Friends and Festival Church Conference
On Monday 30 September 2024, the Church Buildings Department and Association of Festival Churches jointly hosted the ‘Friends and Festival Church Conference’ at St Mary’s Church in Ely. The goal of this conference was:
- To provide training and information about Festival Churches, and help churches to discern whether they should become one themselves.
- To hear more about the work of Friends Groups in our Diocese, and create opportunities for PCCs to understand how and why to start one for themselves.
- To afford Friends Group and Festival Church members the opportunity to meet together, network, and exchange stories, advice, and guidance.
- To continue our commitment of supporting PCC/Friends Groups efforts to widen their organisational sustainability and engagement/support from their parish community.
Read a report of the conference, written by our Church and Community Support Adviser, Samuel Pedlar.
Each of our speakers contributed to the event and made sure that the conference heard different voices, different perspectives, and important personal stories and reflections that all in attendance could learn from and apply to their own disciplines. Listed below are the speakers, along with links to some of the presentations from the conference:
- Ven. Richard Harlow - Archdeacon of Huntingdon and Wisbech
- Nigel Mills - Association of Festival Churches, Development Officer
- Revd. Andrew Whitehead - St Peter’s, Haveringland (Festival Church)
- Gavin Cameron - Rampton Action Group, All Saints’ Rampton (Festival Church)
- David Knight - Head of Church Buildings, Church of England
- Revd. Paul Hutchinson - St Mary’s, St Neots
- Pat Robinson - Friends of the Painted Church, All Saints’ Cambridge (CCT)
- Alan Draper - Friends of St John the Baptist, Somersham
- Kate Jackson - Friends of St Clements, Outwell
- Caroline Lewis - Friends of St Peter and St Paul, Alconbury