Historic Churches 2020

BCD SPECIAL REPORT ON HISTORIC CHURCHES 27 TH ANNUAL EDITION 11 Church buildings have always been designed for use by people, firstly as places of worship, but also as places to meet, congregate and provide a spiritual, social and cultural focus for a community. There is a fluidity in the way churches have been used over the centuries, which has changed regularly with time. Hereford Diocese adopts a community development approach to the sustainability of a church building; working with local people and combining a pragmatic mix of community use with heritage conservation and development. This encourages parishes to engage in the widest community involvement, advocate strong project development and where possible, involve local people in project management and delivery. It works with the Parochial Church Council (PCC) and others locally to consider and identify opportunities for diversification and new ways of thinking about how to use their church building. Sam Hine of Communities Can, a local community development and social enterprise specialist, has supported several of Hereford Diocese’s parishes. When asked about the importance of community development in making changes to parish churches and building uses, she said, As with any community-based initiatives, if they are to succeed there needs to be local ownership. People need to feel engaged and involved, to discuss options, consider challenges and obstacles and develop shared solutions. By getting more people interested you can share the workload and any anxieties as well as coming up with innovative ideas and suggestions. There may well be people in the local community with wide ranging skills – people that may not be regular church goers but have a genuine interest in the building and its long term future within the landscape. For projects to be successful you should try to identify and address a local need or create a new social enterprise opportunity that people will invest time and energy into for the long term. Parishes often need support in this early development work, to build their confidence and capacity, working together to turn their ideas into feasible proposals that they can seek funding to develop further and implement. Over the years, this community development approach has meant that the Diocese has been able to bring forward a number of projects to create new uses within its churches, all of which sit alongside their primary role as places of worship. These include shops, post offices, heritage centres, performance spaces, cafes, libraries, meeting places, digital hubs, community hubs and more, in an effort to help parishes to develop their assets for wider use and enjoyment. The Diocese supports a spirit of entrepreneurial development; and in that spirit has been working on creating a new use for one of its churches. THE VIRTUOUS CIRCLES PROJECT Virtuous Circles is a sustainable tourism project exploring an intriguing new use for churches currently open for worship. The aim is to create a revenue- generating social enterprise initiative, capable of providing income to help maintain open churches and contribute towards their financial sustainability, by installing high quality, well designed holiday accommodation into ecclesiastical buildings. A key element of Virtuous Circles is the exploration of how best to involve the PCC and the wider community in this endeavour. Virtuous Circles has been in development for several years; with a closed church in Herefordshire originally chosen as the pilot. Sadly, the church was in such a poor state of repair that the overall project was not able to offer sufficient value for money to the funders, due to the large cost of essential renovations and repairs. While this was initially a disappointing outcome it did establish one of the first Virtuous Circles is a new project supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund which aims to help maintain open churches and contribute towards their long term financial viability through tourism.