Reports from Group Leaders

 

Reports from our group leaders

Playing Simple Music: Malcolm Simmons

I hope this 'report' from the PSM group isn't too late for the AGM. With much regret I've now decided that I can't be group leader for that group as health matters have forced me to admit that I can't put in the energies needed. If someone else would take-up the baton, I would be very happy to give support as a player or scribe and give access to any material that we've accumulated since 2003. For me, I've had a lot of fun and made many friends as well as to gain motivation to dust off minor music skills dating from my school days.

Poetry Reading: Beryl Paton

During the last year the Poetry Reading group had several successful Zoom meetings and latterly several actual meetings - which were much appreciated by us all and hosted by Jo and Malcolm Simmons in their garden and on their verandah. Recent topics covered included "Gardens" and poems by John Clare and John Betjeman. We will be reading poems about Autumn and Harvest at our October meeting.

Canasta: Christine Hill

The Spire Canasta Group continues to go well. We meet every two weeks to do battle with melds and Canastas, with red threes and jokers. We have two sets of rules operating  that gives a bit of a variety in playing.

Drawing Tuition Christopher Browne

This group has under reported to Spire, please forgive: we are in many ways rather a wild-card group, but do continue to function monthly and have attenders both from Spire and from other Salisbury u3as. We meet at the home of a group-member who has a large screen, which is used to summon up images of various works of art (mainly but not only paintings) which come into the discussion of the day. The other main resource for our work is my own personal and accurate visual memory of art-works, through having been an art-history teacher for many years, including at Salisbury College of Art when it was in New Street many years ago.
A loose description of a session: the business starts with Homework, set at the end of the previous session. Each person in turn shows what they brought (often more than one piece, sometimes many). But there is no judgment of the quality or talent of the drawings, and no competition for praise. It is all a matter of what ideas the (very different) homework contributions  bring to the discussion of the homework theme the were done in response to.
So, yesterday's meeting (September 27th) the homework was to draw in whatever medium or style a visual theme to be suitable for a really big chalk-drawing on a hillside to be carried out in the manner of the Wiltshire White Horses, or the Cerne Giant in Dorset. The results were very varied and interesting, and led us on to further discussion of iconic qualities in art works, and the importance of offering clear memory-impressions with the image, rather than realistic representation of a subject. And how iconic imagery works not only for Greek orthodox church screens, but for computer screen desk-top icons.
You see our thoughts range quite widely: good exercise for the surviving grey cells.
I hope this gives you some idea of what we do and how we set about it. I don't know if, in this form, you would think it useful to circulate Around The Spire? Speaking of that phrase: has our Harnham Chapter of u3a expressed any feeling of linking with the sculpture in the northeast corner of The Square?