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Exploring assets, challenges and opportunities with churches at Diocese of Ely

21/9/2017

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post by Katerina Alexiou

This was a truly bustling and industrious summer for EDP. The last two posts in this blog reflected on the Design Training delivered in Manchester and two themed workshops focused on the role and potential of faith buildings to serve their communities. My last activity before going away for the summer was a workshop at the Ely Cathedral Conference Centre, which brought together 22 participants from 8 different churches, mainly located in rural areas, who are currently developing plans to repair and update their buildings to increase their use.
 
The workshop aimed to help participants reflect on their assets, challenges and opportunities, share experiences, learn from completed projects and get a taste of some of the activities used in EDP to support people to think about the design of their place and their project.
 
We had run a similar workshop right at the beginning of our research, with 8 different places of worship who travelled to London Lumen from different parts of England for this exchange. This workshop, however, was focused on the particular geographical area around Ely, and the churches were introduced to us through Geoffrey Hunter who acts as Church Buildings Consultant for this Diocese. We also invited participants from the Great Bavington United Reformed Church (in Northumberland), who shared common characteristics and challenges with churches in the Diocese of Ely, despite coming from a completely different geographic area.
 
The assets, challenges and opportunities exercise
The first part of the workshop is an intensive exercise which helps groups identify challenges that stand in their way and immerse themselves in the roots of those challenges, but also gradually moves to a position where they start unearthing assets and coming up with ideas or ways in which their assets can help them overcome those challenges. Key to this exchange is having another group act as critical friends, helping their peers to externalise and clarify their thoughts and visions, often providing advice, creative input and inspiration. The exercise has two rounds, and people rotate around the tables, so that every group has an opportunity to explore their project, as well as act as a critical friend to another.
​Some of the key challenges that the participants identified were understandably related to their location, such as not being visible, not having good access routes, being a long distance away, having a sparse local population. Some churches felt there was an element of competition with other churches who may be in a similar position in the area. Consequently, due to having a small congregation and small local population, participants found funding, and even the prospect of applying for it, extremely difficult.
 
Despite those challenges, all groups considered their small, but dedicated congregations as their key asset: a small number of people who invest their skills and determination to help achieve their mission.  Participants were also aware of the importance and potential of their buildings as historic places to be a focal point in their community. Key opportunities identified were establishing collaboration with local schools and other institutions active in the area and taking advantage of their local surroundings, footpaths, heritage trails etc. 

​Inspirational material and taster workshops
The assets, challenges and opportunities exercise was followed by an inspiration presentation where we shared some examples of projects and interventions that we have come to learn about through our site visits to completed refurbishment or reordering cases. This led to a final session of taster workshops, where participants had the opportunity to explore different themes: demystifying design, mapping assets, harnessing conflicts and fundraising.
This was a really intense workshop, and at the end of the day I felt tired but grateful to the participants who were describing their experience of the day as "inspirational", "useful", "encouraging" and "empowering".
 
We have taken the challenges, assets and opportunities workshop to quite a few places so far: apart from Lumen and Ely, also to churches in Chester and Congleton, to Bow Church and to the Israac Somali Cultural and Community Association in Sheffield.
 
As well as being a vehicle for groups to reflect on what they have and what needs to be done, the feedback we have received suggests that the exercise really helps people to feel that they are not alone in their struggle to make things better for their building, their congregation and their community.

​
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Visit to Chester

11/1/2016

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post by Vera Hale

On 20th October 2015 the EDP team went to Chester to hold a workshop with churches that are part of the Diocese of Chester and are in the process of undertaking works in their building. The workshop focussed on exploring current challenges, assets and opportunities the churches face, to help plan future support activities: for these churches in Chester but also other churches who face similar issues when redeveloping their premises. 

Two churches took part in the exercise. The first was St Peter’s Church, Chester, a Grade I listed red sandstone Gothic building. Located in the heart of Chester, it does not strike you as being an active place of worship; the cab driver that took us there for our site visit was adamant that this was not a functioning church. But it is an open church. As you come in the building through a flight of steps on the North on Chester Cross, you find there is a nice café, bustling with cups and saucers and chatter - it is a place to take a break from the business of the city. The church’s aspiration is to improve the café facilities and to make the interior work better for the activities that they hold in it. The second church was St Peter in Congleton. Also a Grade I listed church it has just had mayor roof repairs and is now looking to ‘unlock the future for all’ and to re-order parts of the interior to improve provision, access and inclusiveness for the community of Congleton and ensure the building’s resilience.
IEach group got a chance to look at their own challenges, assets and opportunities but also play the role of a critical friend for the other, asking questions and providing feedback and ideas.

The workshop proved to be a great way to use design thinking to talk about the issues at hand such as finance and funding, design and identity, limitations of the buildings relating to their Grade I status, as well as issues around community participation and involvement of the congregation. Lots of food for thought for all parties involved.

We are using the same type of workshop with other places of worship - keep checking our website for updates about these workshops as well as to learn about our findings.
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Love in Action: Learning from St Luke’s Church Oxford

13/10/2015

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post by Katerina Alexiou

A central aim of the Empowering Design Practices project is to develop methods, tools, resources and mechanisms to support people embarking on projects for refurbishing and enhancing local places of worship. But before we can develop new things, we need to look at past practice: How did other people do it? How did their journey look like? What kind of places they created? What are the pitfalls of the process and how they can be overcome?
 
To inform our own practice, we therefore set up a strand of work called Learning from the Past. The research includes interviews, focus groups, workshops, and a number of visits to past projects. These site visits offer a way to experience the place and engage with the people who relate to it: those who were originally involved in envisioning a new future for their building and who saw it through, but also current users, worshipers, visitors, or people using its services.
 
In this blog, I would like to recount our first site visit to St. Luke’s Church in Oxford and share some thoughts and observations.

The site visit
We were all excited about visiting St. Luke’s. Becky Payne (our valued expert on sustaining historic places of worship) had already written a case study about the project. St. Luke’s is not a renovation project like the ones we intend to focus on for our support, but the church was rebuilt retaining to a great extend the footprint and character of the original building. A really inspiring example, from which we felt we can learn a lot, particularly about the way the steering team led the re-design process while creatively engaging with the wider community in one of the poorer parts of Oxford.
 
It helped that it was a glorious day when we visited, but the first impressions approaching the building were really positive. The entry to the building was smooth and the main hall looked big, bright and tidy. The space gave the impression of a well looked after community centre but it combined a sense of spirituality. In this minimalist space, a beautiful unconventional painting of the last supper drew our attention instantly conveying so much about the principles behind the creation of this space.
The main room has cupboards all around the periphery, which are used for storage, and there is a mezzanine level on its short side. Beside the main room there is a kitchen area, and beyond that a connecting space leading to the ‘Chill out’ room - a space mainly used by children and youth groups, with sofas, a second kitchen area, a standalone sink, a pool and a juke box.
The walkabout
Following a quick lunch and introductions to the project and to each other we divided in three groups to walk around the building. Each group was tasked with discussing a different topic: architecture, heritage, and community, particularly focussing on how changes in the building have affected people’s lives and perceptions.
Participants talked about a feeling of cosiness the Chill Out room has, welcoming different types of users and different types of uses, including art, dance (from ballroom to street dance), cooking, mother and toddler group activities and even just listening to music and playing pool. All these activities happen often alongside worshipping, and the Hungarian and occasionally also the Asian Church also rent the space out for their own service.
 
The building was designed to allow wheelchair access, which necessitated moving the entrance to the side. This was originally met with disapproval by the local authority planners, who expected to have an entrance to such a public building on the front and at a distance from the surrounding private flats. Indeed we found out that there were many negotiations between the architect, the steering committee and the council throughout the whole process, and people in the community also came in with their perceptions and requirements about the place, whether for a small thing like the sink in the Chill Out room or something bigger, like the façade of the building.
These negotiations extended to the perception of heritage different people had as this extract from the discussion shows:
‘Surprising some of the young people find it quite difficult to adjust to the new building as they so loved the old building even thought it was falling apart and everything, they had a very strong sense of ownership over it. I think they thought ‘this brand new building doesn’t feel like our yet’.
 
We did some art projects; they made a Celtic cross out of clay which is hanging in there, and (…) they have got their own chalk board thing and just things that make them feel it is their building as well.’
 
‘In some ways we have established a new heritage haven’t we?
Mapping milestones and assets
The second part of our visit focussed on mapping milestones in the process from the start of the project until now, but also the assets associated with key events: the people, skills, tools and resources that made things happen. We used a map with some key events pre-drawn, based on the interview we had already conducted with the church warden.
 
It was a lively discussion and bit more disordered than we had planned! Thinking about the key events and their succession, helped participants recall and reflect on the process. Doing this as a group helped create a more complete picture. The initial phases of the project drew most of their attention, as they were rightly the most intensive, the most difficult and the most defining. The process had its highs and lows, and there were many setbacks as well as achievements.
There were plans to replace St. Luke’s going back to the 1980’s. But the journey which kicked off the transformation of St. Luke’s into what it is now started in 2005 when the steering group formed. A first proposal was designed with the help of students from Oxford Brookes University. Then around 2007 come another design, which included private flats to help generate revenue to maintain the building, but the plan didn’t get permission due to requirements relating to an elevated flood risks in the area. This also started an on-going consultation with local residents, which revealed their will to maintain the church as a community landmark and resource.
 
Constant community engagement was one of the key characteristics of the project that made it so successful, and so was working in partnership with other local faith and secular organisations; engaging with local media; and combining multiple sources of funding.
A key point in the discussion was when we asked the team about their values and what made them persevere in the face of numerous difficulties over a long period of time:
‘Well, we haven’t touched on faith. For us, this project was part of the outworking of our faith, not just a kind of blind optimism, it was actually looking for guidance, trying to listen’
 
‘We also had a fundamental belief in St Luke’s for me. I knew there needed to be a St Luke’s here. It was unlike other churches, it served a need that could not be met in other ways’
 
‘It was meeting the people around here and realising that St Luke’s can help people get a sense of belonging and feel valued, things that other churches aren’t able to do’

Epilogue
St Luke’s moto is ‘love in action’. This was what drove the process and what drives the group’s everyday activities and use of the space now.
 
During the workshop a group of three youngsters appeared on the door. They hesitated a bit to get in when they saw us, but they were immediately welcomed in. We could see they felt at home and one was confident enough to share his view about the place. I thought, maybe that is where it all starts, in giving people voice and confidence.
 
I feel privileged to have met the people and I have learned a lot. Below I include a list of top tips that the team suggested to us, to help others embarking on a similar journey.
 
Watch this space for more blogs about our visits to past projects.

Top tips from St. Luke's, Oxford

  • Capturing imagination – visualising the project
  • Ensuring a mix of skills – getting people in early
  • Flexible design of project – contingency
  • Engage the community
  • Be clear about what you are/your values
  • Patience and insistence
  • Design to allow mix of as many groups/users as possible
  • See if you can phase the project
  • Lottery funding useful early on (but only early on)
  • Divide responsibilities and respect each other’s skills
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Meeting with English Heritage Support Officers

18/3/2015

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post by Ruchit Purohit 

We attended an annual EH Support Officers meeting a few weeks ago at the Waterhouse Square London. The meeting was organised by Diana Evans who is one of the partners on this project. The Support Officers are experts working on historic places of worship (mostly churches) who had come to discuss their experiences within their diocese. These are bright experienced minds from all over England exchanging the issues they were facing in implementing the conservation projects.

During the introduction, all of us were asked to speak of our best and worst experience in the past one year and it was really inspiring to hear all the work these officers were doing.  There was a lot of positive energy in the room as they discussed their projects. The challenges identified by most of them were roof related tasks and the application for funds for big projects. They also mentioned the bureaucracy behind it which led to the tasks being long and time-consuming - seen as a major hurdle. Closure of certain buildings was seen as a threat and few of them expressed deep concern over it.

Theo Zamenopoulos, our project lead gave a detailed presentation of our project and the stage which we are at the present. He gave them an introduction of what we are seeking to do in next five years and how the officers can be involved in the project. The presentation was very well received and you could see the officers nodding in sync on how important this kind of research is in the present context.

The discussion after the presentation was even more captivating. They told us how relevant it is to do such a project but informed us of the challenges we will face as it involves multi-stakeholders and the community.

Picture
Some of the remarks from the officers were:

An officer who had worked in Southampton on an urban regeneration project told us how regeneration in a Methodist Church will be fairly simple but other churches like the Anglican might be more averse to having any changes. She mentioned that many of these churches are famous and listed for its interiors and the community is very protective about it.  Though most of these interiors are freezing cold, the communities do not really want to change anything and this could be of a challenge for the designers. Also, due to the large size the projects become more expensive and not feasible.

Theo replied that indeed this is a challenge but we want to work with communities and do not intend to push our ideas but work on what really they want to do.

Adding to this discussion a senior officer commented how this research project could be seen in terms of different theologies. How philosophies of some faith groups won’t allow any changes and some will. The question of "what is holy ground" is very relevant and how certain groups won’t allow moving any of the sacred spots in the church (He compared this to his experience of few Hindu temples where the relocation of sacred statues was seemed more acceptable while re-designing spaces)

Another officer mentioned her experience of working with faith groups and how each community raises the issues of security. She stressed that these issues of security differ in different faith groups. For example, the Anglican community is more concerned about protection of the sacred contents in the churches and the possibility of theft. The Jewish and Muslim communities, though concerned about thefts, are far more worried about the issues that are political in nature. The concern was related to the threats/vandalising of properties or the abuse on social media due to the Paris attacks recently. She gave an example of how a Jewish Synagogue wanted to introduce a cafe which would be open to the community but was worried about security issues and that the idea of having two bulky guards at the entrance might not be taken positively.

One of the officers raised a valid point which we project partners have been investigating since the project was conceived. And this is the question - "Who is the community?"

She gave an example of a Gurudwara in east London where the resident community does not comprise of the Sikh faith group. During certain holy and festive events at different times of the year, there are far more worshippers than usual and this impacts on the traffic and parking around the area. This severely affects the local residents and the council has had to take necessary steps. But they have to be cautious as they cannot be seen as discriminatory either to the faith community or to the resident community.

Taking the question of "who is the community" forward another senior officer told of us his experience on working with churches which have been long isolated. The villages surrounding these historical buildings have either moved elsewhere due to natural reasons or have been perished altogether. The community that built these does not exist anymore and thus whom are we aiming for in the changes?

An officer made a very apt comment on how interesting our project is as it concerns with "rational processes which are irrational for people". The other officers nodded and mentioned how certain faith groups don’t know if the proposed changes are for them or for people from the resident community or for the visitors. Diana added that in her experience the faith groups do not understand what public benefit is – “is it for people coming in these sacred places to use the cafes/ toilets and simply admiring the gargoyles?”

One officer commented how the funders like the HLF (Heritage Lottery Fund) demand tangible aspects in terms of the public benefit and impact. 

HLF's demand to give them the number of visitors daily was seen as time-consuming and the officers agreed that the logistics of this was impossible. This kind of bureaucratic side of the funders was seen as a challenge. An officer suggested that the HLF needs to move away from such review processes and accept that it has to be more subtle in their approach and that there is "no one size - fits all" concepts in such reviews.

Continuing with the expectations of funders an officer stated that interpreting the "wider" community benefits is indeed a challenge. She said certain faith groups she had worked with already provided food banks/ counselling/ mental health group/ crèche services etc. This was a part of "role of mission of the Church". Thus, it was difficult to then show to the funders the difference between church activities they were carrying on for wider benefits and the expected 'secular' activities.

Another officer raised the issue of what is funded and for whom is it funded - connecting it to the contrast of architecture value and community value. He mentioned his experience of working for Grade I listed church which is beautiful and has these really great details inside such as the wonderful stain-glass etc. This church has all the money for its maintenance and sustainability but is hardly frequented by the community. Compared to this, within walking distance, was another church not as extravagant but it has a community space. Probably the only community space in the area and hence this church is more frequented. The community has decided to put in more funds and do more renovations in this church!

As it was time to close the session and move onto other activities, Diana added that we intend to come up with outputs from this project which will be useful directly to communities and experts - toolkits/ guides for owners/faith groups/experts etc. Theo thanked everyone for this very useful discussion and stressed that we intend to capture the intangible aspect of public input too.

We exchanged contacts with the officers over lunch and got some really good inputs and suggestions of historical buildings we could look as case studies.

As I walked back home, I looked at the notes in my diary and realised how exciting this project is really going to be. These were experts working at current cases across the country and they exchanged with us the daily challenges that they deal with design and working with different stakeholders.  Within a span of two hours we had discussed economic issues, bureaucratic issues and philosophical issues. The underlying concept that I find relevant is that how different stakeholders perceive these places of worship and what they want to do it with it.  

The struggle is going to be about values - be it architectural value, philosophical value, community value, economic value and so on. The way these values are interpreted and prioritised (by all stakeholders) will define the course of the design and the future of these historic places of worship. It will be important for us to capture these individual/group perceptions and values in our research and how these are prioritised.

One of the comments by an officer would be appropriate to end this blog post - "you know the value of the building only when you close it/ lose it".
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