A warm welcome to all of our new members.
Those of you who are familiar with these updates will notice a change, rather than a list of officers reports, I have tried to give you a broader feel of the discussions taking place.
One of the big changes, just starting to roll out, is the opening up of the committee and the decision making process to more of our membership – still early days and a lot of work to do. Hopefully this will give a greater voice to the membership, allowing for their input on how LIP evolves. Our new Satellite Group Liaison Officer has made a good start by introducing a discussion platform for Satellite Group Leaders. Work is also underway for a members only space on our website – this should permit officer updates and minutes to be made available.
Our meeting on the 8th centered around our annual exhibition. We had hoped, after the AGM, to have an open meeting regarding the future aims and structure of the exhibition. However, do to time pressures we were not able to arrange this prior to some of the most urgent decisions needing to be made. Nevertheless, we were able to send the agenda to the Satellite Group Leaders and they, even though time was short, added some excellent feedback into our discussion.
To begin with, there was a vote on possible selectors for this years exhibition – since the introduction of our new constitution selectors have to be agreed by the committee. Therefore we have been running a selectors list, where committee members can add names and choose up to 4 people based on theirs and members recommendations and opinions. This has worked very well and we ended up with a shortlist of 6 (all agreed) – who our exhibition team can now approach.
Second up was a discussion on the selection process and whether we should continue with our present system of physical prints or move to online selection (or pre-selection). Although some benefits were put forward for going online, the overwhelming opinion was that it was still important to maintain the connection between the image at selection and the final image in the gallery. The vote reflected this and was passed in favour of remaining with our existing system.
Then we came to the issue of Series or Single Images. As you can imagine this is an area which is continually debated and I’m sure this will not be the last time. To summarise we need to give guidelines to the selectors and also members as to how the exhibition will be composed. In the past the exhibition has encouraged submissions of a series from members, the question has been raised, should the exhibition be more balanced to allow individual images. One of the key points put forward was, that the exhibition should promote excellence above all other considerations. In conclusion a vote was taken to reduce the maximum number from any submission of 6 to a final selection total of 4 and a change in the wording of the submission document to, ‘We encourage both a series of work and outstanding single images’ both motions were passed.
Lastly we looked into sponsorship and how and whether LIP should approach companies for either general sponsorship or possibly social sponsorship (food and drink). After some talk the consensus was that social sponsorship should be found for this year but only entered into with the committees approval.
So there you have it, the end of another busy meeting, a big thanks to all in attendance and for all those who put forward suggestion and opinions.
Our next meeting in May will be looking at ‘communication’ internal and external. To give you some idea of context we will be looking at editorial guidelines, guidelines for LIP involvement with external organisations and promotion. If you wish to put forward your opinions please email me.
chairman@londonphotography.org.uk
Adrian Capps
Chair