Mansfield Summer in the Streets July 5th to August 30th.  Eight weeks of free summer fun and entertainment in the streets of Mansfield.  There will be children’s entertainment most days around the market place, with mid week and weekend acts, tribute bands and performers on the stage in the Market Place.  There’s even an outdoor cinema event planned!
 

From July 1st details of Summer in the Streets will be available: visit www.mansfield.gov.uk/summer or call our events hotline on 01623 463600.  Official programmes can be obtained from visitor information on 01623 463026 or picked up from the Visitor Information Point at the Mansfield Museum & Art Gallery, Leeming Street, Mansfield.  Local press will advertise weekly schedules, tune in to Mansfield 103.2 for daily announcements.

Any church in the Mansfield area wishing to add their own events to Mansfield’s District Council’s regular Newsletter, please contact Sharon Smith, Visitor Information Assistant for MDC.tourism@mansfield-dc.gov.uk or tel: (01623) 463026 

St. Wilfrid’s Church, Scrooby  and the Methodist Chapel

are holding a FLOWER FESTIVAL -  The life and times of the Pilgrim Fathers between 28th 29th and 30th June 10.00 am to 6.00 pm daily. Ploughman’s lunches and cream teas   available.  Festival Songs of Praise on Sunday 29th at 6.30 pm.

A Success Story from St Mary and St Martin’s, Blyth.

The parish writes……………….

During the period that Hodsock Priory has been open for visitors to the famous snowdrops, our Parish Church has also thrown open its doors at week ends too. The decision was taken to provide tea, coffee and fresh baked scones or biscuits and a warm welcome to visitors who wished to follow on from Hodsock to view this ancient Priory with its now well known “Doom Wall painting.

Advertisements were duly placed strategically in the Hodsock Tearooms by Sir Andrew and Lady Buchanan and we waited to see what would happen. Well, we were almost followed up the driveway to St. Mary and St. Martin's as we opened at 12 noon and our first visitors arrived and many were to follow. On that first Sunday, people stayed for the Christingle and a good sum was sent to the Children’s Society for their work with children who are bullied.

And so the weekends have gone on, with volunteers acting as hosts and guides in the church and a good many cuppas and scones have been sold and people have kindly made donations, some gift-aided contributing to the funds we need to heat the church and to our charitable commitments too.

As this is written the church has been opened on most of the weekends covering Hodsock Snowdrops, and sometimes in the week too, and we have had many interesting visitors. My thanks to all those who acted as hosts and welcomers, who distributed the Church Tour leaflets, and have made this a truly successful time. So far we have raised nearly £1000 towards our commitments, but more than that, has been the sheer enjoyment of welcoming people into and taking a pride in the heritage we have inherited at Blyth.

In the future, we hope to be able to keep the church open more often, suitably staffed, for people to be able to “drop in” - whether to look round or to just sit quietly and pray or reflect.

The Bells Appeal    St. Peter and St. Paul, Upton

The sound of church bells is an integral part of English village life, ringing out in times of joy and sorrow. Our present bell frame dates from 1611 and is irreparable. One of the bells is cracked and must be repaired and another one is so close in tone to the rest to be redundant.

The planned restoration will involve the removal of the present frame and bells, the manufacture of a new frame to house six bells on one level and the casting of 2 or 3 new bells. A ringing gallery will be constructed with access from the vestry and all new mechanisms will be provided to allow the bells to be rung.

  This work will cost approximately £50,000 and it is expected that at least half will come from charitable sources. We have already raised in excess of £12,000 and will be organising an interesting programme of events for the next 18 months. We cordially invite one and all to attend these and to help us to make our bells ring out once again.  If you would like to buy tickets for this, or to help in any way, perhaps by becoming a Friend of Upton Bells (for only 10p minimum); by making a donation, offering a skill, or by becoming a bell ringer, please contact Derek Commander (01636 830611) or  Eric Green (01636 812042).  

More money for spiritual heritage?

Readers of this Newsletter may be interested in the speech made by the Bishop of London in the Lords on 30th April, strongly supporting the development of church tourism and the availability of greater resources from central government for the maintenance of church buildings.

"My Lords, I, too, wish to address that issue of quality. I welcome this debate on the place of tourism in the British economy and am grateful for the opportunity. I should, however, declare an interest as chairman of the Cathedrals and Churches division of the Church of England. Noble Lords will be aware that in the beginning, mass tourism and religion were partners. Thomas Cook himself was a Baptist temperance campaigner and his first excursion was an 11 mile rail trip from Leicester to a sober rally in Loughborough. The charge included the ticket and food on the way and so the package tour was born and Cook went full time into the excursion business.

But this is not just a historical theme. Religious buildings of all kinds are magnets which draw tourists and their money not only to the major heritage sites like York or Westminster Abbey but also to the depths of the countryside with perhaps Mr Simon Jenkins Guide to our Thousand Best Churches in hand or to less fashionable areas like Hoxton where in partnership with English heritage we have restored St. John's with its remarkable painted ceiling depicting a genteel Church of England Apocalypse.

Religious buildings like the spectacular new Temple in Neasden attract millions of visits a year. How many tourists would miss the pleasure of visiting Wells of the Cathedral did not draw them there? Such attractions bring great economic advantages to the areas in which they are set as well as contributing powerfully to a deeper sense of local identity not least among the newer British communities.

Of course this comes at a cost to those who are responsible for the upkeep of these tourist magnets. The steep rise in visitor numbers over the past thirty years has also seen an increase in legislation covering the care of visitors especially children and those afflicted by disabilities. At the same time stricter regulation aimed at conserving our tourist attractions has resulted in a rise in costs.

Of the million or so visitors who come to Canterbury each year many are French or Germans who assume that the Government bears the cost of maintaining such an important and attractive part of the heritage of the whole community. They are often astonished to discover that what they take for granted in their own country is not true in Britain where thousands of volunteers connected to our country's faith communities do the work and raise the money that is a charge on public funds in nearly every other European state.

Canterbury Cathedral has never received an English Heritage grant and has voluntarily refused the Church Commissioners' diminishing discretionary grant in order to benefit Cathedrals with fewer visitors. But if you have a million visitors the building needs to be presented and preserved in a way that offers the tourist a welcome and an experience and if required an education.

Even visitors from Great Britain assume that the £3.50 charge to visitors nets a little money on the side for the Cathedral over and above what it receives from a generous public purse. Such charges are in consequence often resented and comparisons are drawn with the free entry policy at museum.

Yet the crucial point is that the money from visitors is not to keep services going or even the building standing, in Canterbury's case, for example, it is chiefly to provide the facilities to cope with the demands of mass tourism, to care for the visitors, to keep them secure and to make good the wear and tear of a million pairs of feet.

It is the business of each faith community to finance the religious purposes of our shrines. In the case of Church of England Cathedrals their primary purpose is stated in legislation to be as "the seat of the bishop and a centre of mission and worship."

No one is asking for state subsidy for such activities but it is important to all those involved in tourism [and we have heard the statistics which illustrate the economic importance of this sector of our economy and the employment it provides] that Heritage Sites should be properly resourced to offer a memorable experience to their very diverse and numerous visitors. English Heritage have an annual budget of£2 million for their Cathedral Repairs Grants Scheme. There are vastly greater sums available of course to promote tourism and sustain attractions. There must be a strong argument for considering the eligibility of clearly defined aspects of Spiritual Heritage Attractions on a similar footing to some museums and galleries as beneficiaries of these budgets."

Thanks to the generosity of Mike Williamson, Managing Director of Reprotec Office Solutions  in Nottingham, I am able to offer free photocopying to any church in the Diocese for Welcome and Information leaflets or other simple information sheets for visitors.  The machine available will do black-and-white double sided copies of good standard, and I could be persuaded into copying onto coloured paper, on request. Just send (preferably by email to dta@myrashackley.freeserve.co.uk) me a copy of what needs doing, and we’ll take things from there.

NOTES AND NEWS

Southwell Church Tourism Website

Have you seen our Church Tourism Website which can be accessed via the Main Menu on the Diocesan website at www.southwell.anglican.org ?

FREE Church Security courses from National Churchwatch

Nick Tolson (nicktolson@nationalchurchwatch.com) runs the organisation National Churchwatch that trains clergy & churchworkers in personal safety (including dealing with violent & non violent confrontation plus awkward 'customers'). They also teach churches how to open safely and hold the view that all churches should be open during the day, and that there really is no reason to shut if basic security measures are in place. National Churchwatch says that it has proved that if you lock your church during the day, you are twice as likely to suffer crime than if you open your church. The training days are entertaining and enable churches to feel confident about opening.