Here we are in September already – and dare I say it – Autumn! I think we can agree that despite some promising moments, we all rather felt that summer deserted us last month and ran off to join the circus, which we are all probably rather jealous of after spending an unexpected and frustrating amount of time in the same place. I don’t know about you, but I’m already picking up fallen leaves, watching things turn russet and ochre and abandoning my annual pledge to try not to light a fire or put the heating on until October. I am now digging my chunky jumpers back out of the cupboard, making soup and clutching warming cups of tea with slightly colder fingers. Whether this is your favourite time of year or the dread of the shortening days is starting to kick in, fear not! We are brewing some new ideas at Autumn Voices HQ to keep you busy over the colder months…
Flash Memoir Project
The Flash Memoir Project is still going strong, and has, in fact, been a bit of a hit. So much so that we’ve decided to extend the project until December rather than finish in October as previously planned. We’re still deciding on the memoir prompt themes for November and December, but for now you can submit a Flash Memoir on September’s theme – a memoir starting with the sentence: “The very first time that I …”
The submission guidelines and email address are the same as before and can be found online
here. Please do carry on sending us your submissions and encouraging your friends and family to take part if you think they’ll be interested. They can also sign up for this newsletter vis this link, so feel free to pass it along:
https://autumnvoices.us4.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=f13356c478c77d834bb0ec7c8&id=be6dde074e
Twitter
As you may know, Autumn Voices has been on Facebook for a while but this week we decided to take the plunge into the Twitterverse! It’s a brave new world for us, and while we understand that a lot of people – us included at times – have experienced social media overload and are a bit digitally fatigued at the moment, we think it’s important for us to use Twitter to reach as many people as we can. We want to be able to communicate information about us to different audiences, and to let them know about activities such as our writing projects, competitions, the
Autumn Voices book and other online content we’re in the process of developing. It also gives us a wider landscape on which to meet and engage with other organisations committed to positive and creative ageing. You can find us on Twitter through our handle:
@AutumnVoicesUK, and we really hope to see you there.
Poetry Competition: Judges
We told you about our plans to hold a poetry competition in our last newsletter, and we’re now a little further on with that. To refresh your memory, this is to coincide with
National Poetry Day on October 1
st. We’re still deciding on some of the competition specifics, but it will be open to entries from the 1
st October until the 31
st October, and there will be a modest cash prize. The theme of the competition will be Autumn Vices (no, that’s not a typo) so we’re inviting you to pen and submit a poem on your hard to break habits, guilty pleasures and small moments of weakness your other half, best friend or perhaps your GP would give you a ticking off for!
At the moment we’re looking for a judge, who will be paid a token fee for their work, and we are inviting anyone (that could be you!) to let us know, in 250 words or less, why they should be our poetry competition judge by emailing
admin@autumnvoices.co.uk by 5pm next Wednesday the 16
th September. The full entry requirements will be finalised very soon, and we’ll let you know as soon as we do and these details will be announced here and on our
website and
Facebook and
Twitter pages.
As ever, members of Autumn Voices will be able to enter the competition for free, so if you think you might like to and aren’t a member, then head on over
here and register through our website. If you know anyone you think might be interested in becoming a member, please send them this link:
https://autumnvoices.co.uk/wp-login.php?action=register
Survey
Autumn Voices has now been going for a couple of years and we have watched our audience gradually grow as we’ve branched out into various online activities. We’ve been lucky to receive funding to carry on for another year and pay experienced staff to carry out vital work for us, as we knew our marketing work, social media presence and website all needed to be stepped up considerably. We are thankfully already in the process of doing this work and the new website is taking shape behind the scenes while the existing one carries on in the meantime until it is finished.
When the new website is ready, we’ll be delighted to show it off to you, but we want to make sure that the developing content on it is something you’re interested in and want to see, and that you have helped us shape the direction we move in. To do that, we’ve developed a short survey to get some valuable and much-needed feedback from you, our Autumn Voices audience. There will be 13 questions to answer and we think it should only take about 10-15 minutes to complete. We’re going to send it to you in a couple of weeks and there will be about 3-4 weeks to complete it so there’s no rush, but we would really appreciate you taking some time to give us your thoughts so that we know we’re working in step, as much as we can with limited resources, with what you’d like to see from Autumn Voices. It will also help us think more clearly about the sorts of things we could potentially apply for funding to do, and where we might look to get that support from.
Thanks for joining us this month. Until next time, stay safe, stay well and stay in touch.
