Happy New Year!

The committee and I want to wish you all a Happy (BETTER!) New Year, to update everyone following the news about the grant from Sport England and to look forward to what we hope to do during 2021.

Firstly, many thanks to all of you who wrote in support of our planning application for the indoor range. This has been submitted (details in the attached committee meeting minutes) so we are waiting to see what happens! While we wait, we are continuing to ensure we get the best value for money from the grant and club funds and to this end we are attempting to reduce build costs and find more money. We will not actually spend anything on the project (except for the planning fee) until we get permission to build so we are getting more competitive quotes for things like ground works, foundations, the building itself and the electrics. If any member has ideas on this, or thinks we should speak to a specific business, please let a committee member know. On the subject of finding more funds: if any member has ideas where we could access additional money for our project please shout now as we are looking for other grants to ensure we can kit out the new range appropriately. All fingers and toes are firmly crossed!!

The Annual General Meeting this year (April) will probably have to be held virtually and we are planning the best way to do this – most likely a pre-read of the reports followed by a zoom meeting for the whole membership.

We have created a draft events calendar and competition schedule for 2021 but of course all activity is subject to prevailing COVID restrictions. When we are allowed to shoot outside again, we may have to run our various club competitions over a specified week to allow as many people as possible to submit scores.

On the subject of scores please also find attached some information about the use of Golden Records, a platform we are starting to use to collect and keep all club records and handicaps. Congrats to the 20 folks who shot the frostbite – see attached results

As in previous years we intend to support ArcheryGB over the Big Weekend in May – again this may be a week-long virtual event if the field remains closed. Suggestions on how we could further improve the normal outdoor arrangements would be welcomed.

The committee would like to invite members to submit ides for things we can all do to keep our archery mo-jo strong during this latest lockdown. I think it’s fair to say a lot of the things clubs (and workplaces) did during the first lockdown – online quizzes and virtual pubs for example – have faded a bit but there are plenty of things we can still do especially maintaining our kit and following the suggestions on ArcheryGB here: https://www.archerygb.org/shoot-compete/shoot/improve-your-game/ where you will also find loads of helpful videos. We would also welcome more ideas from the membership about the things we can do to keep engaged with our sport. Also, we would like to know what you would like to learn about archery and to hear any ideas you may have to improve our club and the facilities at our field. We will be calling again for volunteers to take part in our annual field tidy once the weather has improved and of course when the COVID restrictions have been lifted.