106 | P a g e
A F EW W ORDS F ROM T HE I NCOMING P RESIDENT “Talk about your hopes and dreams for the future” was the request from my friend and current President Steve Knibbs for this piece of scribe. As a Club, we’ve spent a lot of time over the past year discussing the future of the club and within that, also debating the question “What future?”. The club may have a history stretching back more than a century, but that does not offer any guarantees of survival. Indeed, often such longevity can be the enemy of survival, as our surroundings change but we don’t change with it, then we think it’s the world that it wrong, not us. I’ve been in other organisations where that has rung true, most pertinently sitting on a church council. I naturally have conversations with my kids from time to time about my school days and talk about their education and schooling. And whilst I am grateful for the education the Crypt gave me, thank goodness things have changed. I didn’t want my kids to go to a single sex school. We live in a mixed sex world and I don’t think the single sex environment is a good grounding for the future. I remember just turning up at the Crypt on day one, whereas there is much more support these days for that transition into senior school. There is also a changed environment in terms of well-being support and development. Whilst I look upon my school days with thanks for the education I received, they were of their time. At least neither of my kids have to worry about dodging a blackboard eraser on its mission to hit the child third desk from the left, second row from the back (I always admired that particular teacher’s pin-point accuracy). As a club, I ask myself how have we changed over the past 30-40 years? The answer is, very little. Some may see that as a good thing, after all if it brings about companionship and friendship, then has its job been done? Change can also be hard, as we found out when we made some changes to our constitution some years ago. I also see that if we don’t change, we won’t survive and that has been reflected in many of the conversations we’ve had over the past year. We don’t represent the diversity of the school, our membership is declining and whilst our purpose may be clear in our constitution (essentially helping people keep in touch with each other and the school), the means of achieving it have changed and we’ve not kept pace. The establishment of the 1539 Foundation, whilst initially seen by many as a threat to the Club, is ultimately our best opportunity to force the needed change. It provides the scale, technology and resources that the Club cannot ever have hope to achieve. Our choice was to work alongside it and seek the means by which we could both flourish, or choose another, more independent path. We chose the former and we must now flesh out what that means and work together to ensure that the Club survives, but in a shape and form that complements the Foundation. Social events should be the backbone of that involvement. Yes, the past few years have shown us that we can achieve great things when we are apart, but there is no substitute to getting together and the unique opportunities that brings. I started a new job just 2 weeks before the first lockdown. I now go into the office around 3 days a week now. Nearly every time I go in, I meet someone face to face for the first time or meet someone new. I always end up in a conversation that I would not have otherwise had, leading to opportunities and insights that would not have happened staring at a screen at home. I thank Steve and committee for the work of the past year, which has not always been easy or immediately rewarding. I don’t pretend that they next year is going to be easy, but it’s going to be necessary if we are going to reshape the Club to be able to better face the future.
Simon Smith (1982-89)
