New Saints Needs You!

A couple of things to update on this time.
First of all, our recruitment drive is well and truly kicking off - we're looking for young people (aged 16-25) who live in or around Langport and the surrounding area that are interested in gaining career skills and working to improve their local community. We're looking to increase the capacity of the core group of New Saints, so you would be required to attend fortnightly meetings (in the evening so they don't clash with school or work), and be able to give about 5hrs per fortnight of work towards the project.  If this is you, (or your children, grandchildren, neighbour, etc. etc.), get in touch!

This is our poster for recruitment - spread, share, reblog, retweet please!

Second update: we had a great meeting earlier in the week with Somerset Art Works (SAW), who are our partner for the Hunky Punk Toy part of the project. The plan at the moment (though this is subject to change depending on the artist that we hire to lead it) is to create kits for everyone and anyone to make 'sock monster' versions of our Hunky Punks, as well as making a good few of our own.  On top of this we hope to be running workshops in schools and for communities around Langport so that we can have a church full of Hunky Punk Toys for the launch event (full details of this are yet to be confirmed)

Whilst it is obvious that these sock monsters don't look too similar to our Hunky Punks (check out Walter for reference), there are (and can be) an awful lot of similarities. For example, all of our Hunky Punks are unique - we've got dragons, griffins, lions and other anonymous hellish creatures all looking different, either by design or by natural weathering, and each sock monster Hunky Punk that our project creates will be unique.  When we're creating our kits for making your own toy, we can substitute ears for horns, and arms for wings, or you can make a cat-like one look even more lion-y! The possibilities are endless.  Anyway, this is all at the planning stages, so I'm not allowed to get too excited as it all might change!

Third and final update: the build up for this one has been a long (long, long, long) time coming, but we finally have the first semblances of a New Saints website! At long last, that link on the right over there >>> will finally be live and send you to our brand spanking new website!

Here's a very tiny sneakpeek just for you lucky readers:

What do you think? I'm sure we'll be able to reveal more soon - and even more at our website launch event (another of our HLF funded events over the next year)

'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:

Training

I'm really looking forward to hearing a responce from emails sent about training oppertunities with New Saints.

May Madness!

We've been a bit quiet on the blog front recently, but that's not for lack of activity.  The New Saints have been beavering away at a Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) application; plans for events in the church to welcome in the local community; and ways to wow the Churches Conservation Trust's Trustees when they stop off at Langport on their tour of CCT churches.

...And all of this comes to a head in May!

We submitted our HLF application at the very start of April; they take 8-10 weeks to review applications, so we should be hearing their final decision at some point in May (the suspense is building already at Camp New SAints!)  This will provide us with funding for a series of events over the following 12 months to give the New Saints great experience in leading events, to strengthen ties with local institutions such as Huish Episcopi Sixth Form, Somerset Art Works, and the Langport and District History Society, get lots of people of all ages and backgrounds into the church to reignite the whole community's passion for the building, and allow us to speak to those members of the community to hear what they want and need in Langport, so that we can start planning new ways of using the building in future accordingly.

Our first (non-HLF-funded) public event is going ahead on the 12th May.  We're holding a cinema event in All Saints church, showing 'Toy Story 3'.  We chose this film because it's enjoyable for all ages (I'm certainly looking forward to it), so that children and their parents, and grandparents can get engaged, and there's very little to find offensive about it.  This is our amazing poster, designed by our very own Charlotte:

We're very grateful to SPAEDA, specifically Flora, who have worked with us to get this event off the ground and into reality.  Please come along and enjoy the show!

As I mentioned above we're getting our act together ready to welcome the CCT's Trustees to All Saints Langport toward the end of May.  I would like to think that the main exhibit will be ourselves - a group of young people passionate and active about seeing new uses happening in a CCT church, but we're also sorting out some displays using Prezi a really cool new display tool that will hopefully knock their socks off!

Stay tuned for a write up of the cinema night, hopefully with photos of a very full church and happy people!

The Limelight!

On Sunday the New Saints were at All Saints Langport to be filmed!  This was for a new promotional video, being made by the Regeneration Taskforce at the CCT.

It is a sign of very good things to come for All Saints Langport, as the film is only being made about the best, most interesting, and most promising of the Regeneration Taskforce's projects, and right from the start, the youth empowerment and regeneration project at Langport was on the cards!  There were a lot of new skills to learn that day - being interviewed on camera isn't as easy as it looks!

Joe’s thoughts about the filming….

I really enjoyed my filming experience for the CCT Regeneration Taskforce DVD..  The camera crew were a great laugh and a pleasure to work with;  all though having three stranger’s, a camera and lots of bright lights shining in my face was rather intimidating.  I almost felt like I was being questioned by the police.  I’m happy I attended though as I’ve never worked with a professional film crew before and it was very interesting.

Charlotte's thoughts about the filming….

I was super nervous when we started but the film crew we’re lovely and very good at what they did, which made the process a little easier! All in all I would never have expected to be doing this kind of thing, it was an amazing experience and a great example of the new experiences I have come in to contact with by taking part in New Saints in Langport.

Grant’s thoughts about the filming….

I really enjoyed our filming adventure. It was great experience to meet the film crew and see the work that they do. They were very friendly and dedicated to what they do. I found the interview was quite intense and interesting. This was defiantly a great life skill to build and I’m sure there will be many more opportunities in future. It allowed time to also reflect on the journey we have all taken so far but also what will be achieved in the future. 

Once the videos finished I'll be able to post it on here so that you can see what we're talking about!

I'm looking forward to reflecting back on this experience in 5 years time and seeing how different the people, the building and Langport are.

Exciting updates and plans for the future!

Hello blogreaders,

Please forgive me for not updating the blog as frequently as I would like to have done recently.  It's testament to the progress of the project that I literally haven't had time over the past few weeks, everything seems to be happening in a pre-holidays rush!

So, exciting updates:

Keys:
The CCT have agreed with our suggestion that making one of our New Saints members an official keyholder for All Saints church will show that the CCT believe in the whole 'youth empowerment, giving young people responsibility and trusting them'.  The project has been designed from the start so that the young peoples' involvement doesn't remove anything that the church was providing already (for example, whatever combination of new uses, the building will remain consecrated and available for worship), so rather than take the keys from another local keyholder, the CCT are investing in a new set just for us!

Noticeboard:
We have been working for a while on a plan to replace the current noticeboard outside the church with a bigger, shinier, new one.  This will be a good, early, physical change to the building that will show followers of the project that we mean business, that we're proud of our community's building, and that we want to make it an inviting place to be used by the community once more.  These plans are going ahead with the knowledge and approval of the parish council.

Cinema Night:
...and speaking of the building being used once more.  The next event that New Saints are managing is a cinema night at the church (probably at the end of January).  We don't have all the details ironed out just yet, but the idea is to bring people into the building that might not have been in before, for a fun family film; but also so that the community can meet the New Saints in our official roles, put faces to names that they've seen in our newspaper articles.  The public events will also be a good opportunity for New Saints to continue speaking to the local community about ideas they have for the future uses of the building. 

Abseil:
New Saints had a very exciting meeting recently with the Fundraising Officer at the CCT, to look at the possibility of holding a sponsored abseil down the tower at All Saints.  The professionals went up and had a look and gave us a thumbs up in their risk assessment.  The CCT have held a good few sponsored abseils in the past and they've always been very popular (and raised a lot of money).  This event will take a while to plan, but that also means that our intrepid abseilers will have a long time to raise money! (get in touch if you want to abseil and raise money too!)

HLF Application:
Last week was a momentus occasion in New Saints history, we sent off our Heritage Lottery Fund application to be read through by our HLF contacts.  If we succeed with this funding application (and we'd like to think we will) we'll be able to hold many more events over the next two years, to celebrate the heritage of the building and it's links with Langport, open the building to visitors, tourists and the local community, build the capacity of the New Saints so that events in future run so smoothly and have much more communication with that community that will be using the building after the regeneration so we can work together on defining the new uses.  Good times!

Constituting Ourselves:
As you may have seen from excited tweets on our twitter, the New Saints are making great steps forward to constitute ourselves.  This means that we'll have much more power to make decisions quicker, we'll also be a more attractive offer to funders when we ask for support, and the group will have much more independency from the CCT (for example, having our own bank account).  We haven't yet finalised what sort of formal group we'll be, but hopefully that's a decision for our next meeting and we can keep moving forward from there!

So, that's a lot to digest, isn't it!  Keep checking back for updates :)