'Walter' the Hunky Punk, back in his rightful place

Last Friday the churchyard at All Saints Langport was echoing with applause and cheers as our brand new Hunky Punk (affectionately known whilst he was residing in the church porch as 'Walter') was cemented into place on the South wall of the building.

Walter has had a long journey from being a lump of stone with sketchmarks on in one of Corbel Conservation's stonemason workshops,

 
to occupying the South Porch and keeping an eye on the visitors,

 

to finally being winched up the scaffolding and manouevered back into place with one of the best views of the Levels you could possibly hope for!

We were lucky to have a front page photo on the Western Gazette last week in a build-up article for the event, and the reporters were there again on the day to write an article for the next issue!

The event was a great opportunity for the groups of people with vested interest in the building - New Saints, keyholders, the CCT, Corbel Conservation, and local Langportians to come together and celebrate the building, as well as discuss the exciting plans for the future!

For more photos of Walter's journey from sedimentary to elevated, have a look at the CCT's facebook photo album

July Update - Website, Recruitment and Partnerships, People using the building

I think we're definitely overdue a little update on the project from July!

So, last you saw us, we had submitted our HLF application.  In case you hadn't heard through twitter, or our newsletter, we were successful! We've now begun our 'Who made our church?' project with a lot of event planning, partnership brokerage, brief writing and consultant hiring!

One of the first things that we were able to do was start researching a good web design company to create our new website for us! You see that link over on the right that has said 'website: coming soon' for the whole of the project so far? Well now it really is coming soon!  We're really pleased to be working with Cosmic Ethical IT to build, design, and maintain our website, one of our HLF funded events is a website launch event, so watch this space!

We realised that with such a big project on our hands we're going to need a few more members of New Saints on the committee.  Our recruitment drive has been a mix of posters up around Langport, word of mouth through youth clubs and Scouts, and volunteering websites such as Do It.  If you, or someone you know might want to join New Saints (and is between 16 and 25), have a look at these forms and get back to us!

I've been very busy building some good strong partnerships for the project in July - Somerset Art Works are working with us to match fund and support a young artist project leader for our Hunky Punk Toy Project (Hunky Punks are the grotesques ornamenting the outside of the church, our project will work with SAW to make toy versions for local young people to make a fun connection to the building).

We've also recently had a very positive meeting with Bridgwater College's Business Studies Dept, to organise how we're going to work with the students as if we were their clients for the event management and marketing of our HLF funded events.  This will be a great opportunity for the students to work on 'live coursework', where the decisions they make have real ramifications and real rewards, rather than a hypothetical project like most students would work with.  We will also be sticking true to the philosophy of the project by utilising and building the skills of young people rather than relying on +25yr olds professionals.

Finally, I wanted to share some pictures of the recent creative use of the All Saints.  St Gilda's are a centre in Langport (just across the road from the church) that take young people from all across Europe and help them learn English language skills.  They use the church for summer schools every year, and this year they haven't disappointed! I really like the way they have re-used the space creatively, making different zones within the one big space: