Edinburgh Swing Dance Society

News

An update from the ESDS Committee

Hi everyone.

We hope you are all well and doing ok.

The committee recently met to start tentative discussions on when and how we might be able to return to classes and social dancing. The health and safety of our members and volunteers is our top priority, so we intend to take a cautious and considered approach.

We plan to email our members in the next couple of weeks with a short survey to gauge their opinion of some options for returning to Thursday night dancing. If you are a member please look out for this email landing in your inbox.

Please stay safe and well, and we hope to see you soon!

ESDS 2020 AGM (12th Dec 2020 via zoom)

Agenda

  • Formalities
  • What ESDS did in 2020
  • Plans for 2021
  • Financial Report
  • Proposed changes to the Constitution
  • Election of Committee Members
  • AOB

Formalities

61 members and 8 life members – 69 in total. 20% (14 members) are required for the meeting to be quorate. 19 were actually present.

Minutes from the AGM on 23 January 2020 were approved.

What we did in 2020

Classes and workshops

Thursdays:

  • Nearly 2 terms, variable class sizes
  • Suspended due to Covid 19 and lockdown

Band nights:

  • 1 band night

Mini workshops:

  • 2 refresher workshops

Other events:

  • On line solo jazz classes – huge thank you to Lottie
  • On line Halloween Party – huge thank you to Kate
  • On line Christmas party

Guest teachers

  • Katie and Jamie

Events and other activities

  • Open Streets – 2 outdoor dancing events
  • working on revised domain name and website

Membership

  • Membership numbers – 61
  • Lifetime members – 8

Thanks to Volunteers

  • Thursday volunteers – door, setup/cleanup, carrying, water, etc:
    • Doug, Emily, Jarek, Karen, Scott and Valerie
  • DJs:
    • Eva, Kate, Michael, Paddy and Siggy
  • Teachers:
    • Alex, Chris, Graeme, Iain, Jane, Lottie, Niall, Rhona and Vicky.
  • Committee:
    • Emma, Jeff, Karen, Lottie, Niall, Pippa, Rhona, Ross

Plans for 2021

Working towards regular in person face to face classes once it is safe to do so.

Regularly monitoring the current pandemic situation and government guidelines.

If possible, a small celebration of some kind for the ESDS’s 25th Birthday with a view to hopefully a bigger celebration in 2022.

Financial Report

Opening balance£2,304.28
Income from classes and workshops
(including Zoom classes/socials)		£3,383.22
Cost of classes, workshops and Zoom classes/socials£1,812.16
Other running costs£1,096.81
Closing balance£2,808.53

Propose Amendments to Constitution

Proposals were circulated via email on 28 November 2020 to all current members and life members (78)

Following review of the membership log a number of continuing members registered have not actually paid the membership fee for 2020.  They received the email but only 69 people in total are eligible to vote.

The proposed amendments were agreed by all at the meeting plus two other members who agreed via email 21 in total.  The amended constitution is here.

Elect committee members and AOB

Current committee

  • Emma
  • Jeff Khan – stood down in July 2020
  • Karen Rae
  • Lottie
  • Niall
  • Pippa
  • Rhona
  • Ross

The following changes were proposed and accepted by all in attendance:

  • Propose moving AGM to May
  • Propose extending term of current committee membership (7) until 31 May 2021
  • Propose extending current ESDS membership for 2020 until 31 August 2021
  • Propose starting annual ESDS membership from 1 September until 31 August each year

Christmas 2020

Firstly, we hope you and your families are well 🙂
Please note that tonight (Sat 12th December) we have our online AGM and Christmas Party – yay!!! Please register and join us for a wee dance! For more information please see the events page

The ESDS Committee has been continually monitoring and discussing our options for classes since Lockdown started, and will reassess the situation in January taking into consideration Scottish Government guidelines at the time.
We greatly miss you all and dancing, and would love to be able to accommodate safe in-person classes. However, we value the health of dancers, our volunteers and the members and volunteers of the LifeCare Centre and regard the transmission of COVID-19 as too high at present.
We appreciate that this is the incredibly difficult time for everyone and we miss our wonderful dance family. We will be back when it is safe to do so but in the meantime stay safe and keep in touch via email, our website and Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/EdinburghSwingDanceSociety
Stay safe and keep dancing!
The ESDS Team

🎃 SOS – Spooky Online Social 🎃 –

We would like to invite you to join us this Halloween for our 🎃 Spooky Online Social 🎃

Who’re you gonna (zoom) call….?

We will have two hours of Swing and other appropriately themed music for you to party along to. Our wonderful DJ Kate Amann will be providing the music – so make sure you tune in!

Saturday 31st October
19:30 – 21:30 GMT
(20:30 – 22:30 CST)

If you would like to join us, please register by emailing events@hopscotch-swing.co.uk , with the subject line ‘Halloween’.

Costumes are of course encouraged! 👻 Also.. it’s free!

We are still running internal operations to ensure that we can safely open our doors again, celebrate our 25th Anniversary next year(!) and are as ready as we can be when it’s safe to return to dancing. Please consider a donation to the society, so that we may continue to contribute to Edinburgh’s swing dance scene.

We hope to see you there!

Stay safe and keep dancing,

ESDS Team

Autumn 2020 update

Firstly, we hope you and your families are well 🙂
The ESDS Committee has been continually monitoring and discussing our options for classes since Lockdown started, and in light of the recent news and rules being put in place by the First Minister and the continually fluctuating rules and regulations in regards to sports facilities (see link here), the Committee has decided that we would not feel comfortable offering any in-person classes for the rest of 2020. We will reassess the situation in January taking into consideration Scottish Government guidelines at the time.
We greatly miss you all and dancing, and would love to be able to accommodate safe in-person classes. However, we value the health of dancers, our volunteers and the members and volunteers of the LifeCare Centre and regard the transmission of COVID-19 as too high at present.
We appreciate that this is the incredibly difficult time for everyone and we miss our wonderful dance family. We will be back when it is safe to do so but in the meantime stay safe and keep in touch via email, our website and Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/EdinburghSwingDanceSociety
We really don’t want to lose the sense of community that the Edinburgh swing dance scene has worked so hard to create, so we will be having a Zoom Halloween party on the 31st October, where we hope to see you for a wee dance! For more information please see the event page
Stay safe and keep dancing!
The ESDS Team

Thursday playlist – support your favourite musicians!

Hi everyone,

Tomorrow (1st of May) and the first Friday of June and July, Bandcamp will again be waiving their revenue share for all sales, meaning artists will benefit even more if you buy on these days.

Normally I’d be DJing in Stockbridge tonight, so I’ve put together a playlist of songs that are often in my sets that are all available on Bandcamp.

This list is just a tiny sample of the bands and musicians we dance to (including a few local favs🎉). If you are able, please help ensure they’re around to play live for us again when it’s safe to do so by buying an album or even just a few tracks. The artists will get some much-needed cash, and you’ll have some awesome new tunes to dance round your kitchen to!

This list is not a continuous playlist, as Bandcamp sells each artist separately, but you can listen every full track here as well as full albums on the site.

This list is also available on Spotify here (though only half of it will work unless you own all the tracks), along with all my other Thursday sets.

I hope you’re all doing ok. I miss dancing with you and hope to see you soon!

Kate