This morning members should have received the electronic version of the September 2020 issue of Connecting Threads.
There is information about the shutdown and room use, as well as columns from the usual contributors. There is no exhibition information in the newsletter as it was too fluid a situation to bring up to date information to members.
A few days ago the decision was taken to cancel the exhibition and President Katie sent a message to all members, via email. Here is the content:
During the committee meeting on Wednesday August 26th, the decision was taken to postpone the Canberra Quilters Inc. Exhibition until 2021. Please understand that this does not mean that there won’t be a Canberra Craft and Quilt Fair on at that time. Expertise Events are still planning on holding the fair from November 5-8 2020. This decision has not been taken lightly and has been done so for a variety of reasons. Firstly, there is a great deal of uncertainty around the COVID-19 situation across Australia. With the situation in Victoria, the continued border closures, and the need to monitor the changeable “hot-spot” travel restrictions, it makes predicting the overall situation challenging. As we know from our experience with the rooms, creating and managing a COVID-19 Plan is a very complex exercise, and the number of variables with the exhibition made this process very challenging. Secondly, BERNINA Australia, the principal sponsor of the Best of Australia Award, has announced there will be no Best of Australia award for 2020. The quilts judged as Best of Show in each state and territory during 2019 will be held over until 2021. There will be no BERNINA Best of Show winners during 2020. We supported this decision by BERNINA, and while we had moved to a different format of exhibition which would allow us to have an exhibition of members work, it was not going to be a formally judged show. This had the potential to create challenges when it came to exhibiting the quilts in 2021. Finally, and most importantly, we have a membership with a variety of challenges which place them in the vulnerable category. As a responsible organisation we must place the health and safety of our members at the core of what we do. It would have been an easy thing to postpone the exhibition earlier in the year when many of the other guilds took their decisions. We have deliberately waited until as late as we possibly could in hope that the overall COVID-19 situation would allow us to go ahead. Unfortunately, this is not going to be the case. If you have any questions or comments about the decision, there will be an opportunity to raise them at the next general meeting on Thursday September 3rd at 7.30pm. At this meeting we will also talk through the plans for the 2020 Challenge Quilts. The link for the September meeting will be sent out with the Bulletin on Monday. Many thanks for your patience and support.Katie Ley President Canberra Quilters |