An arts festival in a city church helped local residents to see the church in a new light, explains Laura H. Drane.
A week of something for everyone is how Roger Hill, the Rector of St Anns Church, Manchester, summed up their inaugural arts festival. St Anns In The City took place in July 2005 and was an opportunity to celebrate Manchesters arts scene and further throw open the doors of this 18th century building. Its place as the city centres parish church is undoubtedly enhanced by its location in the middle of one of Manchesters busiest squares, surrounded by bars, shops, restaurants and offices. The aim was to host work by local artists and performers in the church building. In doing so, the church also hoped to engage with the city centres residential community, which has mushroomed in the last decade from a few hundred to 20,000, and with the tens of thousands of workers and shoppers who pass its doors daily.
Cultural associations between the church, the arts and the city centre exist largely because of its location. The church is a place which tourists, workers and shoppers alike pop into. It previously hosted regular readings on behalf of Waterstones when demand exceeded the shops reading room, and many of the major outdoor cultural events in the city happen literally on its doorstep. So an arts festival seemed like a great idea. After all, the arts are at the heart of what many churches do each week in their worship (think of their traditions in singing, drama, visual art). Both Roger and Gisela Raines, the associate rector, had contacts that could be drawn upon: Manchesters Poetry and Jazz Festivals, the local secondary school, and networks of social groups, such as the Booth Centre for homeless people.
To make it manageable for the church, we suggested that they undertook only one event per day, and that they loosely consider one event per artform through the week. The Sunday afternoon opening event was a launch for the Booth Centres visual art exhibition, with Trinity High Schools steel band playing on the square. Then a range of other work was presented through the week. There was a mono-printing workshop, an organ recital, a guided history walk around the square, a night of poets and players combining spoken word and music, and a family-friendly day on the Saturday including face-painting and a treasure hunt, plus their usual fair-trade café. The programme was also interspersed with a variety of special services, including a service by Sanctus1, a church that regularly uses contemporary cultural media (film, music, etc.) in its worship (http://www.sanctus1.co.uk).
St Anns In The City was well supported and there was definitely a feeling of starting something exciting with the festival it is anticipated that it will become an annual event. Our experience of planning and running these sorts of events are that it takes two to three years to establish in the public consciousness so this is only the start. Certainly, St Anns has a little way to go to catch up with Chorlton Arts Festival, which has run for the past four years in the south Manchester suburb, and is the result of a partnership between Chorlton High School (which is an Arts College) and local churches, businesses and the council. As part of their festival, pubs are transformed into theatre spaces, bars house visual art exhibitions, and church halls host pop concerts not least last year by local-boy-made-good Damon Gough, aka Badly Drawn Boy, raising money for building work to the parish church! An outdoor woodland-and-riverside space at Chorlton Ees had its own temporary festival art trail as well.
Certainly, these arent the only arts festivals hosted in or by churches, but they have some striking similarities and differences. Despite being within a few miles of each other, they are managed and programmed in very different ways, but they have in common their valuing of the arts and the contribution they make to their local communities.
Laura H. Drane manages her own arts consultancy and project management company.
t: 0161 273 1171; w: http://www.laurahdrane.com.
For more information about Chorlton Arts Festival w: http://www.chorltonartsfestival.com