Welcome to your monthly Derby and Sandiacre Canal update!

Firstly, we hope you can support us at a few events – details in the Packet over the next month or so – even if you only pop by and say hello you’d be very welcome.

We will be at Breaston Gala on Monday 4th May (Mayday), at Swarkestone Lock (and Garden Centre) raising funds at a Lock through supported by Swarkestone Boat Club, and in early June we expect to be at The Chaddesden Carnival on Sunday 7th June. Hopefully the boat trailer will be renovated by then and attracting a lot of attention.

I hope you are in receipt of the Packet, despatched last week, so you’ll be up to date on activities. As you’ll see from the activity on our website, Facebook and Twitter we have a new committee member, who is trying to bring us up to speed in keeping you informed. Thanks to those that let us know about email address changes – we like to keep you up to date and emails are so much more cost effective. Thanks to all who have followed us on Facebook and retweeted our news.

Just as important is our activity on the Trust and you’ll see that we have a lot of activity there as well. We’ve had an offer of some support on the admin, but we could do with as much help as we can get. We are conducting a lot of meetings with Councils, CRT, HLF, etc and have a lot of correspondence presentations and grant applications to deal with. As there’s a considerable overlap between the Society and Trust there’s a danger that we don’t cover all the ground that we want to. As an example we have called off the boat rally as without the external support from Rotary we will not have the support to do it well.

So as the progress picks up pace please let me know if you could spare time with the following areas being the most obvious:
· Engineering/construction expertise

· Grant application

· Secretarial skills to develop presentations and manage the reports, information and historical photos

· Membership communications to gather and keep up to date contact details, and talk to members about what they like and how we could improve.

This isn’t an exhaustive list, but any help to existing committee members releases their time to do something else. And I think that while we are a passionate group, we all enjoy the activities and the company and welcome anyone who shares our passion.

See you soon.

Chris Madge
Chairman
Derby and Sandiacre Canal Society
Mob: 07827 946444