40th Anniversary of the Association of Speakers Clubs

2012 has been an important year for Speakers: it marks the 40th anniversary of the foundation of the Association of Speakers Clubs, the 30th of the launch of Carlisle Ladies Speakers Club and the 10th of its becoming the mixed club it now is, Carlisle & District Speakers Club.

Amid all the changes and turnover we still have three of the original Founding Members from 1982:
Christine Shuttleworth, Jess Sinclair and Margaret Hunt, all active and whose experience is of the greatest value to all of our members.

Last month North West District of ASC held an Anniversary celebration lunch in Motherwell for members from all three Areas in the District.  This was attended by the National President of ASC, Graham McLachlan of Renfrew Speakers Club, here seen presenting Carlisle's John Barrie with his Advanced Certificate of Achievement.

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Topics Competition Result

Our annual Topics competition was held at Morton Community Centre on Thursday 15 November.  It had been deferred from the 1st November because of the number of entries in the Speech Competition at that meeting.

A 'Topic' is an impromptu speech of three minutes to be given on a subject handed to the speaker as he or she walks into the room; preparation time is only as long as it takes to reach the point of delivery, so it is literally a test of one's ability to think on one's feet.

The winner was Margaret Hunt, who now proceeds to the the Border Area competition on 27th January 2013.  Many thanks to our Judges: Yvonne Spencer and Eileen O'Reilly, both former members of our Club, and Ella Atherton.

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Club Competition Night, 1st November

Our Club's annual Competition Night was at Morton Community Centre, Wigton Road, Carlisle.  Six members took part in the Speech competition and three in Evaluation, where they successively evaluated a speech given by our Guest Speaker David Preshaw of West Coast Speakers Club.

The winner of the Speech competition was Susan Trafford, whose speech was titled 'Anomalies,' and the runner-up was Jill Simpson, speaking about 'A Perfect Loaf.'  Margaret Hunt was the Evaluation winner.

Many thanks are due to Chief Judge Peter Hodgson of Cockermouth Speakers Club, assisted by Cathie Forbes and Esme Forbes of Annan SC, and to our Education Director John Barrie for all his hard work in organising and chairing the event.  Peter was very complimentary about the high standard of the entries, and John pointed out that the majority were recent recruits to the Club, so still at an early stage of their development as speakers.

The winners will now progress to the Association of Speakers Clubs Border Area competitions to be held on Sunday 27th January 2013, again at Morton Community Centre, where the five clubs in the Area will compete to send Area representatives to North West District in the spring.

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Inter-Club Debate, Thursday 4th October

At our meeting on Thursday 4th October our Club welcomed West Coast Speakers Club for a debate.  The motion to be debated was "The school leaving age should return to 15."  West Coast Club, represented by Anna Wilson and Jess Longrigg, spoke for the motion and Carlisle & District, represented by Richard Hunt and Ella Atherton, spoke against it.  The debate was a friendly competition, taking the place of the usual format of prepared speeches.   We were delighted to welcome past members and friends as guests in addition to our 'official' guests from West Coast, and our larger-than-usual audience clearly enjoyed the occasion.  The audience put some tough questions to the debaters, and finally decided by ballot after the Chairman Susan Trafford had closed the debate that West Coast were the winners.  Many thanks were given to Susan from all sides for her hard work in organising the occasion; watch for a repeat competition in later seasons!

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Jess is our new President

The meeting on Thursday 17th May was in two parts: first our AGM, at which our President and Committee were elected, and then a more normal meeting with speeches presented by two members.  Our new President is Jess Sinclair, to whom outgoing President Christine Shuttleworth handed over the badge of office, and who then presided over the rest of the meeting.  The Vice-President is Richard Hunt, who also remains as Treasurer and was awarded the Ruthie Lockyer Clock, donated by a former President, for progress during the year.  Rebecca Farrimond continues as Secretary and Susan Trafford as Education Director.  John Barrie, who as Vice-President of Border Area will be the convenor for Area competitions, joins the Committee as Competition Organiser.  We wish our Officers and Committee members all the best for the 2012-13 season and hope we can build on our successes in 2011-12 and continue to increase our membership.

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'Room 101', Thursday 5th April

Our meeting on Thursday 5th April was as guests of Cockermouth Speakers Club at Hundith Hill Hotel. The evening was based on the TV show 'Room 101' and speakers, taken alternately from both clubs, had 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. The selected 'victims' were many, varied and ingeniously chosen and there then followed questions and a lot of humorous debate from the audience before a vote Yes or No.

This was a fun social event rather than a competition, and the members of both clubs agreed that it had been very enjoyable and worth repeating in the future. Many thanks to Cockermouth Speakers for devising the format.

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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.

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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.

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