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Annual General Meeting 3rd March 2025

Our 2025 AGM was held at St Chad's Parish Centre, our usual venue for such events. The business meeting began at 10:15. We were joined at 11:00 by friends who had been persuaded to come along and listen to the talks by two recent Awards recipients.The buffet lunch, immensely enjoyed by all was served at 12:15 - but not on the dot: we all had so much to chat about. 

Our student speakers this year were Felicity and Hannah. Felicity is in her second year at the Royal Northern College of Music studying for an MMus in Conducting. She worked as a self-employed musician until lockdown, when life became particularly difficult for performers; and then continued free-lancing, but knew that to make significant progress she'd need to do a Masters in Conducting. She now continues performing as cellist, conductor and teacher. But her main passion will always be for conducting. Such an energised, enthusiastic and persuasive young women would, we knew, go far.

Then it was Hannah's turn. She is at Durham University on a one-year MSc course in Global and Planetary Health, after getting a first-class degree in Biomedicine; to save money for the course, she worked full-time for the Samaritans. After experiencing the effect of being banished to her father's allotment during lockdown, when nature was offering respite from the bad news and all the anxiety attached, she wanted to study the interface between human health and environmental sustainability and how that could lead to social justice. That's what she's learning on her Masters course. She's now heard that she's been accepted to do a PhD. She'll be investigating how people in post-industrial towns build resilience in the face of climate crisis. Her talk was totally fascinating and brilliantly illustrated and we knew that this was another woman who would go far!