Dear #FAM,

Your membership number is #MEMNO.

In this edition:

• Notices
• Upcoming Events
• Groups Notices
• Other Events

Notices

Bulletin Team

We still urgently need another member for our Bulletin Team to ensure continuous publication during holidays, illnesses, etc.

The person needs basic computer skills, but you will be part of a team at the beating heart of u3a.

You will get as much training and handholding as you need, so PLEASE don’t hesitate.

If you want to volunteer or discuss the role, please contact Miriam or David by using this link or by simply responding to this Bulletin email. 

Your u3a thanks you!

U3A Annual Summer Tea

Tuesday 9th June 2026 – Time: 2 – 4.30 pm, bar open until 6 pm
To book – cost £15.00 – please go to our website HERE.

Upcoming Events

April Coffee Morning – Tuesday, 7th April, 10am-12noon

Always on the First Tuesday of each month, so please mark your calendars!

Our Coffee Mornings are held in the Bar at the MINERVA THEATRE building, opposite the Chichester Festival Theatre. You can chat with our groups team and learn about current and new offerings, meet old friends and make new ones!

BREAKOUT TABLES to find out more about proposed new groups:
– New Book Group
– New Witterings Social Group

GROUP LEADERS: If you would like to promote your group at a coffee morning, please contact the Groups Coordinator!

Oaklands Pavilion (Rugby Club) Wellington Road, Chichester PO19 6BB. Free parking, input of car registration needed on arrival upstairs – lift available. 60 bus to Midhurst and alight at Wellington Road – Pavilion is 200m along Wellington Road.
All members welcome, so come along and enjoy tasty food and good company at this great venue, at the same time showing support for a local business. There will be tea/ coffee available afterwards and the bar will be open to enjoy a drink on the large open balcony overlooking Oaklands Park.
Group leaders please try to promote and get a table of 10 together.
To book – cost £15.00 – please go to our website HERE.
Please note any dietary requirements when booking.

Members’ Monthly Meeting at the Assembly Rooms on North Street, Thursday, 16th April 2-3 p.m.

The Speaker is Major (Retd) Paul Whittle: The Andes and the Incas’ Peru Explored

Paul’s civilian career was predominantly in the City of London as a senior human resources manager with a leading British bank. In 1999 he was granted his ‘Freedom’ and appointed a Freeman of the City of London. For 34 years Paul also served in the Royal Corps of Signals, Territorial Army. He took part in many overseas exercises with NATO and attended the TA Command and Staff Course at the Staff College Camberley. To date Paul has travelled to over 70 countries including such relatively unknown lands as Eritrea, Armenia, Romania and Montenegro. He has also crossed the Sahara Desert, and journeyed by train from Vladivostok to central Siberia. He has one grown-up daughter and lives near Woking, Surrey.

Doors open at 1.15 p.m.  No booking required.

  Please stay afterwards and enjoy free refreshments in the Crush Bar.

The Quiz Night due to be held on Thursday 30 April is cancelled

Groups Notices & Events

New Book Group

We will number no more than twelve so we can focus on one conversation at a time. It does not matter when our books were first published – it is more important that one or more of the group have actually read it and feel it would make for a good discussion. We may well be opinionated; we might even disagree – but will do so agreeably. Our overriding intention is to share novels – occasionally a classic and/or non-fiction – that have touched us deeply so that others may feel the same. Is this you?

Venue: Little London Café
Date/time: fourth Monday each month, 10.30 until 12 am except December.

New Witterings Social Group

The Witterings is a new social group for U3A members from the Witterings and surrounding villages to meet up for coffee and organize social events locally. It is run using WhatsApp and email and has a maximum of 50 members.
If you are interested, the organiser and some of the members will have a table at the April coffee morning, so do stop by.

Venues: ad hoc
Dates of meetings: ad hoc

Green Cleaning Group

The Green Cleaning Group is now up and running. We share ideas and recipes for environmentally friendly household cleaning products, and one of the products we’ve been looking at making is our own laundry detergent. It’s a really simple recipe but we need containers! We would therefore be grateful for any laundry/fabric conditioner bottles and dosing balls that you have spare and could donate to us. Please contact the group leader via this link if you need information.

Pilates

As new leader of our friendly Pilates Group I have a place available.
We meet on Thursday mornings 10 to 11am at St Michael’s Hall PO19 6PN.
Please contact me on ann-story@outlook.com or phone 07917 567598 if interested.

Zoom talk with Chichester Practical Science Group

U3A online events is featuring a Zoom talk on Chichester Practical Science group . A free event  by zoom Friday 10th April at 2 pm .Bookable with the link below .

Bookable with this link.

Climate Emergency Briefing Film

The u3a climate change group have been cooperating with Transition Town Chichester, a local environmental charity, on a free film show event taking place on 16th April at the Assembly Room, North St Chichester.

The film is based on the briefing given to MPs in Westminster last November where established experts brought the latest scientific findings about climate risks to MPs attention.

The film’s purpose is to get more awareness of accepted findings by climate scientists to decision makers and the public. This could be alarming to some, so members of the climate change group and some of Transition Town Chichester team will be facilitating discussion tables after the film is shown so anyone concerned can express their concerns and anxieties and talk these through with our team. We will be asking people to focus on what positive measures society as a whole and local communities could adopt to reduce the impact of extreme weather causing widespread disruption to all of us in future.

The MP and political leaders at local government level are also being invited so we expect this to be a seminal event.

Impressionist Art Group Film
Tuesday, 7th April

The Impressionist Art Group are showing the film Edgar Degas: A passion for perfection
on Tuesday, 7th April at 2.00pm in the Friends Meeting Hall, Priory Road, Chichester.

There will be a £3 admission payable on the day , and we will have tea/ coffee available before the film and during the interval.

This shows the life and work of this complex artist who seemed both to bother his fellow artists and yet to encourage so many newcomers.

The Physics of Sound  
March Practical Science Group 

With the buzzing of the bees and the chirping of birds heralding the onset of spring the practical science group met to study the physics of sound. The session was run by Steve Niebel who brought along an exciting array of oscilloscopes and screens .The main experiments were visualizing sound waves turning them into its constituent frequences into a graphical digital display on a screen .Various members played musical instruments from dinner gongs to cymbals.

We also tested our hearing frequencies and noted that our more musical members had significantly better hearing . We also used a transducer attached to an oscilloscope to time reflected sound waves to accurately measure the dimensions of the room .

Next month we will all be trying to make simple electric motors and and generators from rotating magnets.

Later on in the summer we will be moving on to biology with mothing and botany.

Local and National

National u3a

There is a wealth of information on the National u3a website – www.u3a.org.uk , including online groups, u3a Radio podcast, upcoming events, and the latest issue of Third Age Matters, the monthly national u3a magazine.

The link to this version is: https://www.u3a.org.uk/what-we-do/u3a-matters

The next bulletin is due out on 10 April, so if you have an item to submit, you may use this link.

Links to our Website

Follow these links to see:

• Interest Groups
• Previous Bulletins
• News Update

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If you wish to unsubscribe from the Bulletin emails, please contact the membership secretary with subject “Unsubscribe from Bulletin”. This will not affect other email communications with the U3A. Please do NOT  put the bulletin emails into spam! 😒

Please send a message via the usual channels if you wish to have some item of u3a news put in the Bulletin. Likewise, if you have suggestions as to how to improve the Bulletin or would like to join our team.
Best wishes,
Miriam Knight and David Mummery

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The Constitution of the Chichester U3A is available to view here, and its Terms of Use here.
Enquiries: If you wish to contact the Chichester U3A, please call 07490 654524 (and be prepared to leave a message if not answered), or contact the membership secretary.

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