Tikhtak

Portsmouth to Liverpool

In the last two days the youth and children’s team have visited both Portsmouth cathedral and The Anglican cathedral in Liverpool. Both will be excellent performance spaces for our Free for all 2007 project, and we have provisionally booked a week in both for 2007. In Portsmouth we met with the education officer for the cathedral and the Dean and enjoyed a lunch in the Naval club near by. In Liverpool we were shown around by the Dean, Toby Foreword and we were blown away by the sheer size of the cathedral and the possibilities for using the space. There is a bridge across the centre, which could make an amazing boat  and we have been promised a whole number of sails for free, which at the moment are hanging above the coffee shop. In the afternoon we had a meeting with Hope University about co writing resources for the school curriculum relating to the project and there is also the possibility to involve students from their performing arts faculty in the project. I personally have a connection to Hope university, as in my days studying at St Mary's College in London we had a special link with Nottradam college in Liverpool, which included working at Wimbledon together and playing football against one another. This is one of the colleges that have amalgamated to become part of Hope.

Youthwork The conference

It has been nice to do some CMS work with Irfana in a bit of a double act. We spoke at a Church in Shepperton last week on crossing cultures, using our recent India experience and the Christ we Share pictures. At the weekend we were joined by Dione Mcdonald and Sacha Graham from Ruach church in Brixton and our neighbour Suzy Carter to run a CMS stand at Youthwork the conference, as well as link up with Paul Hobbs’ installation of Holy Ground. We linked up very well together and had a lot of relevant resources and opportunities on offer for both Youth and Youth leaders: The Holy Ground pack, Re-source  training course for missional  leaders and short term mission experience with MAD and Encounter programmes. It was just a pity that we didn’t see to many of the delegates, due perhaps to a busy programme and a lack of connectivity between the exhibits and the conference itself. I plan to feed this back to the organisers with some other stallholders. Since getting back I had a couple of days up in Oxford on our mission movement team days, where we presented our Youth and Children’s strategy and saw the new site for CMS’ relocation. The next few days I will be visiting Cathedrals in Portsmouth and Liverpool to explore them hosting our Cathedral schools project “Free for all” in 2007. Watch this space.

Creation Installation

Went to Twyford school on Wednesday to help out run an interactive creation installation for CMS. I was a bit worried everyone would think I was my brother, as Dan used to teach there and my fears were realised as the head of RE had done her TP in Dan's school in Lampton, so I had to explain that one. The day went very well and 6th formers went round the installation in classes. Each station represented a day of creation and there were things to read and do relating to the story. Everyone went round with head phones, which provided some ambient music and commentary. Perhaps the  highlight of the day was when some muslim boys came to pray at lunch time. They respectfully moved back some of the furniture, prayed and then went around the installation themselves. All the feed back of the day was very positive and next year there is talk about doing the Holy Ground installation, which Paul Hobbs ran at Greenbelt this year. I will be at Youthwork the conference this weekend with Paul Hobbs and CMS, where Holy Ground will be run so I'll get some pictures of it in action.

Youth event in Cardiff

  Irfana and I went to the International arena in Cardiff for the Diocese of Llandaff Youth conference "Enter the Mystery" We manned a CMS stand to attract young people to take part in CMS' short term Encounter Mission programme. It was a little difficult to connect as the event was really a eucharistic service. I was  pleasantly surprised to see Mike Stanley up on the stage performing with Joe Boyce (Boyce and Stanley), both who I know from working in Soli House Stratford with teenagers back in the early ninetees. I also chatted with Bishop Lindsey from the diocese of Chichester, who Big Intent and CMS have linked with in the past and hopefully the future too. He spoke very well on the churches challenge to be connected to Christ the head. He compared the church to  sometimes being like a chicken flapping without it's head.

Free for All - CMS schools project 2007

Over the last week the Youth and Children's team at CMS have started to visit cathedrals all around the country with an exciting new schools/drama project with Big Intent theatre to commemorate the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade bill in 2007. On Monday we were in Southwark, Tuesday at St Albans and today in Manchester (see pics). It is an exciting prospect to take over a cathedral for a week and bus in up to 100 school children a day to take part in drama workshops with the aim of putting on a performance at the end of the week. We are aiming to have booked most the venues by the new year so watch this space.

Guy Fawkes night

I remember baking potatoes on a big open fire and going round collecting money for the guy. Now all we seem to get is a big firework display, which always seems to be over before it's begun. We had our mix youth group so the Clapham Common fireworks actually added to our already busy programme, which included a talk about Operation Christmas child