Our next meeting on Thursday 5th April will not be in Carlisle - we have been invited to be the guests of Cockermouth Speakers Club at Hundith Hill Hotel on the Lorton Road. The evening will be based on the TV show 'Room 101' and speakers will have about three minutes each to persuade the audience to support their case for consigning somebody or some item to the outer darkness of Room 101. They will then be questioned before the audience votes Yes or No.
Visitors will be as welcome as ever to swell the audience; we will meet at 18:50 hrs in the Car Park of Morton Community Centre and will then do a car-share to travel over to Cockermouth.
The following meeting, on Thursday 19th April, will again be held at Morton Community Centre at the usual time of 7:15 pm. The theme for the evening will be 'Flora and Fauna.'
Our Next Meeting, Thursday 5th April
Carlisle Speakers go Auctioneering
At our meeting on Thursday 2nd February we invited a guest speaker, Paul Laidlaw of H & H Auctioneers and of TV fame, to share his knowledge and experience of auctioneering with us. He gave a most interesting, amusing and informative talk on his profession and then joined enthusiastically in the rest of our meeting. This was in preparation for our following meeting on 16th February when the theme for the evening was a Mock Auction. None of us had done this before, so we needed an expert to show us how it is done!
Our Mock Auction (with mock money!) got members to bring an object to 'sell' and make a sales pitch for it before President Christine Shuttleworth, our 'Auctioneer,' invited bids. The objects were very varied and so were the sales pitches, some of which were even true!
Our members' experience of speaking varies from a month or two to nearly thirty years, but as this shows, we never stop learning new skills and often discovering some quite unexpected abilities.
Carlisle Hosts Border Area Competitions
Once again, as last year, Carlisle & District Speakers was the host club for the Association of Speakers Clubs Border Area Conference, at which entrants from the five clubs in the Area competed in Speech, Evaluation and Topics contests.
The Conference took place on Sunday 29th January at Morton Community Centre, Wigton Road, Carlisle and more than 45 members and guests attended from the Speakers Clubs of Annan, Carlisle & District, Cockermouth, Stranraer and West Coast (Workington & Whitehaven). VIP guests included Chris Robertson, President of North Western District of which Border Area is a part, and Graham McLachlan, National Vice-President. The Annual General Meeting which began proceedings chose three members of Carlisle & District Club to serve on the Area Executive for the next year from June 2012: Susan Trafford as President, John Barrie as Vice-President and Richard Hunt as Treasurer.
As current Vice-President Susan Trafford went on to chair the competitions which followed. The Speech winner was Frances Burditt of Cockermouth; Evaluation was won by Jess Sinclair, a founder member of Carlisle & District, pictured receiving the trophy from Chief Judge Vic Emmerson of Cockermouth; and the Topics winner was Liz McDonald of Annan. Unusually, the runner-up in each of the three competitions was a member of West Coast Club: 16-year-old Jess Longrigg for Speech and Anna Wilson for both Evaluation and Topics. Winners and runners-up will all go on to compete at North Western District Competitions on 4th March at Motherwell.
Workshops 21/1/12
Saturday, 21st January saw Carlisle and District Speakers Club trying out a new venture. In response to requests for some general training on Public Speaking, the club organized some business-based workshops at Morton Community Centre.
Christine Shuttleworth, club president, welcomed more than 20 people to the workshops on Chairmanship, Presentation and Impromptu Speaking skills.
The workshops, aimed at providing tips on improving techniques on Public Speaking, as well as suggestions to reduce stress and anxiety of this number one fear in life today, were warmly received with comments such as, from one participant from a voluntary organization:
“A brilliant course, I really enjoyed it, I am taking away some positive tips & skills I can go on to use”.
Many would like more sessions like these and the club will have to think about how these might be financed.
Susan Trafford, Education Director said that, “Training for skills in Public Speaking is often low on an employer’s agenda, but employees with excellent speaking skills increase opportunities for maximizing the marketing potential of any organisation, promoting their products, be it a car, increasing take up of a project, or informing the electorate of a change in policy”.
“Training of this type is difficult to source locally at reasonable cost, so we were delighted to be able to provide an afternoon of training that has been so well received.”
The workshops were attended by people from the public, private and voluntary sectors.
At the end of the afternoon all those attending were able to practise their newly acquired skills choosing whether to speak from the stage, or use a microphone, maybe for the first time.
The afternoon was rounded off by a demonstration of a Speech by Gordon Little entitled, ‘Breaking the Barrier’, a personal account of achieving public speaking competence.
As well as attendance certificates, participants were given tickets enabling them to attend the Border Area Speaking Competitions, to be held next Sunday afternoon, 29/1/12 at Morton Community Centre.Annual Competition Results, 17th November
Here are the winners of the Carlisle & District Speakers Club's annual Competition Night, held on Thursday 17th November at Morton Community Centre, Wigton Road, Carlisle.
Left to Right: Christine Shuttleworth (Club President), Gordon Little (Speech winner), Margaret Hunt (Topics winner), David Heaton (Border Area President and Chief Judge) and Jess Sinclair (Evaluation winner).
Contests comprised Speech (prepared), Evaluation of a speech made by a guest speaker, and Topics (contestants to make a mini-speech without preparation on a theme given them by the Topics Chairman as they enter the room - a great exercise in thinking on one's feet!) These represent the principal skills that we hope to develop by joining a Speakers Club.
Gordon Little won the Speech competition with Runner-up John Barrie; Jess Sinclair won Evaluation with Runner-up Christine Shuttleworth, and Margaret Hunt won the Topics with Runner-up John Barrie.
Grateful thanks to our Judges: David Heaton (President of Border Area) and David Preshaw, both of West Coast Speakers Club, and Peter Hodgson of Cockermouth SC - and special thanks to our Guest speaker Roger Wise, who presented a speech for the Evaluation competitors to practise their skills on. The whole event was organised by our Education Director Susan Trafford, without whose hard work and leadership it could not have happened.
