Coronavirus Announcement

Dear SUES Member

As you will have realised already, the present emergency makes it impossible for the Society to run its planned programme over the next few months.

Reluctantly but inevitably, we are therefore cancelling the following events:

  • The two ‘Follow Up’ Activities for the Victorian Country House Course. The visits to Scarisbrick Hall on 15th April and to the Scarisbrick Heritage Exhibition on 23rd – 25th May will not take place. Both will be re-arranged for a later date.
  • The Poetry Meeting on Friday 5th June
  • Alan Potter’s seven session course on The Human Brain. This was scheduled to start on Monday 20th April and had recruited extremely well. We hope that it will be part of our 2020-2021 Programme. Those who have enrolled on the course will have their course fee returned to them. As a result of changes to the Bank Mandate, there may be a delay before these cheques can be sent out.

Despite those cancellations, we are hoping to avoid a complete shutdown for the next five months. Since the launch of our new programme last September, SUES has built up a real momentum and it would be a great shame if this were to be lost. We are therefore looking at ways of maintaining contact, sharing ideas and providing material to keep our brains active. If this is to work, we will be looking for contributions from you and so please let us have any of your ideas. One possibility is that we might be able to gather relevant material that could be sent out weekly or fortnightly. Ideally this would reach you by email between 10am and 10.30am on a Monday morning! It would also be sent by post to those who do not have email.

Looking further ahead to the 2020-2021 season, we are planning a similar programme to this year with four afternoon lectures and longer courses given by Peter Firth (Sept-Nov), Roger Mitchell (Jan-March) and Alan Potter (April-June). Each of these would have between 6 and 10 sessions. We hope to maintain the link with Continuing Education at Liverpool University. Information about our courses should appear in their brochure which is published in July. We hope to begin the new session with an afternoon lecture in September.

Obviously there is a great deal of uncertainty at the moment and it will be some time before we can plan ahead with confidence. Our hope is that we will be able to announce our 2020-2021 programme in July, but we have to bear in mind that many of our members (committee included) come into the Government’s ‘vulnerable’ category and, for this group, the return to normal may take longer.

With that sobering thought in mind, the Committee would like to send our very best wishes to you all and express our hope that it will not be too long before we are able to meet again.

Yours sincerely

Hazel Fort (Chair)
Roger Mitchell (Secretary)

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