HarmonicaUK Newsletter - November 2023

Welcome to our November Newsletter. 

Here at HarmonicaUK central, we've all just returned from a fantastic weekend away at our annual festival at Hillscourt near Birmingham. The weekend was a full on musical experience with a super-friendly atmosphere, from the Friday night jam, through workshops and the Saturday concert, right to the closing delegates concert on the Sunday. All the artists were amazing to listen to, both in concerts and workshops, we had five fantastic trade stands, plus an auction (which was great fun, thanks to our auctioneer John Cook, as well as many bargains to be had). I'll leave it there for now, as a full review of the weekend will be coming out in the Spring issue of Harmonica World (unfortunately the Winter issue is already on it's way to print, so there was no time to get a review in). I'd like to say a big thankyou to all the committee and crew for putting on a great event, and to all those who attended and made it the weekend it was.

We, as usual, held our AGM at the festival; I'd like to welcome new committee members Darren Lampon (treasurer) and Sam Spranger (editor) to the committee. I'd also like to take this opportunity to congratulate Dave Colclough on taking on the role of Chair, and to thank departing members Phil Leiwy and Barbara Tate for all their hard work over the years on committee.

I am also, however, the bearer of sad news; you may have noticed that our comms manager, Suzy Colclough, has not written the introduction to this newsletter. Unfortunately she had a bad accident at the weekend, and is currently in hospital. Due to a lack of volunteers, this means that the HarmonicaUK Newsdesk is closed for the foreseeable future, which also means that our newsletters will be lacking news content for a while. We will still aim to keep you up to date with our events via the newsletter as best we can. Please also note that the monthly open mic, due to take place tomorrow, Saturday 4th, is, sadly, cancelled. I'm sure you'll all join me sending best wishes to Suzy and Dave during a difficult time.

With that in mind, I need to let you all know that we are desperately short of volunteers. Without volunteers, HarmonicaUK will cease to operate. We need help with the magazine, newsdesk, social media, administration, festival planning, and more. Our committee and current volunteers are all stretched. Many hands make light work as they say, so if you can offer an hour a week (or more) it would be a great help to the day to day running of your favourite harmonica charity, and will contribute to us being able to provide all the services we currently do going forward. Helping HarmonicaUK as a volunteer is great fun, and it's surprising what you get to learn about the harmonica when you are helping with other tasks - volunteering is a great way to meet other harmonica loving folks!

If you can help as a volunteer in any capacity, or if you have some time but don't know how you can help, please pop an email to our new Chair: [email protected] 

With this newsletter coming to a close, I'll be getting back to the events team chat, we're already thinking about next year's festival! 

Barry

Barry Elms
HarmonicaUK Webmaster