It’s the Horningsea Annual meeting of the Parish on Wednesday 25th May.
Various village groups are invited to present a report. Here’s a fully linked version of the report that will be presented on the village newsletter, website, social media and other online places.
Horningsea Herald
The Horningsea Herald is primarily for publicising village events for the coming month. However, anything that is of direct relevance to villagers is welcome too. It’s also intended for reports, especially with photos, of recent village events.
Pandemic
There were no real events during the first year of the pandemic. So the editors tried to encourage villagers to submit their stories/thoughts/articles on whatever they wanted, as long as there was a link (no matter how tenuous) to Horningsea. So special thanks to Vee Sanders, Richard Pleasants and John Wilson who all submitted many regular articles. Lindsay also continued to contribute articles. From Vee’s “How I came to know Horningsea”, Richard’s “Lockdown thoughts” and John’s varied articles on the history of Horningsea. We should print and bind those articles for distribution to the village! Their articles kept the newsletter going.
Publication
The release schedule is approximately just before the first weekend of a month! The deadline for submission is still the 25th, but of course we always try and be as flexible as possible.
The Herald is published:
– Via an email list as a PDF
– On the village website
– On the village Horningsea Residents Facebook group
– via @horningseanews Twitter account
If you do not receive the Herald then google “horningsea herald” for instructions (or email horningseanews@gmail.com).
The number of recipients does fluctuate but there are currently 171 subscribers as of today.
The long term goal is still to move the Herald away from a PDF magazine style format, and towards an online format. However, the newsletter style of a PDF is ideal for less IT literate people.
Submitting items
The only guideline for news is for events and articles that are of direct relevance to the inhabitants of Horningsea. The Herald does not accept advertising, but one off “news items” may be used to publicise local businesses, including events. To submit news items either email “ horningseanews@gmail.com ” or submit them via Twitter . You must submit by the 25th of the month, the Herald being published before the first weekend of the month.
Online calendar
There’s an online calendar that anybody can subscribe to for village events (Gmail). The link to subscribe is in each issue. Anybody can view the calendar. You can also add it to your own calendar directly.
Horningsea Residents Facebook group
During the first year of lockdowns there was a greater influx of villagers to to the Facebook group than had joined in the previous 15 or so years since the group was created. Facebook does not keep statistics beyond the last year, but at a guess I would say the group grew by at least 100 residents during those six months to make the current number of 263 members. That has had a beneficial effect on the group as there is a fairly healthy mix of posts on various topics (not just one or two). Although the past 18 months has seen many posts about the sewage works relocation.
As with any small group there is a tendency for “outside” posts to make a poor signal to noise ratio, so the moderators are quite strict in removing irrelevant posts (Debs and Chris). We are quite strict on non Horningsea businesses putting adverts too.
See link above or search Facebook for “horningsea residents” to join.
Website
There’s nothing much to report on the website. Probably it is about time for a revamp as it’s over ten years since Rob, Frank and I redid it. People still contribute and the Horningsea Herald is still published monthly on there. There are also church times.