Every year we (usually) hold a day of dance to celebrate and showcase our members, followed by our annual general meeting. The day of dance and AGM are usually hosted in the home town/city of one or more of our members.

Unfortunately, the days of dance in 2020 and 2021 have been cancelled, and the AGMs were/are being held online.

AGM 2020

The 2020 AGM was held on Saturday 26th September 2020 via Zoom. See the minutes of the AGM in 2020 [PDF]. Links to the minutes of previous meetings are provided at the bottom of this page.

AGM 2021

In 2021 the AGM will be held on Saturday 25th September 2021 via Zoom, starting at 16:00. The AGM will again be held online because of the uncertainties of the restrictions on gatherings and so that representatives would not be put off attending due to travelling out of their area.

Election of Committee Members

Committee members are elected for a term of 3 years at a time. This year, two elected Committee members reach the end of their 3-year term on 31st December 2021 – Secretary and Notation Officer. See the list of current Committee Members

Secretary – Fee Lock will not be standing again in that post. Fee has been Secretary of the Morris Federation for 21 years and is our longest serving officer. We have received one nomination – Andrew Knight – for that post.
Notation Officer – Jerry West is willing to stand again in that post. The deadline for nominations has now passed.

Co-opted Volunteers

There are also plenty of opportunities to volunteer towards the work of the Morris Federation as a co-opted member of the Committee. This could be for a short project or longer term. These posts are reviewed annually by the elected Committee. The current co-opted members are Dan Watford (IT Administrator), Sally Smith (Communications Officer) and Brian Kelly (Communications and IT).

If you have skills and time to offer support, we would love to hear from you, especially in these areas: Marketing; Media Liaison; Safeguarding; Schools Liaison; Teaching morris and related activities in schools; Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion; Recruitment of team members. Please contact us and choose ‘feedback’ to arrange an informal chat with any of the committee members.

Motions and Items for Discussion

All Motions must be proposed and seconded by a member(*), and the deadline for this has now passed. A team member representing the proposer & seconder must attend the online AGM. Items for Discussion must be proposed by a member. (*) The classes of Membership are: Full Group / Junior Group / Full Individual / Associate / Honorary Life.

NOTE: As noted at our AGM in 2020, the Committee are of the view that our Constitution and Standing Orders need a thorough review and overhaul. The Committee propose that we look to replace these during 2022. If you are interested in joining a working party to bring forward proposals to an EGM/AGM, please contact us and choose ‘feedback’.

Getting your AGM Pack

As per last year, the AGM papers will be sent by email to our registered contacts (rather than by post) and voting will be electronic (rather than by email/post).

The AGM Pack 2021 contains the papers for the meeting and was emailed to member contacts on 6th September, for them to circulate to team members to read and decide how to vote on elections of officers (there are no Motions this time), and to think about input to the discussion items.

A separate document AGM Voting & Registration 2021 will be emailed to member contacts soon afterwards with information on how to register to attend the Zoom meeting, how to submit votes in advance or at the meeting, submit apologies, appoint a proxy etc.

When the documents are ready, Member contacts will also be able to find the above two documents in the Members Area of the web site at: www.morrisfed.org.uk/members/agm (need to login).

Attending the meeting

Only one representative per member team will be able to attend the Zoom meeting (individual members may attend in their own right).

Each member team may register for one zoom session to attend the meeting to represent the team. Each person may represent only 1 member team on 1 Zoom session for the duration of the meeting. Attendance at the Zoom meeting will be counted as ‘represented in person’ to meet the quorum of 15 group members.

The meeting will not be recorded.

Other members of your team (or a different member team) will be able to sit with the representative, or watch a live stream, but will not be permitted to participate directly.

The meeting will start promptly at the stated start time. You may join from an hour beforehand, and at least 15 minutes beforehand to check and adjust your setup.

Watching the meeting

There will be a live stream on YouTube so that any member of a member team may watch the AGM ‘live’ and it will be removed at the end of the meeting. The link will be emailed to member contacts a few days before the meeting. Please don’t record the meeting yourself, as we will not be asking for permission from the attendees. Please only share the link with people who are a member of a team in The Morris Federation – it is a Members’ meeting not a Public meeting.

Voting

All members are encouraged to vote so that the views of the entire membership is known.

For teams not attending the Zoom meeting, voting ‘in advance’ will be online (not by email/post as in some previous years) with a deadline of midnight before the meeting i.e. on Friday 24th September 2021. Proxy voting will also be available.

For representatives of teams attending the Zoom meeting, voting will also be made available during the meeting.

Your member contact will ask their team members for their votes on these items:

Election of Secretary – For or Against or Abstain
Election of Notation Officer – For or Against or Abstain

Queries

ANY QUERIES about any AGM items: please contact us and choose ‘feedback’.