A New Year's Message from Sam Mauger and Liz Thackray

Happy New Year 🌟

Dear <<First Name>>

Welcome to our 40th anniversary year - see a message from Chair, Liz Thackray, and I above, and please find the transcript to this message in the bitesize newsletter below.

Very best wishes

Sam Mauger,
Chief Executive

New Year Bitesize and Transcript

Click here to view this newsletter in your browser, in which format you can zoom in to make it easier to read.

We are 40!

This year is the 40th anniversary of the u3a movement. We will be celebrating all year long and want you t as a movement and know u3as and their members will be celebrating too. We will be running national events, the details of which you can see on our website, and u3as will be planning local events too - please get in touch if you have anything planned as we will be sharing what everyone is doing..

To celebrate 40 years of u3a - let us know why you love being a part of the movement and we will share a selection of these in the next newsletter.

Thanks so much

"Thank you for asking me to be a judge for your quilt competition... I saw some really fabulous entries which seemed to me to embody the central aims of the u3a... there were some very easy Yes's! Well done to everyone who entered the competition, I saw a lot of creativity and effort had been put into the entries and I had a tough job deciding on the final 40!"

- Stuart Hillard, known for BBC's The Great British Sewing Bee and one of the judges of our competition

The Winners of Our Quilt Competition Are...

Thank you so much to everyone who entered the quilt competition for our 40th anniversary. Our four judges, made up of u3a members and Stuart Hillard from the Great British Sewing Bee, had a very difficult task picking forty squares. The names can be seen on our website now, and a sneak peak of the high quality can be seen in the photos above.

Photos: Wild Swimming - Amanda, Exeter u3a
Patchwork and the u3a bring us together and keeping us young - Cheddar Valley u3a

Learning

See all our events on our online events page.

A Poetry Competition For A New Year

Announcing the 2022 Poetry Competition – following the success of last year’s initiative, we are launching are asking members for new poems, this time on the theme of ‘New’. The portal for submissions will open on 6 January 2022 and will remain open until the deadline on 25 February. Find out more and read last year’s winners on our learning pages.

Have you taken part in any national learning initiatives this year? We want your feedback and to know what you would like to see from our learning programme in 2022. Take our survey.

Sources Blog

All this and more on our u3a blog, Sources.

We thought we would look back on the last year in our Sources blog - which has been full of stories from you about the innovative and exciting things you are doing at your u3as.

In 2021, u3a members played ukelele on Twitch, painted together on Zoom, discovered new food with each other, studied women filmmakers, walked 5,000 miles in 3 months, celebrated u3a day and so much more.

We are so thrilled to have been a part of your stories in 2021. We can't wait to see the amazing things you do in 2022 - make sure to share them with us.

Photos: Heswall u3a's ukelele group playing together on Twitch, Causeway u3a group painting together on Zoom, Croydon u3a exploring World Cuisine together, Wells u3a with their recipe books they created for u3a day

Another beautiful photo from Belfast u3a, taken on a recent photography outing.

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