Meeting for Sufferings: Yearly Meeting 2021
Next year's YM will be held online due to uncertainty.
In the afternoon, MfS considered plans for Yearly Meeing (YM) 2021. YM clerk Clare Scott Booth told MfS that she was pleased with the way Yearly Meeting 2020 had gone, despite the limitations of holding it online, and she told MfS that YM in 2021 will also be held online, from 31 July to 8 August, with most events on the two weekends. Junior Yearly Meeting will take place at the same time.
‘The fundamental reason for that is risk and uncertainty about where we will be by next summer,’ Clare said. Planning for a face-to-face event, including expenditure, would need to start now and ‘it’s not the moment to take major financial risks’. She added, ‘right now the only thing we can plan for with certainty and confidence is an online Yearly Meeting’.. Clare said that the proposal is for an expanded event. ‘There may well be opportunities for blended elements,’ she said, for example small groups from Local Meetings gathering and participating together. There will be an extended preparation period leading up to YM itself. One representative asked why we are sticking to August, and another said he would find it ‘a trial’ to sit in front of a computer for several days in a row. Clare said that the school holidays in August make it easier to have a spread-out event to combat Zoom fatigue.
