Lichfield Branch

A View From The Helm

Since the Pandemic our Branch, like many other organisations, has been struggling to attract members, visitors to events & volunteers to activities. People have got used to not going out, depending on Social Media and being isolated.

My principal aim since being elected chairman has been to address this issue by ensuring that we have an attractive programme of topics and speakers at our monthly meetings that can be published & promoted for the year ahead.

I believe that we also need to address our ageing membership and the perception that IWA is only for boaters and possibly only for narrow boaters. We need to broaden the appeal of our events, attracting everyone interested in our inland waterways and that includes the public, boaters and non-boaters alike. Improving opportunities for social interaction at our meetings will be a bonus,

Our Lock Wind on 6th August at Barton Turn on the Trent & Mersey has been publicised in Barton under Needwood’s community magazine. We’ll see if anyone comes to find what IWA is about. On the August Bank Holiday we’ll be at IWA’s Festival of Water at Pelsall.

Getting folks in gives the best chance of showing them the friendliness and social benefits of our Branch meetings. And converting them later to IWA membership. Inside this edition of Lichfield Lines with its new attractive cover created & edited by Pete Gurney, you’ll find our programme from September to next April. Please put the dates in your diaries and plan to come to our meetings. The programme will also be on the Branch website pages and on our Facebook page. Its ‘use it or lose it’ time!

In addition to historic topics on the heydays of our canals, Neil, your vice-chairman, & I have attracted speakers on fascinating subjects outside the usual range of our meetings.

These include Stephanie Horton managing director of River & Canal Rescue (whom I first met twenty years ago when we were obtaining our RYA Helmsman certificates); Nik Antona, national chairman of CAMRA & Dr Harry White chairman of the National Brewery Heritage Trust.

After 50 years of saving cask beer (dear to the heart of many IWA members) CAMRA is now facing new challenges of ageing membership, pubs closing & Branch decline, some of which are similar to those facing IWA.

Younger people are attracted mostly only to CAMRA’s beer festivals as they are for IWA’s Waterways Recovery Group activities. They shy away from taking office helping to run our Branches.

Burton’s breweries fortunes were transformed by the arrival of the Trent & Mersey