Milestone passed

Just a reminder of the very first issue of our newsletter, "Talking Point", issued July 2001. I printed about 50 copies of that myself on my HP deskjet, with the front page picture by Hilary Buckley, and the lead article reading "Welcome - to the Society of your dreams!". It is beginning to look like those dreams are more than being fulfilled - thanks to the membership surge at the NEC, our membership has well passed the 500 mark. For the first time ever, over 560 people will receive copies of the latest "Talking Point" due out in December. Congratulations to all who have made this possible. Based on population size, we are now "bigger" than the CPSA!

Of course, with size, comes problems, and our members will be aware of many requests for help from the AGM last October. A letter setting out what we are asking for in more detail will be inserted with the newsletter - along with a small gift to make the request more palatable.

"Magic Memories" Competition Winner

Derwent have recently held a competition to mark their 175th Anniversary, and the overall winner was hosted by the UKCPS at the Art Materials Live Show at the NEC recently. The overall winner was 15 year old Min Kyung Eun from Seoul, South Korea, with her memory of ‘When my friend and I walked under one umbrella on an autumn day’. She won a limited edition print of their winning entry, a 2 night break in Keswick, one to one tuition with a professional artist, an escorted tour of the Derwent factory and pencil museum and a Limited Edition Heritage wooden box worth £500. She also spent an hour on the UKCPS stand at the NEC, and we were happy to present her with a years Membership of the Society, some back issues of Talking Point, and various materials from our sponsors, including some Stonehenge paper. The picture shows Peter Weatherill (nice waistcoat!) with Min and her mother.

The UKCPS at the NEC

The Society had a very successful four days at the Art Materials Live fair at the NEC, Birmingham from Thursday to Sunday last week. Apart from making a considerable sum of money for Society funds, mostly by selling workshop packs containing materials donated by our sponsors, we gained a lot of great publicity, and gave out over 200 membership forms. Many thanks are due to Rachel Stirling and Peter Weatherill who did a super job of organising the event, and to all the many members who helped out as demonstrators, workshop leaders and just general dogs-bodies. A lot of work by a lot of people - thank you all!


Some photos have come into my hands showing various aspects of the show, starting with the ever-present Suzy Herbert on the left, at her easel as she was every day. On the right is Deborah Theobald, who came to help out demonstrator Gary, and a shot showing the exhibition and demonstration space we were given. The pictures changed each day depending on who was demonstrating.


A shot in the other direction shows that most days we had two or three demonstrators - Richard Childs has said he never talked so much in his life! Hard to believe that Richard! On the right is Peter, looking a bit puzzled as he explains to an attentive group just what the difference between blending and burnishing is! This shows the workshop area, where people were able to sit down for an hour - a very important selling point! - and try out pencils and papers using the packs of materials we supplied.

Some of our members have mentioned the show in their own blogs - see Katherine Tyrrell's posts here (scroll down to Art Exhibitions), and Gayle Mason here. We hope to be back next year - if we can persuade people to do this work all over again - and hope to see you there.