We'd love to hear from Committees how they engage with their Members during this time. Please share here so we can all achieve more together

Many thanks Dave, I will look at that and give it a go.

Does anyone know of a free 'invite' app that we can use for lectures/SIDs to invite, members can reply to, and we can keep an eye on numbers? We have looked into Eventbright but it is too sophisticated for our needs and it puts the event on Facebook which we don't want. If it also provides an easy and speedy check in facility all the better! There must be some way to ease the jostle, and need for space, of check in before a lecture. There are quite out there but it would be very useful to hear if someone is familiar with a particular one. with many thanks. AS Malmesbury

We had some audio issues with our live walk in Tokyo but that's been sorted out. Our next live walk is in Kyoto on 30th March at 9am for an hour and a half and we will hopefully see the Japanese cherry blossom. If you want to come along, please email richmond@theartssociety.org

Richard, that sounds a fabulous way to kick start 2021. Best wishes to you and all at Richmond Society.

The Arts Society Richmond has just agreed to have a virtual live walk in Tokyo, like the one we did in Venice. The date is not set yet but it’ll be in the last two weeks of January.

Dorset County have already had On-line lectures via Zoom in June, (our lecturer ran it twice) with another this evening. We communicate via MailChimp. For the 12 members without Internet we are sending Newsletters with the Printable Lectures. One page is ideal Because of printing costs, even doing it cheaply via internet. We are supplementing this with articles about Heritage Projects and Church Recording and Trails and will be sending these via MailChimp, too, each month. We are going to offer the rest of the year on-line lectures for new members at half the annual fee, putting leaflets through postboxes. Also putting on an extra lecture in July. Now absorbing all the information sent on16 June and researching You Tube as a possible improved platform, easier for members.

Richmond had its first virtual walk this morning and it was a great success. We walked around the East End. Lots of lovely emails. I particularly want to tell you about one email. A member wrote that she loved the virtual walk because she’s not fit enough to go on normal visits. She hopes that we will include a few virtual visits in the annual programme when things get back to normal. That’s a great suggestion. We need to cater for everyone.

Pewsey Vale held its first zoom lecture this week, and thanks to Richard Lebus For his excellent advice, there were no technical hiccups and we all thoroughly enjoyed Ian Swankie’s talk on the Great Railway Stations of the World. Now lots of requests from members for a July online lecture. I thoroughly recommend Elizabeth Gowing’s online lecture on Silver Filigree work - absolutely fascinating.

We had our first on-line lecture at TAS Grayshott (Hants )this week, a Zoom webinar with Sian Walters. I'm glad to report that it went extremely well. We had an audience of over 50% of our current membership, not far off the number we typically get at any one normal lecture, which would rarely be much above 60%. I’ve since had a large number of emails from members, all really happy with the experience and wanting more. Sian was excellent and most people had no problems with the technology. I was able to speak at the beginning and the end and we had a few questions and comments via the chat function. The committee phoned round all our members in advance, which was undoubtedly a big help in securing the turnout, as well as being much appreciated by the members. But I realise it would be more difficult for a big Society (we have some 160). We also offered a Zoom practice meeting for earlier this week, which was welcomed and went pretty well. But the Zoom webinar format Sian used at the lecture is certainly easier to join and control. We aim for our next lecture to use that format too, if the lecturer can do it. However we may need the standard Zoom meeting format for some lecturers. Those who came to the Zoom practice also liked the idea of trying a virtual coffee morning, making use of the Zoom breakout rooms function to split people into small groups for some of the time. Any tips on this very welcome!

I'd like to record my thanks to AS staff and to TAS Chiswick, Richmond and Worcester, who all kindly gave us the benefit of their experience with on-line lectures beforehand.

We have decided to “hibernate” our society. We don’t think we’d get sufficient members watching online lectures to justify the incredible hassle and cost, with no benefit for the majority. Instead, we are sending regular newsletters, and supplying them with lots of links to online cultural resources.

Importantly, we have told the membership that we are planning to extend the current subscription year until we have been able to offer the full programme of 10 lectures at the Hall - we can’t in all good faith run any kind of renewals process this autumn, when we haven’t given them value for money for this year, and have no idea what we will be able to offer next year.

We sent out the notification of an email/postal AGM process last week, and are about half-way to a quorum of 75 (25% of the membership), so will send out a nudge or two before the official AGM date.

Many thanks Shirley

Thanks for posting that taster Shirley. DO you have a Zoom licence yourself and if so for how many people? Best wishes Chrissie from Birmingham Arts Soc

Oh How unfortunate. Our Society sends an e-Bulletin to our members each month with links to virtual museum tours...and an update on our activities as a Committee...we've had Zoom committee meetings each month. We're expecting to host our first Zoom lecture this month.We recognise that we need to work to retain our members and then work to attract new members in the future. Our non-email members have been contacted by telephone to keep them in the loop.

There appears to be such a lot of communication going on between committees and society members. It's very sad that some societies are just not communicating in any supportive way with their members.

As another way of keeping in touch with most members, we've just invited them to share photos of anything of an art or caft related nature that they've been working on in lockdown - or reasonably recently - including work in progress. The idea is that they will e-mail to me a photo or photos and then I'll put them up in a kind of 'virtual exhibition' on our website. We'll see what sort of response we get. No doubt this is not a new idea but may be worth considering (and depending on the capability of your website).

We're putting our toes in the on-line lecture waters next month when Sian Walters is going to talk to us about the Guggenheim in Bilbao. Fingers - or should that be toes? - crossed.

How are Societies giving members who do not have any email addresses or indeed computers fully engaged and accessing material? Are there printed lectures we can send by snail mail so these members feel it is worth renewing their membership? We have a small number of totally e-free members and we don't want them to feel there is no point in renewing. We have been in contact by phone with them all, now we need to send them something beyond a printed version of the Mailchimp messages I send monthly. Thanks for all ideas.

Hello Cheryl, it depends how you have gathered your email addresses Are they all on Mailchimp or do you have them on your own email provider? The important thing is that you send out the email with the addresses all entered into BCC which will be under the To, CC. That way they cannot read each others' addresses. As yet, we do not use Mailchimp and I have all the members' emails on my Outlook account gathered into smaller groups as some providers do not like sending out too many addresses at once. Write your email to them all and then press send and they will all go out blind. Send one to yourself as well and you will see that it has worked.

Hope that helps,

Katharine Odlum, Malmesbury

We are are beginning to look at using online lectures. First I would like to email our members to find out their views and which platforms they may already be familiar with using. So a simple question, is there a way I can email our 350 members with one email and not showing all the email addresses and having to write them in one by one ? Advice please.

Thank you Sue for your comments. I accept that there must be advantages in its use, so really should try to give it a fair go in due course.

yes - Mailchimp should be much easier than it is I feel. I was given the manual by someone who went on a course - but she never used it - wonder why? Its OK to look up a few things but i dont think its a good starting point. I then went on a course - but it wasnt that good as there were too many people who hadnt done thier homework so we didnt get very far - but the way she started was better - to use a template that she sent us - not to start from scratch - then you can just reuse the template each time.

So yes - you can add pictures, links to online stuff, get reports of useage ( opens, clicks)

We only have a few members who are not online now so it is easier than emails.