Occasional Seminars

What are seminars?

Like the monthly meetings, occasional seminars are open to any member of the U3A. Any member wishing to attend is asked to sign the list available at Monthly Meetings, or inform one of the coordinators - Jackie Hinton (01539 731133) and Mary Christian (01539 733275).

Seminars differ from the Monthly Meetings in being more interactive, taking the form of a short introduction followed by a discussion and sharing of information by the group. Each seminar is expected to take about two hours.

We rely on volunteers from our own membership to lead the seminars, preferably with subjects not covered by other groups. The choice of subject varies considerably: from "The role of needlework in womens' lives" to "The princes in the tower"; and from "British porcelain and pottery" to "The Western Front in Word War 1" .

If you have an interest you would like to share with other members, or a subject you would like to study, contact Jackie Hinton or Mary Christian, or let us know via the Contact Us page. if you don't want to present it alone, Mary and Jackie are happy to help.

The next seminars

We meet at the Abbott Hall Social Centre on Dowkers Lane, with coffee at 9.45 and then the Seminar starting at 10.00

At our Autumn Seminar on 1 October we’ll be looking at Military Service, with the emphasis on National Service. We are planning a similar format to the two very successful seminars on Evacuees. After some background information about the introduction of National Service, several of our members will be telling us about their personal experiences. This will be followed by discussion about the benefits and disadvantages that occurred and the possible relevance of such a system today. If anyone has any photos or equipment from their National Service days that they would be happy for others to have a look at, please let Mary know and we'll arrange a display. It would be helpful if you could sign up at the next monthly meeting, but we would be happy to see you anyway, so do come along.

Reports

June 2008
At the meeting on 14 May the topic was the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Twenty six members attended the seminar. After Jackie’s presentation we divided into three discussion groups which produced lively debate and had a very enjoyable morning.

Mary and Jackie are putting together the programme of Occasional Seminars for 2009, so if there is a topic on which you would like to lead a session, do please let us know. If there is a subject that you are interested in, but do not want to present, we can probably find someone to put some ideas together to get the discussion started, so let us know about that as well.
If you have your 2009 diary or calendar, you might want to make a note that the next two Seminars will be held on Wednesday 7 January and Wednesday 1 April. Topics suggested so far include calligraphy and early books and the experiences of people who were captured by Indians on the American western frontier.

Mary Christian