hi R,

thanks for the input, i know how well the scottish club done in your hands amongst others.

if i see a downer for midshires, its the same thing all area clubs are having.

its not so much the lack of younger members, which i always think of as 20 to 30s. this age group rarely have the spare money for a hobby car.

its more that people coming into 7s are usually 40+ and have a different attitude to clubs and the cars they are buying to the old days.

ive always put local car owners that come to me for parts either onto the nearest club, or the meeting point at the wight horse.

for the suggestion of there local club, 90% of people give the reply "im not a club type of person" only my opinion, but i think most people find clubs to be very old fashioned and out of date.

many have tried the wight horse, but very quickly give up. to the feeling of a clicky meeting of people talking about rileys.

i dont know how it would be done, but if you had the phone numbers for all local owners, club or not. and invited them to join up and use there cars. there would be a good responce.

and everyone would have the same car in common.

tony

Location: huncote

We had a similar situation here in Pembrokeshire when the chairman and mainstay of the local astronomy group passed away. He owned a caravan site with a club house and an observatory, after his death the meetings in the clubhouse turned into a chat and drinking session until people lost interest and the group folded, leaving only the groups virtually unused website and forum.
Being new to astronomy at the time and looking for a local club I and a couple of others left messages on the forum, we decided to meet up and form a new group, we hired a local village hall and had six people turn up, from this we started the Preseli Astronomy Group, we started by discussing what we wanted from the group and used the old forum to inform interested parties of the new group our next meeting we had about 12 people mainly from the old group and we then sorted ourselves out formed a committee and chipped in a few quid each to buy a projector and screen and got the ball rolling with our own forum and a Facebook page, we now have over a 100 followers on Facebook over 50 registered members in the group and regularly get 30 people turn up at our monthly meetings.
In our case we chose not to use a pub for the meetings to avoid people forming their own little social groups in the corners, our meetings consist of basically a cup of tea/coffee and a social chit/chat followed by a talk on what can be seen in this months sky followed by a tea break chit/chat and then another lecture and if conditions allow a short observation session in the car park.
We have been going now for over 5 years and in that time we have managed to secure a £2500 lottery grant to buy telescopes and equipment and have been bought a storage container and extra telescopes to hire out to members all this from the donations we receive from our members. This year we will be introducing a membership fee of £15 a year to even things out as some members donate more than others and we are getting in a lot more money than we actually need to run the group.
I realize that astronomy has many more aspects than an Austin Seven but if I as thinking of starting or reorganizing a group I would seriously consider doing what we have done, Start with short chat about local/ national club news and events,even things said on this forum, with a lap top, projector and screen give monthly maintenance lectures, simply copying a Pitmans or Woodrow manual would give quite a few lectures and once done these could be stored and rerun in the future,just show the pictures and read the words as simple as that, ask members to talk about their own cars history, problems or events they attended,also have a few back ups for when things go wrong like U tube videos Pathe news articles and Austin publicity films etc,will keep the masses amused for hours.
This has worked well for us, we currently have only five people running the group and two/three who prepare and give most of the lectures.

Location: Pembrokeshire.