Our Open Day 2007

Once a year we open our doors to the public for a whole weekend, it's a brilliant time because every club member gets involved in some way, we draw on our resources and the results are amazing.

The night before, By the time the members arrived on the Friday evening the lathes where pretty much set up and the Gallery backdrop and table area had been erected, this work is best done with only a small number of members otherwise you get distracted and it all goes pear shaped. So now it was time to let the members loose using their imagination, skills and enthusiasm to dress the hall with boughs of holly, fa la la la la, la la la la, sorry but that just followed having sung that carol a good many times, just dress the hall. The members did a brilliant job and if I wore a hat I'd take it of to them, it was brilliant. Now I would like to take a few minutes of your valuable time to explain how we, the club did it.

Last year we had a committee to set up this weekend, this year I was sure of the help so no committee. Once I had confirmation of a number of things it was obvious it was going to work so no more sorting other than a brief chat with Don one Sunday morning, it just fell into place that Don would sort the lathe's and turners and I would do the other things, this gave us one end of the hall each and so the door track across the room became a humorous "go back over your side of the line" wise crack. The result of everybody's efforts was a resounding success.

We had fifty prizes for the Tom-Bola table, another fifty for the public gallery, on top of this we had a good number of donations for the members raffle (to be drawn on our May turn in night) CRM at Waterlooville our local supplier, Robert Sorby and our own members gave more than 20 items giving a grand total of more than 130 donated items for the event when you include the cakes, quiche's sausage rolls, chocolate brownies biscuits and the list goes on. On our gallery table there where 54 beautifully turned pieces for the public to choose their favourite, this is an interesting area as there is a lot of discussion about why they like their piece over another, I hasten to add it was all very friendly.

I know I'm repeating myself but it has to be said, there was very little prep work on my behalf for this event, all the credit goes to the members of the Forest of Bere Wood Turners, as you can imagine there was a good many areas each with its own way of working, I had no system to finalise the gallery draw, I had no idea we would get the 120 donated prizes which would need sorting, labelling and some means to control their coming and going, the Pyrography and refreshments all need to be presented properly, collating the public choice information and explaining to the public how it works, advertising the event, and the list goes on.

But this was always going to be an easy event to manage as the club members are more than capable of working together, if they see something needs doing they get on with it, they think it through and draw on the experience they have between them. There is an increasing friendly atmosphere at our club to the point that a good many people have mentioned it and that's from members, visiting turners/demonstrators and the general public.

The event itself was well attended with a good deal of interest shown to everything we offered. Most notable for me was the linking of people together, in brief there was Simon and Cliff from the Learning Zone, there working with teenage children still of school age with problems, they came as we the club have started helping them and the children, they then got chatting to Chris and Lucy (Chris is an Arborist who did a demo for us in October 2006) they live in the woods and have offered to assist them and Lucy has worked with trouble children and has agreed to pay a visit. Chris had a go at turning and is now well and truly hooked and can supply us with burrs and the like.

Grant, a service user at PDS Craft turned for the first time and now recognises Don, and Robin who used Pyrography to write Grants name on the finished piece. It was a real surprise when Grant followed my lead when I called out the names and numbers of the winners at the end of the day, he called out all fifty of them, a very emotional time for one particular caring person as he doesn't talk at PDS Craft? It turns out my wife knows Grants parents so they got chatting. Mark gave me a hand to return some things to Chris in the woods, Mark knew the previous Game Keeper there and has done some tree work so they got busy talking. These and I'm sure there was more I didn't hear about are the important things a club can build on, our members certainly aren't backward at coming forward.

The hall itself was filled with interesting things to see and touch, very important the touching, people must be able to pick things up and feel the object, as was explained to me a while back, pick the object up and see how it feels in the hand, its surprising how this helps when judging a piece. It seemed to me it took most people about an hour and a half to go right round the hall if they went to every table, chatted and had some refreshments. The oldest visitor was a 95 year old gentleman, who was interested in everything he saw and spent time discussing it, and the youngest was Kayleigh, she couldn't wait to get started and with jacket and goggles on Don helped her turn a dibber, Robin helped with the signing of it and to practice drawing a dragon on a piece of ply, she went home very proud of the items, I have a feeling we will see young Kayleigh again.

We had two young lads with us for most of the weekend, Dons Grandson Greg and his pal Daren, (apologies if I got your name wrong, I lost my bit of paper) these two lads will be the foundation of our junior section, and the powers to be will set to putting this together ASAP. I chatted to a number of people about this over the weekend and others have shown some interest so next year we will give them their own area to use at this event.

We had much the same things as last year, the public choice gallery, things of interest, matching pairs, the raw and the turned where visitors try to pair them off, 5 lathes going with the chance to have a go, Pyrography the burning a design on wood or leather, the Tom-Bola, a display from PDS Craft, a group run by the City Council for people with learning disabilities, this showed how we the club are helping them, and finally the refreshments. To compliment all that there where members happy to explain things and generally chat about anything related. When the time came for the draw it was all arranged and ready to go, what more could you ask. And with an efficient calling of the numbers over it was time to clear the hall, This was done in around one and a half hours, which considering we had to return Kens big heavy lathe to his workshop, the public gallery display to carefully dismantle so we can use it again next year, five lathes to clear plus the shavings, cables, wood, all those prizes, kitchen to clean, floor to vac and 54 gallery items to find a home for etc etc it was pretty good going I thought. So once again a very big WELL DONE to all the helpers, it was a first class performance. And there goes another Open Weekend.

Boots - March 2007