Toastmasters to Commemorate 1916 Rising

Mullingar Toastmasters, in association with Westmeath County Council, invite the public to the 1916 Commemoration theme meeting this week.

It takes place on Thursday March 24 at 8.30pm in the Greville Arms.

A spokesperson said: “For people who have never been to a Toastmasters meeting – Toastmasters is not art. It is not school. It’s a place where you can practise speaking to a crowd. It’s that simple.”

Toastmasters is not art because art is creative. Art can be described as the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination that produces expressions in a visionary, literary or auditory form that are appreciated for their beauty or emotional power.

Speaking to a crowd does not demand the speaker to be creative or to present beauty or emotion.

Toastmasters is not school because a school has the primary function of teaching under the direction of teachers to a qualitative objective.

Toastmasters does have a training objective but that objective is attained solely through practice, i.e. it does not have a qualitative assessment that scores the speaker as ‘fail’ or ‘pass’.

Nor does it have the perpetual delineation between teacher and student; one time, you’re the speaker, another, you’re the crowd.

So what is Toastmasters if it doesn’t demand creativity, beauty, emotion, quality? It’s a place where you can practise speaking to a crowd.

Of course, you can offer creativity, beauty, emotion. Of course you can be your own qualitative assessor. The function of Toastmasters is merely to be the practice ground where you can practise speaking to an audience.

The theme for the meeting this Thursday is the Commemoration of the 1916 Rising and it’s free, thanks to the sponsorship of Westmeath County Council.

The meeting will be dedicated to the 1916 theme and will include the story of the Rising with particulars on story, speech, poetry as follows:

Beginning: Speech: Pádraig Pearse’s eulogy at the grave of O’Donovan Rossa

Speech to Inform: Description of the events of the Easter Week 1916 including the impact on and contribution of Westmeath people

Story: The surrender, as told by Elizabeth O’Farrell, the nurse and member of Cumann na mBan, who was sent by Pádraig Pearse to deliver the surrender to the British command and to all the other fighting locations

Poem: Pádraig Pearse’s poem ‘The Mother’

This will end the story, but not the night; the night will continue with a topics session which will initially be given to club members on the 1916 theme, but later topics will be open to the floor and will give people having great interest in 1916 the opportunity to speak and you don’t have to be a member to speak in the topics session.

At the end, tea will be served, with 1916 sausages and bread (with a best before date of 100 years!).

The main participants and the setting will be adorned as far as possible in 1916 style.

Will we succeed? Will we fail? We don’t know. Toastmasters is a place where you can fall down and someone will pick up. And while Toastmasters is not art and is not school, it does have one thing in common with both art and school and that is: connection.

It’s about connection to other people. Toastmasters does not need to connect in a highly dramatic or visual sense, which is art, or to display great learning and knowledge, which is school, but connection is the aim and if the connection fails, it’s not the fault of the audience, it’s the speaker’s challenge not to stay down, but to get up and make better art.