We held our second AGM earlier this month.  Looking back, 2014 was all about experimenting with how we can work together as a collective and focusing more on our creative work.  Not everything worked, and finding the time to fit things in is always difficult – we all seem to have got busier either with textiles and/or work to keep on living.  Everyone agrees that meeting up to share our experiences and our inspiration is an important part of our textile professional lives.

Our most exciting development is taking one of our ideas for a collaborative project and exhibition, working together to develop the details, and then sharing it with events organisers and gallery owners. The project has been well-received so we have taken the plunge and applied for funding – if we are successful this will be our focus for 2015.  It is now that we need our constitution – we are grateful we did things right from the start – but we did need to strengthen our finance section to prepare for opening a seam bank account.

The collective elected the following officers for the year:

• Chairperson; Penny Wheeler
• Secretary; Linda Row
• Treasurer; Anna Glasbrook and Joy Merron
• Marketing Officer; Desiree Goodall

Penny Wheeler