Reports

Chairmans Report 2024

Chairman’s report 24

 

We have managed to complete a full programme of talks, and these have been delivered in hybrid form with a live audience in the hall and as many as forty tuning in on Zoom from as far away as Canada, Australia, Sweden, and the USA. With the generous help of our technical expert Ron McHugh, we have improved the quality of our talks for both the hall and virtual audiences by having a camera trained on the speaker at the lectern which makes for a much more realistic presentation experience. Thanks go also to Bruce McKenzie and Fraser Kemp for their assistance.

The town walks and the Kirkyard Tours continue to be popular throughout the summer. The booking system for the Town walks proved to be very useful.

In last year’s report I mentioned the remarkable memoir of Kirkcudbright marine engineer, John McKie, which was kindly donated by Bud Gordon from her late husband Jimmy’s collection. It was therefore a delight to include in our programme a talk by David Devereux and Donald Henry in which they reported on the progress of the community project to transcribe the document, carry out further research, and eventually produce a publication.

The Website and Facebook social media provision remains vibrant and together with the monthly newsletters have kept the membership, and the wider public, abreast of a wealth of topics of historical interest. The Website is attracting about 1,000 viewers per month and the Facebook page now has 1,000 followers. I am indebted to Helen Bowick for her splendid work in keeping all these communication outlets relevant and interesting. Helen passes on her thanks to Barry Russell for his help and guidance on her IT issues and to David Collin and David Devereux for their help in fielding the many queries she receives through the site. We are also grateful to David Collin for the lovely posters he produces for our events.

As we will hear, the club remains in a healthy financial position, and I am very grateful to Treasurer Donald Cowell for his careful management of our funds.

We have been very fortunate in having Carol McQuistan as our secretary. Her impressive organisational skills and wide knowledge of the town and its people have been invaluable. In particular, she has played a major part in driving forward the ungraded hybrid meeting format.  So, to her and all the committee members I offer my sincere thanks.