My first year with Wigan 10
What a week it has been to round off my first year with Wigan 10. At the end of last week, we heard that we had won the second round in our section of the PSA International Interclub Nature competitions…a very pleasing result in our first season. We are also leading in our section in the Creative competitions.
Last weekend, some of my team-mates from Wigan 10 spent a weekend in Paris as guests of FIAP, to be presented with the World Cup for Clubs. Unfortunately, I couldn’t go but spent a superb weekend judging the Southport Open with fellow judges Leigh Preston and Richard Speirs. The weekend rounded up with the club winning five out of the six sections at the L&CPU Annual Club Competitions, missing out on Nature PDIs by just one mark.
Meanwhile, in Scotland, the PAGB Great British Cup was being judged and there we won both the Open and Nature Cups. WOW! What an achievement!
The tension mounted as the North Cheshire Challenges arrived Weds and Thursday. We could beat the world, but could we win with a set of only 5 images locally? With only 5 images needed, a club does not need the depth of work that we have in Wigan 10, so in theory, it is easier for clubs with only a small number of top workers to win and this often can happen. We have some fantastically strong clubs in the North West. Again, we succeeded, taking both the PDI trophy and the Print trophy by a narrow margin in each case and top work to Kathryn and KT.
Having lost some very high-profile workers last year, who are also international judges, many people could be forgiven for thinking that Wigan 10 were finished. In a sense we are almost a new club, with half the members who are actively producing work for competition being new to the club. In our first year, it was so important to show that a new group can come together and achieve so much.
Now down to fourteen members again, after the loss of Maurice Jones, who sadly died in December, the club has had its ups and downs this year. Our joint success will help to bring the groups of older and newer members together, the main objective for the coming year being to eat plenty of cake. We no longer need to prove we can do it…so I look forward to a less intense and thoroughly enjoyable 2014!
This has turned out to be quite a self-congratulatory blog post…but it is meant to be more of a tribute to the group of people who have come together, in what has been quite a difficult first year in many ways, formed a new club out of the old and had so much success. But I think the best part of the year has been the occasions when we have met up to eat cake. I think that friendship and cake is more important than trophies!
Below are my images that the group used to represent the club this year. You can follow the club’s highs and lows on our Wigan 10 website.
