Friends of St Paul’s AGM – Secretary’s Report: Wednesday 13 July 2016

Mr Dean, ladies and gentlemen, fellow Friends:

Welcome to the first Cathedral Community meeting which comprises the 64thFriends’ AGM and allows the Dean to give a review of the year once rather than twice in the same week! We found that the vast majority of people on the Cathedral Roll are also Friends, so there was an obvious duplication of effort which it seemed pointless and indeed positively wasteful to perpetuate. So here we are, all joined up and Friendly by name and by nature, and anyone here who is on the Roll and not yet a Friend of St Paul’s – well, Ben has application forms ready for you! Please do join as a Friend – the £30 annual subscription is, after all, a mere 57 pence a week! - and become even more closely involved with this great Cathedral.

You will I know be as pleased as I was to learn that HRH The Duchess of Gloucester, our Patron since 2003, will be joining us later for our Festival evensong, recital and reception. We, as always, sent a card from the Friends to mark her own 70th birthday just ten days after the amazing service here which marked the Queen’s 90th and indeed Prince Philip’s 95th. To mark Her Royal Highness’s birthday, by special arrangementwith Chapter our choristers gave her, her own family and her own friends, a private recital under the Dome on the very day of her birthday, as our special and unique way of thanking her for all she does for St Paul’s. She was thrilled. In my few words of welcome to her guests, which she had asked me to give, I paid tribute to the fact that she does so much for us, attending Festivals and Galas, concerts and services, charming everyone she meets with her genuine affection for the cathedral and its music. She always displays her keen interest in, and instant rapport with, all the people presented to her, be they staff or volunteers, Friends or Patrons. I told her and her guests that we are immensely grateful to her for her unfailing warmth and dedication, and on behalf of the Friends I gave her a flower arrangement for which she wrote and thanked the Friends profusely.I am also writing a profile of her in the September edition of Dome magazine. And I am delighted to announce today that, in reviewing her many Patronages at this time, she has offered to continue ours for a further five years to 2021.

I am also delighted that our former Dean, Graeme Knowles, who is now what they call a ‘flying bishop’, in his case in the diocese of Bury St Edmunds: he is flying in here shortly and it will be very good to see him back.

I’d like to thank all nine non-clergy members of Council for their contributions and help throughout the year, and also publicly thank Ben Nikolay for all he does in the office for the Friends on events, memberships and dealings with all of the Friends - I know you all appreciate his unfailing cheerfulness and efficiency - and Jack Henderson who will shortly be presenting the 2015 Accounts which he sets out in terms that even I can understand, so that is very much to his credit.

The 4th Annual Friends Lecture in March was given byTim Knox, Director of the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge. He spoke on “Kings In Exile: The Residences of French Royal and Imperial Exiles in Britain, 1795 to 1920”. It attracted acapacity crowd at Stationers Hall, including TRH The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester who both asked to attend it and were warmly welcomed. HRH The Duchess also asked to visit the Hackney children’s choir, run as a joint venture with the cathedral by Tom Daggett our OBE Outreach Fellow who spoke us after last year’s AGM. They were of course completely overwhelmed by her interest.

Next year’s Friends Lecture will be given by Sandy Nairne, lately Director of the National Portrait Gallery. Other tours this year included visits to the Ironmongers’ Livery Company’s hall. They support two choristers here: we could not field the choristers but Tom Daggett and our Organ Scholar Rachel Mahon entertained us to a very accomplished piano duet recital (Schubert and Fauré, since you ask!) prior to a tour of the hall by the Clerk. We also ran four City walks on a Shakespeare theme, to mark the 400thanniversary of his death, and the author and historian Adrian Tinniswood is coming here on the actual 350th anniversary of the Great Fire, on Friday 2 September at 2pm, to talk about the Fire and its impact. It will be good to have him back too. Tickets are imaginatively priced at £16.66....

To pick up a point from a previous AGM, all these social events are now run at a slight profit which is how it should be. During the year Friends have also been asked to make additional donations for such things as the proposed new access ramp for the North Transept, and they have. Such donations are Gift Aid-able which makes them even more valuable. We are grateful to all those who augment their basic Friends’ subscription in this way.

Your Council has also made grants and allocations to a range of cathedral activities including indeed a replacement temporary ramp, until we have found the funds for the permanent one, given that the current one has rotted!

The fact Council can make these grants is all down to these donors and indeed legacies. This afternoon’s evensong has in fact been ever so slightly broadened out to enable the cathedral to pay tribute to Friends whom we have been informed have died in the previous year – and of course we can only list those about whom we have been notified. You are all far too young to remember, but this service was for many years called the “Festival of the Friends of St Paul’s and Commemoration of Benefactors” so, with Chapter’s permission, we have tried to recapture that sense for today’s and from now on. As you will find, the service booklet listsnot only departed Friendsbutalso those who have left a bequest intheir Will for the cathedral – be it to the Friends or the Foundation, the Chorister Trust or direct tothe Cathedral. For all of these people and their gifts,we are all most grateful.

During the year since last year’s AGM, Council has had its usual three meetings, in October, February and May and I thought you might like to know some of the issues discussed, which have included:

  • Deciding on grants in response to projects put forward by the cathedral, made possible by the additional donations and legacies received from Friends;
  • How Friends might develop their support for the cathedral alongside the fellowship dimension, in order to be able to increase the provision of grants; at present, there is an unsustainable over-reliance upon paid staff time to support the Friends; discussion has focussed on trying to resolve the conundrum of on the one hand annual £30 subscriptions being set too low for the benefits offered which are proportionately too high, including free admission @ £18;
  • How some of the work looking after Friends (subscriptions administration, events planning and administration etc) could and should be undertaken by volunteers;
  • Feedback from the programme of social events organised for the Friends;

Council continue on your behalf to support the cathedral’s work with young people, specifically the Schools and Families department – and Donna McDowell is going to tell usmore about that shortly – and also with support for a chorister. Toby Edgar Davies, not to be confused with Toby Davies two years above him, is the new Friends’ Chorister -currently in year 3 - and you will spot himproudly wearing the Friends’ Chorister medal later on today.

I hope many or most of you will stay to hear him and his chorister colleagues give the traditional recital under the Dome after evensong. Andrew Carwood has the knack of making it a very entertaining half hour.

As HRH said “Andrew and the choristers make such light of being second to none!”

Membership numbers continue to be just under 3,000. We have over 61 new Friends so far this year and we now as a routine invite them to evensong and a glass of wine in the first January after they become a Friend. In the same time period in 2015 we had 100 new Friends, and 172 in total for all of 2015.

Subscriptions bring in some £43,000 a year on top of which some Friends make additional donations totalling nearly £34,000: added to which have been some £200,000 in legacies for which we – and, I know, the cathedral - are, as always, extremely grateful.

So, finally, it just remains for me to say thank you all for your Friendship and support.