Harleston Choral Society

These minutes may be downloaded as a Word document here

Report of Committee Meeting

On Wednesday 21^st May 2025

At Grange Barn, The Street, St James South Elmham IP19 0HN

• Apologies for Absence: Heather Butcher and Stella Brownsea

• Minutes of last meeting (31^st March 2025): These were approved.

• Treasurer’s report 

• Subs – these will be slightly lower this term as fewer people are singing.
• Bonus Ball – This is expected to be higher than last year by the end of the year.
• Summer Concert – the forecasted costs remain the same.

• Anniversary Events

Summer Concert

Staging – John and Malcolm confirmed that the staging visit had taken place.  We can use the school’s staging with no extra charge.  They will take a few squares of our own staging to be used if necessary.  There will be rows of twelve.

• VIP invitations – Jo has invited Basil Abbott, Chris and Baba Bracewell, Nick, who designed the poster, Janette and Karen.  Chris has already replied and accepted, saying they appreciate the invite but will pay for their own tickets.

John F reported that he has been working towards getting a grant of £500 from South Norfolk Counciland has just found out that he’s been successful.  He wondered if we could give them 2 free tickets.  We congratulated him on his successful bid and thanked him for his work on this.  We agreed that we should send 2 tickets, even though they may not be able to accept them.  We will identify the tickets on the back in some way so that we know if they’ve been used.

• Introductions – Jo is going to ask if Tom or Jaine from the school will be introducing the concert, after which Caroline will also make a short speech.

Action – Jo to agree with Tom or Jaine on an introduction.

• Raffle – The results will be posted on a board at the end of the concert.  
• Front of House – Stella sent a message prior to the meeting (see attached) to say that she has passed all FOH persona details to Fiona Catherine and informed us that Eileen Ryan will also help.
• Musicians’ tea –This will consist of plates of finger food.  Julia will bring a tick box sheet, with suggested items, to rehearsal so that choir members can choose what they would like to provide.  She would like these to be brought to the afternoon rehearsal on paper plates.  There should be around 15 people to provide tea for.

Action – Julia to bring in list of food items

• Dress code – Normal dress code.  It was suggested that the ladies would wear a red silk rose and the men, red bow ties.  Julia has agreed to order the roses and research the bow ties.  Malcolm suggested the men have just white shirts but nothing was decided on this.

Action – Julia to report back on accessories

• Banner – we need to check with Stella to see if she has asked the school’s permission for this to be on the railings.
• Post concert coffee morning – this will be held at the Dove at 10.30 on Monday 30^th June.  Fiona will compile a list and Stella will call them with numbers.

Action – Fiona to make list for coffee morning

• Checklist meeting – this will take place on 23^rd June at 7pm

Summer Garden Party

• John and Julia have kindly offered to host this.  Whilst we had previously looked at both the 12^th and 19^th July, Julia said that the 12^th would be the better date for them.
• There should be enough parking space and people will be encouraged to car-chare.
• Further arrangements will be discussed at the next Social S/C meeting on Thursday 12^th June at Julia’s.

Action – S/C to make arrangements for Garden Party

Messiah workshop

• Amanda reported that she had received 10 bookings so far.  Heather produced flyers and these were distributed on seats at rehearsal.  This was also announced during notices.
• Nikki has put the flyer on our FB page, asking people to ‘like’ and share.  Justin has put on his own site and advertised it at his other choirs.  Amanda has taken flyers round shops, the library and information centre in Harleston and will do the same in Diss shortly.

Action – Amanda to distribute more flyers locally

• The Publicity S/C has also distributed details.
• We have agreed that we need a cut-off point of the end of July whereby we will cancel the event if we don’t have enough bookings.
• Whilst Karen is hoping to play for the workshop, John Witchell has kindly agreed to keep the date open in case she is unable to attend.

Community Events

• VE Day – A good number of the choir attended this event and we received a lovely letter of thanks from Redenhall with Harleston 

Town Council.  They have since asked us to attend the Christmas Tree Lights switch on event on 28^th November.  We agreed that this would be very good PR for the choir and that we would like to attend.

Action – Jo to get back to the Town Council to accept

• Stella suggested that we really need to be more prepared as unaccompanied singing outdoors is always a challenge.  We wondered if we could use Julia’s Karaoke machine for these events.

Justin would like to be involved in agreeing the format for public events such as this.  We will probably be singing carols that we’re doing for the Christmas concert but he feels anything else would need to be rehearsed outside of normal Monday evenings.  This will be further discussed at the next Music S/C meeting.

Action – to discuss how to prepare for community events

Christmas Concert

• Stella has found a trumpeter for this.  Karen hopes to be back by September but, if not, hopefully John can step in again.

• Replacement and recruitment policy for the Committee
• Malcolm informed us that the Diss branch of U3A is about to close as they struggle to get new people to join the committee.  He feels that there are many long-serving members on our committee with some nearing or in their eighties and that we should be looking to recruit younger or new members with fresh ideas.  He feels that more accessible meeting times would help so that working people can attend.

We will make an announcement at the start of the autumn term to give people a chance to think about joining by the AGM.

Action – Jo or Caroline to make announcement at first rehearsal

• Members’ feedback
• Some people have reported that Justin doesn’t always give them time to find the page numbers.  This could be because he is using a different score.

Action – Jo to ask Justin to wait for people to find the page.

10.  Next meeting – Monday September 15^th at 2.30pm at 

The Dell, Billingford, IP21 

The AGM will be on Monday 13^th October