2016
As 2016 comes to a close it is time to reflect on the year and look back at what we have archived and where we could have doe better. We have already published our competitive reports, but there is a lot more to the Club than just competitions.
Teaching and Recreation
Our main focus for teaching and recreation was at Osterley Park in conjunction with the National Trust and our Sunday sessions from 2015 were extended to include Saturdays and Wednesdays. On total we had over 1,200 different people paddle with us in 2016, with a grand total attendance at Osterley park of 2,500.
A big thank you to the National Trust and their staff at Osterley Park and of course to The Shark staff who made this happen.
In addition to the sessions at Osterley Park, we have held sessions at Southall Activity Centre and Harefield. We have held sessions for a number of community groups, such as Scouts and other organisations.
We have interacted with a number of schools and run after school clubs for Featherstone Primary School and Three Bridges Primary School. We ran an activity day for the Alec Reed Academy. We also run three schools satellite clubs with help from London Sport; at Harefield, Spikes Bridge, Southall and our award winning club at Osterley Park.
It was very disappointing that we lost the use of the Outdoor Pool at Hillingdon Leisure Centre, this was because Fusion, the company that operates it on behalf or Hillingdon Council increased the rent by 400%
Trips away
As well as our many trips with the various comparative sections, The Club also went to Cornwall again, enjoying a number of activities beyond canoeing, although canoeing did feature, we also did some surfing and horse riding
Competitive Paddling
The Club has its traditions in competitive paddling, our teaching operations has grown out of the need to feed our competitive sections with paddlers, although our teaching and recreational section is now huge and growing the competitive options provide a route for people to take and broaden their experiences of canoeing and kayaking.
Each of our disciplines has already produced an annual report to co-inside with the end of their competitive seasons. Whilst the paddlers partaking did well, I think we as a Club can do much better and we need to see more people involved in competitions.
Wild Water Racing Report 2016.
Media
Our media coverage was good, with regular articles in Ealing and Hillingdon Paper, we also got mentions on the BBC website and the Metro described us as Awesome.
We have used social media and have found Tweeting our Osterley Session particularly useful as the NT the retweeted to their very large following, We also use Facebook, YouTube, Picassa and Instagram (all accounts are /thesharkscc); however this is an area we need to develop much more in the future.
Funding
Always a major consideration to any club. The Sharks Policy is that all sessions must be sustainable and self funding, the Club can not run if it is dependent of funding from outside. However, that does not mean we should not use funding to invest in the Club and develop new projects.
In 2016, we had funding from London Sport (for Satellite Clubs at Harefield, Osterley and SAC), Hounslow Council (via Fusion – investment at Osterley), Moto (operators of Heston Service station on the M4 – for kit), The Slalom Committee of British Canoeing (for improvements at Harefield for the wider slalom community).
How did we do compared to 2015? This is what we said we would do.
The Sharks would like to say a big thank-you to everyone who has made 2016 work for us; Staff, Volunteers and Partners. 2017 will be even better.