Clowns International AGM 2018 – Toby Carvery, Coventry Road Birmingham

Members Present: Present: Noeleen Fries Neumann, Susi Oddball, David Vaughan, Mattie Faint, Ian Thom, Wendy Ann Gibson, Ian Williams, Caroline Ainslie, Rob Bowker, Mo Via electronic means: electronic means: Michel Hojer, Toto Johnson, Luni Smil, Anne-Mette Hojer, Henrik Fries Neumann, Conor Joe Sef, Ro Zie, Anete Christiansen, Matthew Inge, Gerry Humphries, Leonora Piper, Benjamin Breith. Meg Cochran, Steve Benton Apologies: Simon Thomson, Martyn Cooper, Chris Stone, Blue Brattle, Carol Bosworth, Chris Fincham, John Cooper, Jester Jim, Spotty, Lori Lythgoe Whyley, Annie Dolny, Masjolie Noeleen opened the meeting with a greeting to our online members Chairman’s report: report: This has been a very challenging year for the club in so many ways, Among the committee, personal challenged faced by everyone of us have drastically impacted our work for the club. Members have been quick to criticize but slow to support the solution. We enter today’s meeting without a Joey editor or a nomination for treasurer. We have done what we can to support each other but the existing team simply cannot stretch any further. In the absence of adequate funding and the temporary loss of one of the venues required for our Bognor even, we reduced the scale of the event to be a professional development weekend for members. The decision to cancel was taken because there were NO registrations for the event. An Alternative gathering was offered in Belfast which was extremely successful, financially covered all of it’s costs and brought a few new members onto the club. The survey of members regarding the type of event we should aim to hold in future shows a range of opinions on the matter with no clear consensus. We have invested a huge amount of time and effort into improving the current perception of clowns in the media with some excellent results. The club continues to be financially healthy I would like to thank all of the team (elected and co-opted) on the 2017/2018 committee for their fantastic dedication to the club despite their individual personal challenges over the past year. PRO’s report: report: In my role as PRO for CI I have dealt with all media enquiries & opportunities in a positive manner and put CI and the art of clowning in a positive light wherever possible. I have prevented a few negative stories from getting out & I’m happy to continue on that role with the memberships approval. Secretary’s report: report: It’s been a busy old year and I feel like I’ve never stopped travelling festival to festival, there’s been a lot happening behind the scenes of CI with us organising a festival, mainly thanks to Susi, Sue and Caroline organising over the course of a year and multiple visits to Bognor to source funding, unfortunately the festival had only 1 member sign up and it became financially unviable to continue, we needed to have something as we had our education officer had reserved the weekend we booked for the weekend to deliver a 2 day workshop. Noeleen stepped into the breach and organised a 2 day workshop open to CI members and non clown members and we managed to sign up 2 new and very enthusiastic members at this event. We’ve (I say we but Susi mainly) signed up a few new members in Svendborg too. We’ve failed to get the Joey out and have taken a lot of comments on board on the production on it. We have a team looking at redesigning