Notes from the PYA Annual General Meeting of 22 Jan 2025

Notes from the PYA Annual General Meeting of 22 Jan 2025

The Annual General Meeting of the Promoting Yorkshire Authors Community Group was held on 22 Jan 2025 and we appreciate the participation of all those who attended, even if you couldn't make it for the whole session which lasted an hour and a half.

Firstly - the documents referenced in these brief notes can be found in the December section of our blog (opens in a new window) and are.

• The Agenda
• The Chairman's and Finance Report (combined in one document), and
• The PYA For the Future - PYA 4F working document.

Chairman's Report and Finance Report

Paul Smith (Current Chair) referenced his report which was placed on this blog in December 2024 but he did not go through the report in detail (please read it in this blog under December 2024).

Paul emphasised the vision of PYA which is broadly to improve the quality, visibility and worldwide recognition of the work of authors who have a strong connection with the ancient Ridings of Yorkshire (the old boundary of the current four counties).

He stressed that PYA will work with any other groups and organisations (commercial or otherwise) who support our vision and who will help us realise our ambitions. PYA is about helping - helping one another, supporting each other and sharing experiences, knowledge and skills across the group. In short - we are stronger together.

PYA has done much in 2024 - organised four PYA book fairs, supporting members who are holding their own book events, attendance at the prestigious spring and autumn Harrogate Flower Show, continued with our popular Writers' Support Group that helps authors improve their writing (thanks to Helen Johnson who hosts this) and the Children's Author Group which saw presentations from established writers and book sellers plus development events (thanks to Linda Jones for hosting this) and growing our membership to around 400. We also continued our cooperation with the Thirsk Write Now writers' group that meets fortnightly to prepare stories against a theme to read to the group (PYA members are always welcome to these events).

By convention the PYA Committee steps down each year and resigns or put themselves forward to serve for a further year. All committee members agreed to continue but subsequently Susanna Lewis resigned after the meeting due to other commitments. The committee would like to thank Susanna for her support since PYA was formed, particularly her Directing of our Ilkley Literature Festival performances.

Finally - PYA has significant presence in Cyberspace , namely our You Tube Channel, Open Facebook Group (book promotion welcomed), Members Facebook Group (no book promotions), Our new Mastodon account (@PromotingYorkshireAuthors@MastodonApp.uk), our website plus this blog of course.

PYA is a not-for-profit Community Group and all funds we receive through our events are reinvested into our activities to support our vision. Our current net assets are £1,590 and we aim to keep at least £1,000 in reserves to cover our insurance and technology committed annual expenditure.

PYA for the Future - PYA 4F

The aim of this section of the agenda was to recruit champions against 'headings' to support our PYA 4F strategy but it didn't quite work out like that - perhaps the chair was expecting too much as the AGM is often the place where members share their ideas and (possibly) grievances.

The PYA 4F document uses PYA's vision to identify topics on which the committee should concentrate, namely the bolded items in our vision:

Advancing the work of Authors who have a close connection with Yorkshire to improve the Quality and Recognition of their work Worldwide.

The PYA 4F working document (meaning it is for discussion, not set in stone) suggests what is required for each of these headings - as a starter. We were seeking champions who would volunteer to run with a topic and put flesh on the bones - make it happen in other words.

That outcome wasn't achieved but we did have two volunteers for PYA 4F - Jane Clack for Quality and Kate Swann for Advancing (with an emphasis on poetry initially). Karen Drury also volunteered to advise the committee and be involved with the Quality topic, specifically beta-readers and Yvonne Battle-Fenton offered to assist with event organisation and perhaps act as a committee adviser (to be confirmed).

There was a far-ranging discussion about PYA 4F which uncovered numerous ideas - like improving skill recording for members, offering beta-readers to improve quality, a virtual books shop (which most people feel we already have on the PYA website), improving face-to-face events - especially workshops to improve skills, promotion of eBooks as well as physical ones, an annual membership fee for PYA and a database of events for book selling.

Date of the Next YA Annual General Meeting

The next PYA AGM will be held on Wednesday 21 January 2026 at 7pm.