Our meeting today was the first time I'd lead a meeting in Langport without Melita to keep me on track, eek!
The first issue that came up was that our planned venue for the meeting was closed and locked because it was Good Friday. This was quickly resolved by moving to a pub garden, so silver-linings all round.
The meeting, whilst not following the planned agenda very closely, actually went very well, early on we met with a young person who came to the meeting opposed to the project but after a short introduction to who the CCT were and why we were developing a project in Langport, they soon became a supporter and a new member of the core group, success!
Our core group, which is growing every week, enjoy a bit of progressive thinking coming up with future use ideas for the church. This really makes me happy because we're actively engaging in the idea of regenerating the church, we're exploring the wants and needs of the community, and we are a group of young people sitting round a table discussing how the grown-ups have messed it all up and what we're going to do to remedy that.
The only problem is that this part of the project development should be happening weeks and months later on, in tandem with community consultation, so that we're having informed discussions on the wants and needs of the whole community, with documentary back-up, rather than the wants and needs of 6 people around a table.
The upshot of this is that we're all getting excited (myself included) about the possibility of a music and performance venue *idea*, and coming up with very legitimate reasons why the community needs it and how it could fit sustainably and with multi-purpose effects in the church (as well as reasons that people might not like it). What we can't do is get carried away with this idea and push it forward without properly researching how it might fit into the community. Having said all this, enthusiastic young people with big ideas and conscientious thinking are not to be sniffed at!
The second half of the meeting was spent inside the church, discussing ideas of value and identifying what was seen as highly valuable and less valuable (I identified the aspect of the nave from East to West, in my eyes it would be heresy to chop the nave in half with a stud wall), other areas that were identified as valuable for different reasons were the space around the altar and the Chancel in general due to its spiritual significance, the monuments on the walls and floor slabs due to their local resonances, and the 'hunkypunk' grotesques due to their sheer number and uniqueness to Somerset. All in all some good, useful discussion.
Next meeting we're working on filling in the HLF application with young people, and coming up with a name that stands out a little bit more than 'All Saints Langport Youth Project', woooooo! After discussing today's meeting with Melita, she's going to scribe the next meeting whilst I lead it, so that I can practice some techniques for holding on to a meeting that enjoys going off-piste.
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