This year saw a number of willing volunteers attending the Motor Show at the National Exhibition Centre in Solihull. The Solihull group provided a team of seven for the first Sunday of the event. This is a report by Sean Clarke, the stand manager.

I had volunteered as stand manager for the day, so with my exhibitors pass in hand, I wandered into a very empty and quiet NEC hall 3 at around 8:00am on Sunday morning. It was the Sunday morning of the October storms, so I was a little wetter than I usually liked to be. I found the IAM stand, hung up my coat, unlocked the cupboards and started to unpack the various pieces of equipment we had on our stand.

We had a large plasma screen connected to a DVD player, which would run continuously, displaying the principles of advanced driving to our intended audience. We had two computers with various packages running on them, theory test, hazard perception, ways to improve your driving etc...

As the rest of the team arrived, the hall was beginning to fill with all of the other exhibitors. As 9:30 arrived, a tannoy announcement was heard, telling us that the public were about to be let in. We braced ourselves and hoards of people whizzed past the stand and headed straight for the Ferrari, Bentley, Seat and Citroen stands. It’s what we had kind of expected. People were after all here for the Motor Show.

Just to add a little excitement to the day, we had a power cut throughout the NEC complex at around 10:00 and everywhere resorted to emergency power for an hour or so. Worst hit was international station and those using the trains to get in and out of the show.

As the morning progressed, people gradually plucked up the courage to come over to our stand. A few at first and then around 10:30, all hell broke loose and we were in full swing for the next 5 hours. We were surrounded by people asking all manner of questions about the IAM, advanced driving and the skill for life package. We had every level of enthusiasm from, "I’m not letting anyone slag of my driving" to "I’ve always wanted to become a better, safer driver. Where can I sign up?" and everything else in between.

Oliver and Jim, the reinforcements, arrived around lunchtime, just in time to let some of us have a well-deserved lunch. The pace of activity kept up until around 4pm, and then slowly the hive of activity calmed itself down until only the odd punter paid us a visit at around 6pm.

As the day drew to a close, it was time to tally up our efforts for the day. In total, we had sold 12 ‘skill for life’ packages, to a value of nearly £800 and entered over 300 names into the enquiry database.

We had handed out thousand of leaflets and talked to just as many people about the IAM. The day was thoroughly enjoyable and I would just like to thank everyone who helped to promote the IAM for their efforts on the day:

Bob Hands, Brian Irons, Denis Hale, Jim Collins, Oliver Turley and Peter Dolan.

Sean Clarke, Stand Manager
See you in 2004 !

More photographs are available in the gallery