Photo: Summer School excursion to the State Library
With over 80 classes on offer, January’s Summer School attracted over 1650 attendances, more than twice the previous year’s attendance figures.
The planning, which commenced last August, certainly paid off with the biggest Summer School program ever and the highest number of members on record enrolling in at least one class.
Diverse Class Leaders
The Summer School classes were led by some of our regular Class Leaders who kindly offered one-off sessions on different topics to their normal classes, or ‘taster’ classes for members who may be interested in enrolling in their year-long courses. Other leaders included members who had a particular interest they wished to share in a short course format, plus there was a wide range of excellent outside presenters.
Lectures by professionals on health issues and estate planning proved to be particularly popular, as were the creative workshops. It was great to see the hats, bags, self-portraits, and paper cut-out works produced by members in the holiday atmosphere of Summer School.
See more photos from Summer School classes
Excursions were immensely popular
The four widely varied excursions held on the Mondays and Fridays of the Summer School fortnight all attracted great interest from members. They provided group visit opportunities to the NGV, the MCG, the Islamic Museum, and the State Library, which was the most popular of all. Due to the maximum of 15 for their group tours, we had a very long wait list for that excursion. We hope to run another excursion to the library sometime in the future.
Cooking demonstrations
A highlight of this year’s Summer School was the extensive range of cooking demonstrations held in the Hub kitchen/dining area. Summer School Committee Member Kim Ngoc Tu, sourced all of the presenters from within our own membership to create a most successful and popular program over the six days that classes were held at the Hub.
See more photos from the cooking demonstrations
Thank you to the team behind the scenes
Many thanks to Lindsay Glen and Bert Lopes for the IT and AV support to presenters throughout the two weeks, to Elsie Mutton and Ken Briscoe for their work on enrolments and timetabling, which was made just that bit more challenging with the building works making two of our large classrooms unavailable, and to our always helpful Reception Desk Volunteers who were on duty throughout. Thanks also to the Hub staff who were on-hand to help with moving furniture and assisting in a myriad of ways.
The Summer School Committee of Valerie Donlon (Convenor), Athalie Edis, June MacDonald, Kim Ngoc Tu, Lorraine Fowles and Sue Ebert are to be congratulated on providing an outstanding summer holiday program for our members.
Summer School cooking demonstrations gallery