The Way Forward?

There was an article published, a month or so ago, in CAMRA’s "What's Brewing" newspaper in which correspondent Neil Harvey from Tyneside branch, argues the case for scrapping CAMRA branch meetings, and conducting all business via Facebook or Twitter instead.  He claims that  "it's either evolution or extinction for the campaign", arguing that unless CAMRA fully embraces modern technology it will fail to attract younger members and, as the older ones pass into obscurity then so will CAMRA itself. 

Whilst not quite willing to go all the way down that route, after all you can’t beat a good get together in a decent pub over a few pints, Neil does have a point. Formal branch meetings tend to be long and boring; such meetings are bad enough at work, so why subject oneself to more of the outside the workplace? Fortunately I’m no longer on the committee of my local branch, so no longer feel pressurised into attending such events. The trouble is, many of my fellow branch members would agree, as evidenced by the fact that few, if any, non-committee members turn up to what are billed as "open branch business meetings". With stuffy, out-dated, formal proceedings: “Point of order Mr Chairman,”; “Put it to the vote”; “Minute that, please secretary”, it's small wonder  that most younger members, as well as quite a few older ones, are put off attending such meetings.

Socials though are different and are definitely something that local branches should be encouraging. Over more years than I care to remember, my local branch (West Kent) has struggled to attract members to our socials; to say nothing of the aforementioned formal branch meetings! We have tried mailing people who live locally before holding a social in their particular town or village; we have tried adverts in the local paper and advanced notices via the branch website, but all to no avail. It seems that barring a few exceptions, we are stuck with the same old faces week in week out. Meetings, of course, are advertised each month in “What’s Brewing”, but judging by the poor attendance do people bother to consult the “Branch Diary” section? Or is what we are currently offering just not appealing to the majority of our 450 odd members?

Over the course of the last few years we have changed tack and have been updating members by e-mail instead..  This approach seems slowly to be working, but current data protection/anti-spam legislation means that members have to actively “opt in” to the e-mail circulation list before we can contact them. Over the years the numbers on the list does seem to have grown steadily, meaning we can inform more and more of our members about up and coming events.

As mentioned above, branch socials, along with business meetings, are listed in “What’s Brewing”, but the ridiculously short deadlines for notifying events for listing in the paper, does mean that the branch diary often has to be arranged weeks in advance,  leaving little opportunity for change or alterations to take place nearer the time. In short, the system is inflexible and arguably outdated.

Recently the branch has found a way around this by holding “unofficial” socials. It was realised, quite a long time ago, that there was just a small hardcore of members turning up to socials, and trips out, on a regular basis. This was especially true of events held at weekends or to places further afield. A number of us decided to start organising additional trips, either by public transport, or as part of a walk in the country, on days that didn’t clash with official branch events, staying in touch with each other by e-mail, and circulating details about travel arrangements, best pubs to visit etc amongst ourselves. This arrangement seemed to work quite well, and to date we have conducted various walks to hard to get to country pubs, and have also had days out to towns such as Lewes, Canterbury and indeed London, together with visits to the Kent Beer Festival and GBBF. 

As these unofficial and informal socials seemed to be working well, we decided to publicise them to a wider audience, by circulating details, by e-mail, on the branch mail-out system. This has led to other activities taking place, such as historic pub tours, (one of our committee members is a qualified “Blue Badge” tourist guide, and is happy to organise such tours). These events are now being publicised on the West Kent CAMRA Facebook page as well, and in turn members prescribing to the page have been putting up their own suggestions for walks/trips out etc, along with suitable dates. The whole thing is starting to snowball and become self-perpetuating, which has to be a good thing.

Obviously because these practices by-pass “What’s Brewing”, they have to remain unofficial, but it does seem to be the way forward in encouraging people to support their local branch, and to actually get involved.

I wonder what the views of other branches are on this matter?