4 minute read
Alumni Officer Report: Charlotte Merson
ALUMNI OFFICER’S REPORT FOR 2020
CHARLOTTE MERSON
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What a year it has been since the 2019 conference! We started the year with a truly fantastic line up of shows, events, open days and study tours only to see the vast majority being cancelled. However, this provided Nuffield Farming with a valuable opportunity to build its online presence through webinars, virtual open days, Facebook live posts, virtual farm walks and an online introduction to Nuffield Farming/drop-in sessions for applicants.
If we start by looking back to the start of 2020; in January the Northern and Welsh Regions ran open days for potential Nuffield Scholars, both were new ventures for Nuffield Farming and were a resounding success and something we will definitely look forwards to repeating. The potential Scholars enjoyed listening to the presentations at both events; the Northern event took place on an evening with three recent Nuffield Scholars (Neil Eastham, Caroline Mitchell and Angela Kirkwood) presenting before a question and answer session. This event was kindly sponsored by the Yorkshire Agricultural Society. The Welsh event had a different format with more guest speakers in different rooms so potential candidates could choose who to visit depending on their chosen subject. Spring and summer were set to be very busy with a number of first-time events including attending Grassland and Muck, a farm walk hosted by Ed Barnston and Charlie Steer (West Midlands) as well as all of the expected shows and tours. Unfortunately, these were unable to go ahead due to COVID 19 pandemic but hopefully these will return in 2021.
This interesting year has also opened the door for Nuffield Farming to work collaboratively with other organisations; including The Farming Community Network (FCN) through Jude McCann. This collaboration led to a series of short videos, which we hope to expand on with and work more with FCN over the coming months. The impact of COVID 19 provided Nuffield farming with an opportunity to engage with a wider audience alongside building the online presence. We have been joined by a number of knowledgeable speakers including Holly Beckett, Barbara Bray, Wyn Owen, Matt Swain and of course culminating with the Nuffield Lecture by Professor Andrew Fearne. The webinar series took a small break during August before commencing in the Autumn.
Richard Pennock 2014 NSch during filming for Nuffield Farming
Roger Mercer joined us in September and Anna Jones will be guest hosting the webinar in October following on from her Countryfile filming. The poultry group will be leading on the final webinar of the year, before we kick start 2021 with a virtual open evening and the Global Focus Programme presentations. Please do follow Nuffield Farming on social media and read the weekly emails for more information on future events.
Throughout these virtual events we have been joined live by over 500 attendees with 6,800 watching the recordings and video clips at a later date via the Nuffield Farming YouTube channel and through Facebook. The wider audience we have been able to reach this year has surpassed all expectations! It has been such a pleasure to host and chair these events; the variety of topics, inspirational guest speakers and challenging questions has led to a very successful series and I am excited about the future of further events like these.
I was also able to do some socially distanced filming at Myton Hall Farms with Richard Pennock in typically damp Yorkshire weather where we discussed the machinery he is using for maize production. The film is available on our YouTube channel as a series of short videos. Personally, I feel that our ‘Introduction to Nuffield’ webinars have been one of the biggest successes, we have had over 110 potential applicants join the sessions which ran in May, June and July (twice weekly in July due to demand). They were an informal and informative introduction to Nuffield Farming and provided applicants with the opportunity to discover more about Nuffield and ask questions within the comfort of a small group. I would like to extend my thanks to Lindsay Woods for her support and assistance in running these events. The introduction to Nuffield Farming events will be continued in 2021. To date we have received some excellent and very strong applications; at the point of writing we are about to start the mock interviews. Due to the current climate these are going to be held remotely on Zoom which has opened the door for some inter-region collaborative working with the mock interview panels consisting of a mix of Regional Chairs. I would like to express my thanks to all who have taken part in this and your time and efforts are greatly appreciated. Finally, I would like to finish by thanking the wonderful presenters who have made both the webinar series, short video clips and farm walk films possible and turned a difficult year into a brilliantly informative one.
