Greetings!
Last year at the 2022 ARM, under the new constitution passed at that meeting, I was honoured to be elected as the first holder of the office of ‘Squire Elect’ established under that constitution, and I took over as Squire from Simon Newman in the course of the 2023 ARM itself. I should like to thank Simon for all the hard work and effort he put in since his election in 2020, especially seeing the Ring through Covid and bringing in a constitution fit for the times in which we live.
The Ring has been through many changes these past twelve years, and no Ring Officer can know what is going to come our way over the next few years. One of the things I want to do is to ensure that the Ring remains relevant to its members, and to keep in touch with you all by sending out the occasional message about what is going on and what we are doing, in addition to what appears in the Bagman’s Newsletters. This is going to be the first such message.
It is very important to me that I am contactable by and responsive to our membership. The Ring exists to serve the member sides and I want to ensure that happens. I want to stress to everyone that if you or any member of your side have a Morris issue that is troubling you, or if you have a complaint or a bright idea about something, just write to me at squire [at] themorrisring.org and I will do my utmost to get back to you as quickly as I can. Also don’t forget that each side has an Area Representative whose job it is to keep in touch with the sides in his or her area – do make use of these people, as they are keen to help. If you would rather contact me, feel free to do so. If you don’t know who your area rep is, just ask!
I attend meetings of the Joint Morris Organisations (JMO) as one of the Ring’s representatives, and it is the Ring’s turn to chair the JMO in 2023. This year, in addition to the annual JMO Day of Dance (in Exeter on 22 April), the JMO is organising a number of local Days of Dance in September/October to mark 20 years since the Morris was able to get an exemption from some of the potentially more troubling provisions of the 2003 Licensing Act. Without this exemption, many of the public outdoor and indoor activities we enjoy might have had to be licensed, which could have killed off numerous traditional activities. You will be sent details of all the local events in due course, and we hope to see you at one of these events.
I wanted to draw your attention to a couple of important matters for sides that came up at the ARM. The first is the perennial problem of recruitment. The JMO recently organised, though the Morris Federation, an online workshop on the subject of recruitment. In this, several speakers shared their experiences of running recruitment campaigns. A recording of the workshop is available on Youtube at the link at the end of this paragraph and I would urge all Bagmen to share this with their side members as it is almost certain to contain some suggestion that you haven’t already tried in your recruiting efforts. It is important to stress that recruitment is something we should think about throughout the year, and not just as the practice season approaches. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jp9Idwx6dtY
Club archives were the subject of a very interesting discussion at the ARM. You may not think that your side’s archive is particularly important, but no-one knows what will be important in the future. Every team should know where their archive material is and have a plan for preserving it somewhere, particularly if the worst happens and the team decides to hang up their bells. It’s good for each side to have a person responsible for the archive, and he/she should ensure that other members of the side know where the material is, and the archivist’s family members should be aware of where it is, and what to do with it if the archivist becomes unable to look after it or suddenly passes away. There are stories of family members being completely unaware that a side’s archive material was in their house and the whole lot going into a skip. The obvious place to deposit a side’s archive is with your local County Records Office, and the Ring’s Archive group (MRAG) recommends that sides contact their local office and find out what they would require so as to be in a position to act should the side fold. The MRAG hopes to produce guidance for sides on this very subject before long.
Lastly, I want to draw your attention to the relaunch of the Morris Ring web site (https://themorrisring.org). This is only the beginning as it has been moved to a new server with new software etc—we will be adding material and hope to include as many suggestions as we can from the Bagman’s recent survey. We’ve spent many hours testing and checking, but should you come across any oddities, we'd be grateful if you could let us know using the contact form at https://themorrisring.org/contact-morris-ring. We thank in particular our webmaster ( Martin Jones) and our web editor (Peter de Courcy) for all their hard work.
Anyway, I’ve gone on for long enough now. Remember to share this message with your members, and please keep in touch with me, especially if I can help with anything. I very much hope I will meet as many of you in person at some event or other over the next couple of years.
Take care, and all the best for the upcoming dancing season.
Nigel Strudwick
Squire, The Morris Ring