It is my great pleasure to present this 44th Annual president’s Report. As always our centre goes from strength to strength providing a focus for a wide range of creative styles and talents. ASP buzzes with activity on Saturdays and is an ideal venue for daily and evening classes, weekend workshops, member events and social functions. We celebrate the collective strengths and abilities of our membership, staff and committee.

Our Executive as always has continued to provide ASP with responsive and effective decision making and excellent attendance at meetings. Throughout the year there are a number of major events which require a considerable amount of effort from our committee. Without the high availability of the committee, ASP would not be able to stage the many events throughout the year with such finesse

Trien Steverlynck as always keeps a well trained eye on our finances and part way through the year passed the job of presenting the Financial Report to Mike Donaldson. Thankyou to Mike for keeping us in the picture and being such an efficient honorary Treasurer.

Centre Staff
Trien Stevelynck joined the payroll in 2008 and has been doing a fine job of organizing our office systems and taking some of the clerical load from out other Directors. Peter Lange has focused on producing our member’s newsletter and our Otago Diploma organization and liaison with Otago Polytechnic. Renton Murray has a wide portfolio of responsibilities and often goes a long way beyond the call of duty. Joanne Raill has been invaluable in her ability to fill in where she is needed and deal with the multitude of requests people have when she is on duty. Lois Jameson has a big part in making the centre a great place to be. Lois is the person who cleans up after us and somehow makes the centre “gleam”. We are very grateful to Lois.

Classes
These have remained mostly full although we have noticed a slight downturn in numbers from term 4 last year. It is important to pay fees early to secure placement in the classes Classes have been running morning and evening Monday – Thursday with Friday being set aside for diploma students. This continues to be a satisfactory arrangement. The average size of classes has been just over 16

Our tutors in 2008-2009 were Peter Stichbury, Peter Lange, Graham Ambrose, Chris Southern, Renton Murray, Margaret Sumich and Joanne Raill.

Innovations and Improvements

New website launch – March 2008.

New gas kiln purchased.

Small electric kiln – rewired.

New revamped Raku kiln.

New paths between the outdoor kilns – no more muddy feet!

On going clearing and replacement of gutters.

The Les and Sonia Andrews scholarship
Once again we owe a debt of gratitude to Les and Sonia Andrews for their generous donation of $2500 for our most improved potter. The recipient of this award for 2008 was Helen Perrett. We also note that Les and Sonia are still in excellent voice with a brief performance from both of them.

The Otago Diploma Programme

The Otago Polytechnic Diploma programme is in its 8th year, with 14 students. Tutors in 2008 were Andrew Van der Putten, Toby Twiss and Merilyn Wiseman.

Exhibitions
Student Exhibition: 2008 saw the first opportunity for students attending weekly classes to exhibit their work in a small exhibition at ASP. This event was well attended and received with Nadine Spalter winning 1st place by popular choice.

Domestic Ware Exhibition 2008: This event definitely picked up some impetus in 2008. The number of entries increased along with the quality of the entries. This exhibition is generously sponsored by Tony Bacon. It is hoped that this event will further develop in scope.

Fire and Clay: Our annual exhibition at the Mairangi Art Centre was a great success. The support of our committee, exhibitors and membership is integral in bringing you this much anticipated event. Barbara Hockenhull our selector and judge did a fine job and many positive comments were made about how empowering she was to work with. Opening night saw a large crowd and the sales were brisk. Our thanks to Peter Lange and Charade Honey for the “Rabbit Family” and “garden Chair” installation – it created much interest. The premiere award was won by Elena Renker.

The Big Clay Day Out
The set up for the BCDO is becoming like a “well oiled machine’. There is a lot to do in preparation for the BCDO and without the support of the committee and many members on both the set up day and the actual day we would not be able to achieve such excellent results. The financial report will reveal more details related to financial gains. Many thanks to our skilled potters who donated pots for the auction. The auction is always a popular event and we are very grateful to Wally Hirsh for his great expertise as an auctioneer. Thanks must also go the John Pirtle who manages to keep everyone to the right time schedule. John also took many photographs during the day. Trien Steverlynck is the BCDO “anchor person”. Trien does a huge amount to coordinate this event and keeps a very close eye on financial side of the BCDO. Once again we are very appreciative of her efforts. Peter Lange’s slingshot is as popular as ever and attracting many delinquent followers!

Newsletter and Website
The newsletter is our main portal for getting up to date information to our members. It contains a wide variety of interesting information, is an excellent guide for upcoming events, advertising and useful information. Thank you Peter L. for all your efforts in producing the newsletter, it is not an easy job. There have been many positive comments made about our upgraded website. The website has its official launch in March 2008 and is the result of a huge amount of work by Tony Bacon who has taken on this difficult task and made such a success of it. The website is also a very important source of information about upcoming events, classes, tuition, and centre information. It is well laid out and easy to navigate.

Premises and Grounds
Our premises and grounds are well maintained with paths being laid, sink area being improved, kiln remodeling and a general tidy up of all areas. The clay pug mill has now been moved outside near the recycling baths – out thanks goes to George Taylor for taking on this time consuming and messy task. Thanks to all our members who regularly keep the gardens and courtyard in check. Before our BCDO we had a “working bee” which saw a good turnout of members and committee. The ASP plant and grounds are in excellent shape.

Membership
Paid up membership for 2008 was 328 a good increase from the previous years 237. Our drive for increasing our membership was a success.
Your Committee granted Life Membership to Peter Lange.

Library and Archives
Our library has been well used and is regularly updated. Library issues are now done through the office in order to keep better track of issues and returns. It is important that borrowed books are returned on time. The library area has been freshly painted thanks to Anita Barlass, Joanne Raill and Helen Perrett. As well as the paint job the whole area has been tidied and made to look more like a library / reading room. Thanks also to Judy Rae for her watchful eye on the library and regularly purchasing new resources. Regular backups of the office computer have been done along with weekly backups of the core data. ASP has purchased a removable hard drive for the weekly backups. John Pirtle has been working for some time on digitizing our video resources and is recording this info on a large digital storage device. Many thanks to John for this important time consuming work.

Finances
I note that our accountant is urging caution with any major spending for the time being – I feel it is wise to heed this advice.

Conclusion
ASP has sustained a big loss with the recent resignation of Peter Lange as Co Director of our centre. Peter has been associated with our society for all of its history and was welcomed back in good health after major surgery. It is great to see Peter in such good health and looking younger each day. His experience, wealth of knowledge, people skills and humour will be missed very much. The good news is that he will continue to be a significant part of our centre in the future in his emeritus position and will I hope be elected onto out 2009 committee. The remaining Directorial staff has already taken steps to take over his duties. Peter wishes to continue to be compiler and editor of our newsletter. We thank Peter for this as it is a time consuming task. I will not be standing for President of ASP because of recent health changes. I am happy to continue in a smaller role if our members see fit. I have enjoyed being President for the last three years. I am very appreciative of the on going support from our membership and committee.

Michael J. Billington
ASP President

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