| Awards Evening 2010 |
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31st May 2010
This year in celebration of 40 years of 1st Haslington Boys' Brigade, the Awards Evening was handed over to the Seniors to organise and present and for which they put on a great show, despite being busy with ongoing GCSE and A Level exams.
Having been the Boys' Brigade now for nine years and having attended nine Awards Evenings, there hasn't been an Awards Evening quite like it. Indeed it broke the mould of past Awards Evenings with even more fun, different organisers, more videos, more games and even the odd technical hitch!
The items were of a wide variation including Junior Section Figure Marching, an Obstacle Course for the Juniors and a remake of the famous 1970s game show, Blankety Blank presented by Company Section. Each were throughly enjoyed by the boys and in the case of Blankety Blank, even the Parents! Thanks to Ian Parrish and David Westhead for so kindly "volunteering" for that event!
The event also opened and closed with two videos prepared by the Boys. The opening video was put together by Company Section members Dominic Mellor, Simon Wright and Matt Welch titled 'This Is Your Life'. It composed of a selection of photos from over the last 40 years set to Status Quo's 'Rockin' all over the World' which brought much laughter with particularly 'revealing photos' of the leaders' behaviour during the course of a BB year.
The closing video, titled 'Our Company Sure and Steadfast', was a video put together by myself and Joe Dixon in the form of a documentary about our Boys' Brigade and the journey it's had over the last 40 years including interviews from many well known members of 1st Haslington including Rob Welch, John Quigley, Dominic Mellor, Anthony Winnett, Matthew Winnett and Robbie Ward.
Of course the main event of the evening was the presentation of awards by the Guest of Honor, Parish Councillor Doris Farrell and everybody came away from the evening with some sort of badge or award. It was so pleasing to the see the achievement of the boys and all of them have worked extremely hard this year from both Junior and Company Section to get what they achieved.
Although a tough evening in many respects to organise and carry out, the people who I talked to after the evening were impressed at the quality of events there were on the night and pleased that despite some problems surrounding technology and other organisational things, the boys still manage to create a special evening. Everybody played a part in making this evening special and I am very greatful to everyone for their input in helping to make this Awards Evening very good indeed.
Particular thanks however must go to Mrs Doris Farrell for coming along to be our Guest of Honor and for presenting the Awards. I would also like to pay tribute to all the Senior Section who all played a huge role in putting together the Awards Evening, including Phil Wright who produced the programmes, Joe Dixon who did the technical aspects of the evening and Jonathan Allpress and Chris Burrows who ran a really great Blankety Blank game. Finally I would like to thank Anthony Winnett for leading an excellent Junior Section Figure Marching which went down extremely well with the audience and put in a lot of effort for learning the routine. Well done everybody!
Ryan Mellor