Dear Membership,
I hope everyone had an enjoyable holiday season and New Year. I want to thank everyone for electing me as president this past December. I am excited to start our 2023 season, and work with all of you. This year we have a great Board of Directors assembled and I foresee growth and prosperity for the coming year. I want to thank everyone who have accepted to host us each month and those who are putting together the special events. I know it is a lot of work and it is appreciated by myself and by all of us. For 2023 I have four major goals as president and wish to share them with you. Any input and assistance from the membership is always welcome in these matters.
My first priority is to get a regularly issued newsletter sent out to the membership every quarter. Jarrett Gorecki has volunteered as the newsletter editor. I have great faith in Jarrett’s abilities and look forward to collaborating with him and our Communications Officer to accomplish this goal. If anyone has something they would like to have in the quarterly newsletter, please send it to our Communications Officer at michaelbarton@wraba.com.
Taking a cue from PAABA’s level of communication I want to start having a bi-monthly reminders and updates sent to the membership via email. I find this to be a great resource to keep everyone informed and up to date as to what is transpiring within our organization. If any member has something important they would like sent out in the emails, please reach out to me at any time.
Public outreach is critical to organizations like the Western Reserve Artist Blacksmith Association. This is another major point we as a n organization need to work on. I am going to be looking into new avenues for WRABA to accomplish this goal and have a plan to be implemented for the 2024 season.
My final goal for my term as president is to research avenues to fund a preliminary expansion of the Burton Headquarters Shop. Over the last several years the facility has become undersized for the required events we hold at the facility and cannot accommodate the future growth of WRABA. If you have any questions, please let me know. I will be happy to answer them all.
We have another full year of events planned for 2023. When creating the calendar there was a nice rush of people volunteering to have us at their shops. It is a nice change from the last few years when everything was very restricted and or shut down.
There are a lot of familiar faces and some new faces on the Board of Directors from December’s election. A full list of WRABA officials is on the next page of this newsletter. I just want to say welcome back to those who have remained on the Board and welcome those who are new.
Be safe and always be trying something new.
Thanks,
Grant Michener
