I confess
to having known little about the U3A prior to the spring of 2017 when,
following attendance at an event in Hornsea East Yorkshire, I was invited to
speak to the Hornsea branch. The invitation was for a date almost 18 months
ahead. The U3A is nothing if not organised.
My
philosophy on “giving a talk” is basically that that is not what it’s about. I am
not “giving a talk”. I am “giving a talk to a specific audience”. There’s a
huge difference.
There are
people who keep a bank of talks that they roll out in the various places where they
are asked to speak. On the face of it, that’s a real time saver as it avoids
the need to create a brand new talk every time, but in my experience, where
that strategy works, it works because the person with the Talks Bank does not
take them out and use them completely off the shelf. They customise them to
suit the audience.
The truth
is that a badly judged or ill-fitting talk shows. It becomes clear early on
that the speaker knows nothing about their audience and that their talk is
pitched slightly askew.
For me
it is akin to an invitation to join someone in their home for something like a
bridge evening. If I walk in, slump on the settee and refuse to join in other
than to drink their coffee and eat their biscuits, I am an impolite boor. If I venture
the excuse that I don’t know how to play bridge, I only play whist, then I’m
also an idiot. Want to play whist not bridge? Then don’t accept an invitation
to a bridge party.
Back to
the U3A. I’ve given talks around the world to many different groups on many
different topics, but this was my first to a U3A group. I had a vague notion of
their origins and philosophy and looked them up to learn more.
The U3A
is a thriving international movement that originated in Toulouse University in France
in 1973. Third Age University groups in France sprang up, usually attached to a
local university, working closely with them in terms of specialist teachers and
opportunities for joint research.
As the
U3A idea spread, divergent models developed. In the UK in the 1980s, the U3A model
was developed as one of peer-learning and self-help, where local groups, such
as the Hornsea U3A, are autonomous and self-funding but retain their links and
pay a membership fee to an overarching coordinating body that provides access
to a vast range of resources. There is now a global network of universities of
the third age coordinated by an international organisation.
My talk
landed at the point where the local committee had had a significant change of
personnel. There were many plates spinning on many sticks as the new guard took
over from the old; my long-arranged talk was but a tiny pinprick in amongst the
many things that had to be organised. Yet the joins hardly showed. I doubt I’d
have noticed at all if I hadn’t had it explained to me by someone concerned
that some frayed edges might show.
It all
went remarkably smoothly. I was welcomed in, the technology worked, the timing
was impeccable, interesting questions came my way and I had a thoroughly
enjoyable time. My talk was entitled: Contemporary Crime: the problems of
researching the present.
It was
my first U3A experience but I hope it won’t be my last.
Learn
more about the international U3A movement here.
Learn
more about Hornsea U3A here.
Delve
deeper into Buried Deep and come unstuck in Syrup Trap City, just two of the novels I used to illustrate my points.
