If you are a member offering coraclemaking courses, we encourage you to offer introductory membership to the Society in your course fee. By offering coraclemaking courses you are already making a contribution to the Society's aims - specifically promoting the knowledge of coracles, curraghs and allied craft, their making and use - and by enrolling your course attendees as Society members, you are helping to grow the membership and encourage more people and future generations to help keep the traditions of coraclemaking and coracling alive, as well as informing a greater audience of the work we and our members do.

By including the cost of introductory membership in your course fee, you may get increased interest in your courses and your attendees will perceive it as a benefit of coming on your course. It is up to you whether you increase the cost of your courses to cover the membership fee, or whether to absorb the cost yourself. It is also up to you whether to offer just individual memberships, joint memberships, or both.

If you list your courses on our website, we will add a note to your event listing advising visitors whether or not you offer introductory membership in the course fee. If you don't wish to include introductory membership in the course fee, but will offer Society membership for purchase on your course, we will add this note to your course listing.

If you offer introductory membership or offer membership for purchase on your course, it is important that you do not sell it as 'a year's free membership' or 'a year's membership' to the Society. This is because our membership year runs 1st January - 31st December, regardless of when members join. A member attending a course in May would therefore only receive membership until 31st December, not the following May. This point is detailed on the information page about introductory membership for non members. For courses later in the year we may, at our discretion, extend introductory membership through the following membership year.

Finally, your course attendees may wish not to take up your offer of introductory membership if you offer it. This is absolutely fine and where this is the case, you should not forward to us the personal details of these attendees.

Is there a difference between introductory and 'standard' membership?

Only in name and the payment of the fee being included in the cost of their course. The term 'introductory' refers to the fact that many course attendees may not know of the Society and you are therefore introducing them to our presence and the work we and our members do. Introductory members will receive a copy of the most recently published Journal on joining, the new edition at the end of the membership year, the spring newsletter, regular email updates if an email address is provided and full access to the website and member benefits - just like any other member.

Is there any promotional material about the Society/membership I can provide to my course attendees?

You can download our information flyer from the publicity materials page (requires log in to access). You can also borrow our banners for use at your course - details on the banners available and how to request them is also available on the publicity materials page (requires log in to access).

We may have spare copies of the Journal which you can use as display copies. Please contact Euan Raffel to enquire about the availability of spare copies of the Journal.

How to inform us of course attendees accepting introductory membership

Our preferred way of receiving new member information is using our paper membership form, because of our requirements under GDPR legislation.

Click here to download a paper application form

Forward the completed forms, with payment for the correct number of members and membership types to Euan Raffel. Please ensure that the mandatory fields on the membership application forms are completed. If you would prefer to make payment by bank transfer, please contact Euan Raffel to request our bank details.

We will contact the member once we process their membership registration.

If you have any questions regarding introductory membership that have not been answered here, please feel free to contact Euan Raffel