obvious our success is due to the appearance of the Bioscope and our other books. For this, our printers are responsible: I wish to draw attention to and thank all staff of Q3 Digital Litho for their care, interest, and print standard. Their new digital technology investment has paid dividends for us in the quality of illustrations, and cleanness of text.
But our centre and mainspring is here before us today: we are fortunate that Kate Taylor devotes part of her enormous energy, scholarship, and reputation to us. She has kept us alive over several famine years! We congratulate and thank her.
Mervyn Gould