Location Drawing at St John the Baptist

There will be a drawing project taking place weekly at St John the Baptist church! I'm Charlotte, a new volunteer, who is setting up free drop in location drawing sessions which will explore creating drawings and images of the building. I hope to engage people with the historical structure through the act of drawing, mark making and writing. I'm inviting members of the public and other volunteers in to take part! So I will let you know when I'm officially up and running! I'll also will keep the blog updated, so check back often to see how things develop and of course to see some wonderful sketches and photos. These are a few drawings I worked on last week with Chris!

Drawings by Chris Rose and Charlotte Pain

Drawing by Chris Rose

Photo: Charlotte Pain

Photo: Charlotte Pain

CCT Bristol Volunteers monthly update. July 2015

Dear All,

I hope you are all well and enjoying the mini heatwave – let’s get the churches open as much as possible to offer people a nice cool refuge!

As always, firstly welcome to new volunteers this month. Britanny Bishop and Charlotte Pain join us at St John’s. Britanny will be helping with some of the team leader responsibilities and Charlotte will be joining the Tuesday team, with a particular remit to try to engage visitors with drawing the church!

Gerardo Ferreyro Salvador, an architect from Spain in Bristol on a volunteer exchange programme as part of Bristol Green Capital will be working with us until the end of July to help us draw up a proposal for regenerating the fountain head of St John’s conduit on Quay street. Welcome to you all!

Have your say / find out more about the St John’s project.

On the 30^th July the Conservation Church (aka the Gateway) project team will hold a drop in session from 4 – 7pm, with a presentation and group gathering for those who can attend at 6pm, for CCT volunteers to find out more about the project and give feedback.

We should have some of the final designs from the architects to share by this point and other important bits of paperwork.

Nibbles and refreshments will be available and we’ll try to find a way to share this info and for you to have your say if you can’t attend the meeting too. Please indicate your attendance by replying to this email.

St John’s Research Team

Please find attached the minutes from the last meeting of the research group as compiled by Keith Stenner. Keith chairs the research group and will be able to answer any questions you might have about the minutes: keithstenner@blueyonder.co.uk     

Archive footage of St John’s

Check out this amazing early film of St John’s, which Emma has found. I wish I could drive my car straight through the archway like that!

http://maps.bristol.gov.uk/knowyourplace/film_archives/H264-0013-04_St,_John_Baptist_church.mp4

Social and cultural significance of St John’s

You will all be contacted shortly by Nick Ellis who is voluntarily helping us with some documentation assessing the social and community significance of St John’s church, which will form an important part of our funding bids. Message from him below:

As well as volunteering for the St John's Research Group, I am currently a student with Heriot-Watt Univeristy in Edinburgh working on a dissertation to complete an MSc in Building Conservation. My thesis is exploring heritage values, management and community participation in charity-owned historic buildings and places. I would very much like to include CCT Volunteers perspective on volunteering for a heritage organisation in the charity sector and would be grateful if they would complete a survey. The CCT has kindly donated a prize for those responding to the survey; submitting a completed survey will automatically be entered in a prize draw to win a bottle of wine and chocolates. Questionnaires to be received by 24th July and prize draw w/c 27th July.

Volunteer team outings

On Monday we had our first volunteer team summer outing to St Mary’s Church Fairford. You can read more about our visit on the blog I’ve set up for St John’s here.

If any of you would like to contribute to the blog you can find instructions attached. It’s linked to the same google account as you should use for logging in to the online rota for the church. The next outing is on the 29^th July (note change of date) to Clevedon Court. Do let me know if you’d like to come.

Bristol Open doors day.

Last year we had 1823 visitors and raised nearly £400 between St John’s and St Thomas’ on DODs, our busiest day of the year. We are signed up again and to open our doors on Saturday the 12^th September, which will be with us before we know we know it! We’ll need as many of you as possible to be available to help on the day so please reply to let me know your availability for the day (we’ll probably break up into two shifts, morning or afternoon) and preference for being in the upper church or the crypt. If any of you could help Bob with St Thomas’ too that would be massively appreciated!  

Other Upcoming events (all at St John’s unless otherwise stated)

Bristol hippodrome choir perform Cole Porter songs in upper church.     09/07/15 15:00-21:00

Bell-ringing     Training morning       11/07/15       10:00-12:30

St John’s project meeting (@St Thomas’ Church)    13/07/15       11:00 – 15:00

St John’s Research meeting       15/07/15            11:00-13:00

Bell-ringing     Peal attempt  18/07/15       15:00-18:00

Concert in crypt        Phurpa. Tibetan monk chanting       21/08/15           times TBC 

Hands on Conservation Day                  22/07/15            11:00–12:00

--
Ed McGregor
Volunteering Officer, West
DL: 01179 309 652
Mobile: 07872 502 118
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Day out to Arnos Vale 17th July

Continuing our theme of days out to learn from other heritage sites, Mike Coe, interim CEO of Arnos Vale, will be meeting a group of CCT staff, and any volunteers who want to come, at 10.30 on the 17th July to have a chat about how they approach managing Arnos Vale as a visitor attraction whilst balancing the wishes of relatives visiting loved ones as well as wildlife conservation considerations. It will be very informal – just a chance to see what they do really.

We can then have a lovely walk along their new trails.

Please do let Ed (emcgregor@thecct.org.uk) know if you want to come along! 

Visit to St Mary's, Fairford. Magnificent medieval windows and audio guide.

The first of this summers St John's volunteer outings to get inspiration for the development of interpretative materials at St John's was to St Mary's church, Fairford. The church boasts  the only complete set of late medieval glass in a parish church in the country. It's opened daily by volunteers, runs scheduled guided tours and has a fantastic, celebrity delivered, audio guide which we were keen to check out. 

Delia, Elizabeth and Ed set off on a glorious summers morning for the hour long drive to this church on the Gloucestershire / Wiltshire border. Volunteer guide Geoff Hawkins met us at the church and explained a bit about the history of the church and the development of the audio guide. 
The guide grew very organically - the script was written by the chairman of the friends, who just happened to have excellent contacts in the theater industry and was able to call in some favours from celebrities to deliver the script. 
Each of the 30 odd windows has it's own short section in the guide which can be skipped to on the handset and there are several discreet themes, such as the wool trade, pentecost, and of course a general history of the church and the conservation of the windows. 

The friends paid for the entire development of the audio guide and purchased the hand held players with no support from external funders. A true voluntary enterprise! 
They were initially worried that theft of the handsets might be an issue but it hasn't been. Only once or twice have people wandered off inadvertedly with them, and have hastily brought them back. 

Geoff was unable to say if it had increased the average donation from visitors (they don't charge for the guide) but he did say he thought it had been successful and people stayed longer in the church because of it. 
Elizabeth was particuarly taken by Tiddles, the church cat buried in the graveyard!

Delia was kind enough to provide some useful thoughts and feedback on the visit: 

Thanks for the trip yesterday… I really enjoyed the audio guide at the church. I  liked the way it was divided into general history and then specific exposition about the windows… the production values were very high with an excellent script and the use of so many well known, actors.

I can imagine that we could do something similar at St. Johns – some general history with perhaps ambient noises and maybe dramatized scenes – like royal visits, harbour-side life, merchants meetings/service in the crypt, liturgy in the medieval day, Markets and general life.

We might approach the Old Vic for help with this perhaps but would probably have to write the script first. We could also use ambient noise just as background – like playing renaissance and choral music in the upper church – rather than Victorian hymn singing…

Next team trip to Clevdon court on the 29th July!