Club Management Focus: Autumn 2018

The Farnham Festival of Bridge

In the summer of 2017 representatives of the Bourne Bridge Club, Farnham Bridge Club and 3 Counties Bridge met to discuss how the bridge communities in Farnham could co-operate more. Following this they canvassed several bridge groups in the area, and were amazed and encouraged to find that there were 14+ active bridge groups with a combined membership of over 600, and a diverse range of bridge playing and learning opportunities. There was also strong support for greater communication and co-operation. Specifically, they agreed three “All Farnham Bridge” priorities:

1. Communications and publicity
2. Youth Bridge
3. Charity and education events

The Farnham Festival of Bridge, which took place in September, was the culmination of the first year of activities by this co-operative group. It was not, however, a full stop – the success of the event in bringing the bridge communities in the area together, and making bridge more widely known to the local public, means it will be the first of many planned activities by the group.

The Festival

More than 160 participants took part in the festival, with ages ranging from eight to 99 years old. By design there were different bridge games to suit all abilities – from complete beginners, through to those who had been playing many years – with three competitions taking place: an ‘open duplicate’ (18 boards, with Bridgemates); a ‘no fear duplicate’ (14 boards and introducing Bridgemates); and a Chicago section.

There were also learning opportunities, with introductions to both bridge and minibridge taking place, and all participants were given a free invitation to participating bridge clubs and a free invitation to a lesson given by 3 Counties Bridge.

Grants were given by a few companies, and these were used to fund all the trophies and enabled under 21s and participants in the beginner and taster sessions to join in free of charge. The target for the overall event was to break even, however a profit of more than £100 was raised, which will be donated to the Alzheimer’s Society.

How did it come together?

As with many things, the Festival was primarily the result of cooperation and hard work. With careful management the burden of the latter can be reduced, and the organisers of Farnham’s festival have kindly shared a schedule which outlines a timetable you may wish to follow should you wish to try to arrange a similar event yourselves. This can be seen here.

The need to establish lines of communication between bridge groups in the area was recognised at the original meeting. One way this was achieved by the Farnham group was through a regular newsletter circulated amongst interested parties to help nurture the cooperative spirit that was needed to drive the project forward.

For any event such as the Festival to be successful, it needs to be pushed forward by energetic and enthusiastic people in the area. The EBU appreciates, however, that not everyone has all the skills that are needed to do some of the more technical work. Part of the work of the Membership Development Officer, Tim Anderson, is to create and update a ‘resource centre’ which will include templates which can be used to create things such as posters and leaflets, and a selection of useful pictures and graphics. Hopefully these will be helpful to anyone wanting to organise similar events in future. You can read an introductory article from Tim here.

We hope some of you, having read about Farnham’s Festival and other initiatives on which we have reported in this and previous newsletters, will be motivated to hold your own event. If you are, then please let us know.