THE OPEN UNIVERSITY CHOIR
Minutes of the Annual General Meeting held on Thursday 1st October 2015
Present: 52 members of the Open University Choir, Brandon Cook (OU Club)
1. Apologies
Apologies were received from: Yvonne Alton, Keith Attenborough, Lisa Burns, Anne Dietz de
Broise, Monica Else, Martin Ferns, Liz Healing, Laurence Holden, Jonathan Hughes, Mary Lea,
Jan Lloyd, Ruth McCracken, Carol Oliver, Dennis Pim, Magnus Ramage, Rhona Sayer, Richard
Seaton and Janette Taylor.
2. Minutes
Minutes of the October 2014 AGM were received and approved as a correct record.
3. Matters Arising
There were no matters arising.
4. Chair’s Report
The Chair’s report can be found in Appendix 1.
5. Treasurer’s Report
The Accounts were distributed.
Tim Hunt gave his thanks to Vanessa Penzo for auditing the accounts.
Tim's Report can be found in Appendix 2.
Tim proposed raising the annual subscriptions from £15 to £20.
Eleanor Milburn commented that the Danesborough annual subscription was £135. She felt
that the OU Choir subscriptions could therefore be higher than £20. Tim replied that the
matter had been carefully considered in committee. The 2015/16 budget had been based on
£20 subscriptions. A further increase can be considered next year.
Bill Strang added that there were students in the choir who may find paying a higher
subscription difficult.
It was also pointed out that an increase of £5 is proportionately a 33% rise, which is
significant
Other members indicated that they would support raising the subscriptions by more than £5
this year. However, it was pointed out that to cover the potential cost of soloists would take
a far more significant increase in the subscription rate, perhaps up to £50.
Beverley Thompson asked how the revised budget relates to the revised programme.
Bill responded that main change was to have replaced the programme previously planned
with a piece not requiring soloists. It does, however, require quite a large orchestra.
Proposals
Acceptance of the Accounts and proposal to increase the yearly subscription to £20 was
proposed by Vanessa Skelton and seconded by Helen Jarvis.
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The accounts can be found in the attached document.
6. Conductor’s Report
The conductor’s report can be found in Appendix 3.
7. Election of the Committee
The following officers were elected unopposed to the OU Choir Committee:
Chair: Liz Camp
Secretary: Sally Connelly
Treasurer: Tim Hunt
The following were re-elected as ordinary committee members:
Marian Ballance, Gill Smith, Anna Page, Robin Rowles and Jan Lloyd.
All were proposed by Juliet Baxter and seconded by Mike Street.
The following people were re-appointed: Mike Davis (Concert Manager) and Lisa Burns
(Membership Secretary). These choir members are co-opted by the committee.
Liz Camp is continuing with her role as Orchestra Manager
Juliet Baxter (Assistant Librarian) is retiring this year but Lynn Castle has kindly agreed to
take her place.
Gill Smith (Publicity) has recently retired. She will continue with most of her role but
requested another person to help with actions that could only be carried out by an internal
member of staff. (e.g. liaising with the Print department and posting material onto the OU
website.) Karen Kear kindly offered to help with this role.
8. Any Other Business
How the University Cuts are Affecting the Choir
Liz Camp reminded everyone that a summary has been circulated to all choir members to
provide a common understanding of the situation.
This summary can be found in Appendix 4.
Mandate
Liz Camp read out the mandate which had previously been circulated to the Choir Members.
The OU Choir, while appreciating the supportive funding it has received from the
University for many years, deplores the disproportionate extent of the cut to its grant for
2015-16 and the lack of transparency with which it has been imposed. This meeting
charges the Choir committee to pursue all possible means to seek restoration of the former
level of financial support so that its recognised profile of inventive varied programming,
which is under threat from these cuts, can be maintained in future.
An overwhelming majority of those present supported the mandate.
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Nine choir members were unable to attend the AGM but had confirmed by email that they
supported the mandate.
It was also suggested, however, that the choir should not necessarily push to restore its
former level of funding, but should accept that some cuts had to be borne, given the
University’s overall financial position.
Brandon Cook, who attended the meeting as a representative of the OU Club Committee,
spoke for a few minutes. He revealed that Estates had originally allocated a budget of £70k
to the OU Club but the Vice Chancellor’s Executive had cut this to £34k when it met in June.
This left Club with no choice but to pass on these cuts proportionately to clubs. The Club is
in negotiation with VCE via Estates in an attempt to claw back some of the funding that has
been cut.
Vote of Thanks for the Chair
Robin Rowles thanked Liz for her hard work in support of the choir and this was unanimously
supported by the meeting.
Close of Meeting
With no further business the meeting was closed.
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APPENDIX ONE: Chair’s Report
The Open University Choir
Chair’s Report 2015
Last year I reflected on a period of change for the choir. In some ways this year has been
comparatively quiet, in that we have sung a reasonably typical programme for the choir,
with no major disruptions. This is the second year since Bill retired from the OU and it has
felt, I think, a natural evolution that he made a decision not to conduct the summer term.
By all accounts, he, Dennis, and the choir found that the new arrangement worked well, and
evidently we managed not to put Dennis off, as he has agreed to do the same again in 2016.
However, you’ll also recall that Dennis himself has just retired from the OU, and has in fact
decided not to come today as this was officially his first day of ‘freedom’!! In his absence I
would like to record the choir’s thanks for conducting last term, and for agreeing to do so
again.
I won’t say much about the financial situation that you are all aware of, as I hope we can
take a moment later in the meeting to consider this, and I’m aware that Bill and Tim will
refer to it. All I wanted to say was to reassure you that despite cuts to our grant this year,
the choir is actually in a strong financial position so it is not this that we are concerned
about. But it is a challenge to how the choir operates, and it is likely to affect what we do in
the coming years, so there will be decisions to be made.
So, whilst the past year has been reasonably quiet, we have some interesting challenges and
changes ahead. As well as Dennis conducting us again next summer, we also have the
fantastic opportunity in spring 2016 of doing another concert off campus in Stony Stratford.
It is really exciting that we will be able to help inaugurate the new organ, which many of you
will be aware, Anna Page has been heavily involved in fund raising for over the past few
years, and it will be a fun challenge to us all in vocal terms, and give us the opportunity to
sing some interesting repertoire in a fantastic venue. So please do support it, so that we
have a strong choir to take and showcase to the people of Milton Keynes!
I don’t want to go on too long, but I cannot finish without the usual role of thanks. I hope it
doesn’t sound trite to say it, but it is really important to remember everyone who helps keep
the choir going. We all come here to sing on a voluntary basis, and it is a fabulous choir with
a lot going for it. So I must, as always, thank Bill for everything he does, and has done in
suggesting repertoire, driving it forward, and organising so much to do with it, as well as
conducting. I’d also like to thank the committee; particularly to Tim who has so capably
taken on the role of treasurer since Vanessa retired last year; and to Sally who keeps me in
line at meetings and makes sure I don’t forget what I’m supposed to be doing! Thank you to
everyone else both on the committee, and others who help to organise, input ideas, move
things during rehearsals, sort out concerts, get us our music and the rest. You know who
you are!! And finally, thank you to Kevin for playing at rehearsals. There may be more to
follow about that but I can’t say anything formally as we’ve not discussed it yet. However,
you should know that Kevin is another imminent retiree from the OU and may have less time
in future to play for us. So thank you Kevin, for your input over all these years.
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APPENDIX TWO: Treasurer's Report
The most significant problem is the change to funding from the university, as reported
separately.
Fortunately, last year we made a large surplus, which can be used to soften the cuts in the
short term.
The main reasons for the surplus are:
 £75 more subscriptions (5 members) than budgeted.
 £195 less than budget on instrumentalists (We had one player drop out of the autumn
concert which is £85 of that, also an orchestral player from 2013-14 never cashed
their cheque, and that appears as a reduced expenditure in these accounts.)
 £420 less than budget on music hire (We had budgeted more conservatively than in
the past due to Inter-library loans no longer being available. Then Marian found
some good ways to get music.)
 £300 vocal coaching that was in the budget never happened.
Looking to the future, because of the cut in funding from the university, we are proposing to
increase membership from £15 to £20 per year. This still represents excellent value. Each
increase of £5 gets us about £400 more. This year, we lost £1400 funding, which we have
handled by spending some of last year’s surplus, and by scaling back our programme.
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APPENDIX THREE: Conductor’s Report
The Open University Choir
Conductor’s Report 2015
If I were to characterise the concerts we gave last year, and indeed the programmes for the
present season, I would refer primarily to the varied, inventive repertoire which has been a
hallmark of this choir for at least three-and-a-half decades, since its first lunchtime concert
in 1979.
I would not be surprised if no other choir in Britain has performed Randall Thomson’s
Frostiana, complete and with orchestral accompaniment; at any rate it is extremely rarely
done on this side of the Atlantic.
Conversely Bach’s motets are core repertoire, indeed at the pinnacle of the choral
repertoire, but it is few choirs of this kind that attempt all six as we now have.
I also congratulate Dennis for exploiting an area of the British repertoire which we have not
often explored and I thank him for steering the ship in my absence.
For this term I had planned something a little more mainstream, a Haydn mass with four
soloists and orchestra, but because of the cuts we have ended up instead with another
rather infrequently-performed work, Cherubini’s Requiem in C minor.
And next term we are going to bring in some of the most unusual music we’ve done for a
while. As you know, we’ve been invited to perform in St Mary and St Giles Church in Stony
Stratford, to showcase its newly-renovated Willis organ. The team at St Mary and St Giles
have been researching the history of this organ and have uncovered a lot of interesting
information about its former life at St George’s Church in Edinburgh, on which the first half
of the concert will draw.
If you were in the fundraising concert we gave in 2010 you may remember that the first
minister, Andrew Thomson, wrote a famous psalm setting. It turns out that he complied two
whole books of hymns for his congregation in collaboration with his precentor, Alexander
Smith, so we’ll have one of Smith’s hymns too. Thomson’s young son also contributed and
went on to write a more extended setting of the Benedictus which I hope to include.
Later choirmasters and organists included Alexander Campbell Mackenzie who subsequently
became Principal of the Royal Academy of Music in London: we have a movement from his
cantata Bethlehem. And, during World War I, Robert Finnie McEwen, a colourful character
and extremely wealthy landowner, who wrote an anthem especially for the choir.
Finally the last organist of St George’s and my own teacher, William Bowie: I have two short
anthems of his which I guarantee none of you will know, and I think I can reassure you that
they’re not as difficult as some of his other music.
However, all this exotic Scottish fare will be counterbalanced by a sequence of Bruckner’s
iconic motets and rounded off with John Rutter’s popular, jazzy Gloria for choir, brass, organ
and percussion.
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There is as yet no repertoire in place for the summer term, but we can today announce that
Dennis has again agreed to conduct the summer concert, and he will also direct both choir
and orchestra for the carol concert.
I have mainly spoken of the artistic profile of these two years, but I am conscious of the
practicalities too and I pay tribute to the committee which keeps the show running, and in
particular this year to co-opted helpers, and also to those who just help without even having
titles. It is one of the strengths of this choir and this context that we can draw on Ekkehard
to guide us with professional insight through our German pronunciation; Mike Street is
prepared to be consulted about Latin matters; I have watched Mike Davis handle Events and
Porters with saintly forbearance; and Juliet has been Marian’s right hand and, I think, helped
Margaret before her, for so many years they are misty in my memory.
However, I cannot conclude without reference to the effect which I think the financial cuts
may have on the choir in the future. We have contained the loss this year largely by altering
the programmes, although I have to say that I take a very dim view indeed of the
carelessness with which the cuts were imposed on clubs which had already given voluntary
time and effort to planning ahead responsibly. (Had the cuts been at the 10% originally
indicated we could have absorbed the change much more easily and probably without
changing programmes.)
We are promised a review next year, without indication whether this will restore funding
levels or deplete them further. If the funding cut is maintained – or increased – there is no
doubt that the nature of the choir will change for ever:
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either the choir will have to shrink its profile to exclude pieces which require
professional soloists, or at least use fewer soloists – and that repertoire is
considerably more limited and may be easily exhausted
or it will have to lower its standards and, for example, manage without the very
good external players with whom we have built up good relations over the years –
and to whom we actually give fairly minimal remuneration per head
or it will have to start charging for its concerts, against long-standing OU principle,
which will in itself mean looking for new audiences in more direct competition with
other choirs, apart from the extra administration of collecting ticket money
There might, of course, be other solutions, or different combinations of adjustments may be
possible. But be in no doubt, the reduction of funding, if maintained or increased will be a
gamechanger and I think that, whatever happens in the coming months, we will face greater
uncertainties about how to proceed as we move towards planning the next season.
So I think the choir needs to do all it can to press for a restoration of funding as a priority.
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APPENDIX FOUR: How the University Cuts are affecting the Choir
The Choir committee planned dates, repertoire and budgeting for 2015-16 during meetings
in January, March, April and May 2015. Committee members spent many hours developing a
reasoned, responsible plan.
In February 2015 the University announced cuts ranging across all areas and activities. A rate
of 10% across the board was generally applied to “non-protected” areas.
On 8 June the choir committee, as well as the orchestra and chamber concerts series,
received notice from the OU Club that much deeper cuts might have to be imposed, up to
60%. The music groups collectively questioned this, seeking further information, but
received no reply from the Club.
The OU Club’s accounts for 2014-2015 were published in advance of its AGM which was held
on 9 July. These revealed the following expenditure for last season:
Forecast spend £94k which is £10.5k over budget
Main areas of spend:
Entertainment: Social Trips/Events (£37.5k)
Subventions – Nations/Regions (£23.7k)
Subventions – Affiliated Clubs (£16.9k)
Lunchtime concerts, Choir and Orchestra (£12.2k)
– of which £4,000 was allocated to Choir
Discounted cinema tickets (£4k)
The AGM papers also revealed that the Vice-Chancellor’s Executive had decided to cut the
Club’s budget for 2015-2016 to £34k. We understand that this was linked to a specific
decision by the Vice-Chancellor’s Executive that “staff subsidy” spending on trips, events and
discounted tickets was to be discontinued.
Choir members may remember that just over a year ago the funding route for music
activities in the University (Lunchtime concerts, Choir and Orchestra) was changed ‘for
administrative reasons’ and is now operated through the OU Club rather than through the
Music Fund. At this stage the Choir committee sought assurances on behalf of members,
following discussion at last year’s Choir AGM, that similar levels of funding would be
maintained (see treasurer’s report in Minutes). We were unable to secure a written
commitment to this.
At the Club AGM serious and probing questions were asked from the floor about the
discrepancy between the original rate of 10% cuts and the later prediction of 60%; however,
no clear explanation was forthcoming. Instead it became evident that the OU Club Chair,
David Phillips and the Director of Operations, Mary Legge held different and contradictory
views about whether, how and by whom the Club Committee had been informed about the
increased level of cuts.
We were also told that it has now been stated clearly by the University Secretary that
funding for music activities will not be protected or ring-fenced in the way that we had
understood it to have been in the past.
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Strong comments were made from the floor about how the cuts would affect musical
activities and Laurence Holden subsequently went to a meeting of the Club committee to
explain concerns on behalf of the music groups and to help the club determine how to
proceed.
At the AGM itself the Club Committee declined to inform affiliated clubs what their grants
for 2015-16 would be; however, afterwards it notified all the music groups that cuts of at
least one third were being imposed. The Choir committee offered the following broad
response the following day, 10 July: it would
 make repertoire changes so as not to require professional soloists for the autumn
concert, potentially saving approx. £900
 make more modest economies in the spring and summer concerts
 increase subscriptions from £15 to £20
 use surplus from 2014-15
These changes together could reduce the amount we would need to seek from the OU Club
from the £4,000 granted last year to £2,600.
The OU Club committee met on 30 July to decide how to allocate funding and informed us
immediately that it had accepted the Choir’s bid for £2,600. We confirmed our intentions in
a detailed budget which we submitted to the Club treasurer on 8 August before announcing
our plans to members and on the choir website.
We have been told that the current funding levels will be reviewed next year, but it is not
clear whether this will lead to a restoration of funding, or further and deeper cuts.
The concern of the Choir committee is that the budget for 2015-2016 has been achieved
mainly by sacrificing a dimension of our activities, namely performing one medium-scale
work with soloists and orchestra each season, which has been part of our activity and
offering for nearly 30 years. We will not be able to reinstate it in future years unless the level
of funding is restored, or some other change is made in the way the choir operates.
The Choir has joined with OU Orchestra and the organisers of the Lunchtime chamber
concert series to write to the Vice-Chancellor on 6 August expressing these concerns and
offering to discuss a more secure arrangement for funding musical activities in future. To
date we have received no response, although we did receive immediate brief statements
from Estates and the OU Club defending their positions.
OU Choir Committee
30 September 2015
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