Last year, FOCAL looked at some measures we could introduce to help increase safety and wellbeing at our events, and we’ve started out with our first FOCAL First Aid training day. I’d like to thank the event organisers/attendees who chose to give up a precious summer Saturday to join me in Oxford as we learnt many important life skills, such as administrating CPR and how to use a defibrillator safely, how to help someone who’s choking, burned, seizing, bleeding, or suffering anaphylaxis. It’s safe to say we all learned something yesterday – whether we were learning for the first time, or just refreshing our previous knowledge. Finally, I’d like to give a big FOCAL thank you to Lee for hosting the session and putting up with us! Lee has over 20 years experience in medical based settings including 4 years as a army medic, based in the UK, Iraq, Canada and Kenya, so if there’s anyone who knows what they’re talking about on the topic it’s him. If there was enough interest we could look into doing this again in the future. Check out the gallery below to see some highlights from the session.

George Armstrong
Focal Chair
17/08/25