Connecting with youngsters - and their parents

How do we connect with people these days? Improved communications (e-mail, text, smart phones) should make things better but they don't appear to do so. Is it a case of 'less is more'?

Zone Plus

We made it!

The pictures say it all...

Zone Plus days 2 and 3

The Urban Strides workshops yesterday were really what Zone Plus is all about: the youngsters actively participating, comfortable with each other and the environment and enjoying it. The instructor Natalie was fantastic, very professional and with a very good rapport with the youngsters. I’m not sure that the music would go down well with some of the congregation and Liam would be challenged on the organ!

Today was quiet – but with wonderful weather. The cycle track was busy all afternoon (including some interlopers) and Lucy and Andrew were kept busy with the bellringing.

Only one more day but I think we’ve already achieved some things. We’ve seen new people in Church and we’ve seen some of these develop over the week. There’s also been lots of networking amongst the helpers and visitors’ parents. And all the helpers – who’ve been great – have enjoyed themselves and many have asked for similar activities for grown-ups. More of this later but plans are being hatched for a whole range of activities for the 17+ age group. Not an intensive week like Zone Plus but throughout the year – perhaps in support of one of the windows. There’ve been several suggestions and requests – another Urban Strides session, organised walks, coach trips, outings on the river and canal... All these will be under the umbrella of... – we’re still thinking: Twilight Zone didn’t seem right, O-Zone is the current favourite – unless you have a better suggestion.

Tomorrow we have gra... sorry, street art and the climbing wall. I hope a good end to a fun week.

Zone Plus day 3

There are more pictures on the Zone Plus web site www.zoneplus.org.uk

Zone Plus day 2

Mike’s photo workshop was well attended by a serious gang of budding photographers. They all concentrated through Mike’s description of aperture settings, focus, exposure and so on. And they all participated in his fun exercises – one of which involved Liam hiding behind safety goggles and a pillow.





The afternoon brought two sessions with Urban Strides, the Street Dance compay from Wycombe. Andy Instone who founded the company is a local boy – he went to The Mibourne. His instructor this afternoon, Natalie, was fantastic: she got the youngsters really going in each of the one-hour workshops.

Many of the adults present want us to get Natalie back when we have the grown-up version of Zone Plus!

Zone Plus has started

Today saw the first day of Zone Plus. The cycle track was quiet in spite of wonderful weather but the drama was buzzing. We had 17 youngsters of varying ages. They all got on very well and the older ones were extremely helpful. But as someone commented: if you go in for drama you’re not the quiet retiring type! They did a series of exercises in groups and then developed an improvised playlet which they performed just before the end of the event.

Many of the participants and their parents were not known to us in Church so we’re achieving our aims of getting new people.

Helen had time to take young Anna round the bike track.



More pictures - click on the image to see them:

Zone Plus day 1

Easter day

...started at 6am with a damp dawn service: not many of the candles stayed alight for the walk up to St Peter & St Paul, Gt Missenden. The 10:00 service was great: a very full Church, joyful thanks to Elizabeth and Jo (on her birthday, it turns out). Liam and the choir were on form in their quick rehearsal before the service...




as were the bellringers.

Then off to Leicester for the Ginger Princess’s birthday party: 2 yesterday.

All very sustaining.

Now for Zone Plus: a day recovering and preparing tomorrow (later today – it’s 00:35) then off we go on Tuesday morning.

After Easter – Zone Plus

The main reason for the blog to be rather sporadic over the last few weeks is the time I’ve been spending on Zone Plus. This is a week (actually four days) of fun for 10 th 16 year olds in Church after Easter Monday. A few of us were inspired by Malmesbury Abbey Skate where the built a skate park in the Abbey for a few days during the February half term. “What a way of getting youngsters into Church” we thought. Zone Plus grew from there. We don’t actually have a skate park but we do have a climbing wall, a drama day, street dance and street art workshops (I’m not allowed to call the latter graffiti – there is a fear that the gable ends in Gt Missenden will soon be covered! The bellringers are inviting youngsters to have a go, we have a mini spa for the girls and we have a cycle track.

This was today’s excitement: the track arrived and has been set up ready adjacent to the tower. Cyclist Will has tried it out – and his fixed grin while he did so was wonderful. Helen, who has done all the arrangements for this particular activity was also visibly excited today. I just hope we get the weather to make the most of it.

More Easter

A month or so ago I visited Stony Dean School in Amersham. The Young Enterprise company here have been very active with a whole range of products and services. They make the Holding Crosses we give children who are baptized in Church and I was collecting the latest supply. They were taking orders for simnel cakes. I collected my two cakes today. One has gone to the children but we have the other. We seem to be missing the chicken and the number of eggs is not quite right – but it’s still an enterprising activity. Wendy has commissioned a larger cross for the office. The school is given pieces of timber, some offcuts and some new. Wendy chose a piece of English Oak. I’ll report when the cross arrives.

Here’s our cake.

Tonight was the second – and last – performance of the Passion Play. Lots more photos below. It’s also featured on Bishop Alan’s Blog at http://bishopalan.blogspot.com/2010/03/passion-play-in-great-missenden.html

Passion Play 2

Capture Easter

Tonight was the first night of the Passion Play. An experience for all: audience and particularly the cast. The Lent card I’m trying to follow has the suggestion “Use a digital camera to find images that capture Lent/Easter” I think these images do.


More pictures here.

Passion Play

Nearly two weeks...

... with no blog entries! It’s been a busy time: getting ready for Zone Plus, building a tomb for the Passion play, hospital visits for cousin Tony. So not a lot of time for Sustaining the Sacred Centre. I’ve looked at the list of activities again - "Listen to some music you've never heard before."

Last evening we went to the Aylesbury Choral Society’s concert at the Aylesbury College. They performed Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers – a piece of music I hadn’t heard before. The Choral Soc where joined by six professional soloists and were accompanied by the Gonzaga Band – a group of musicians playing contemporary instruments (contemporary with Monteverdi, that is) – sackbuts, cornetts (sic), a chamber organ and a theorbo. The whole evening was fascinating: the harmonics of the singers with the authentic sounds of the band. The entire work was sung in Latin – although the programme had a translation. It brought back a few memories of my O-level!

Contrasting with the 17th century music was the location of the concert – the atrium of the new Aylesbury College. Acoustically the space is variable – we sat in a low-ceilinged part of the atrium for an earlier concert but last night we were in the open area and the sound was much better. The space is very asymmetrical – a three- storey interior space between a flat wall and a curved wall with the now almost compulsory curtain wall suspended on a complex framework.

A very enjoyable – and sustaining – evening.

Eat Fish and Chips at the Seaside

Well, not quite although Great Kingshill is nearer the seaside than Little Hampden. We had our delayed Christmas meal with the deputy wardens and their partners on Friday evening at The Red Lion, Great Kingshill. We originally planned this for January – we decided that December was too busy so going out in the new year would be better. However, we were snowed off – or at least the majority were. Don managed to get up to the Rising Sun in his 4WD and we walked – we were the only clients that evening. However, when I tried to book the Rising Sun for the delayed event, I got a recorded message “we’re now closed for a while...” So Red Lion it was. I picked the fish and chips (it was rather more grandly described)

The pub did a grand job: we were 17 so we ordered in advance. Instead of arriving at the table asking “who ordered sea bass” the staff had our names – so the service was very rapid and personal. The food was excellent – try it (I may get a discount next time of lots of you go – mention the blog!) I had tried it out a week or so before. We’d got it booked for one of our regular deputy warden meetings but several people couldn’t attend. I had already rebooked it once because of snow so I felt I couldn’t cancel yet again. So I did a “rent-a-guest” evening where I invited some friends to join me: it was like a dinner party but at the pub. It was great fun and I can see this being repeated.

The Christmas meal was a success – I felt it helped me to “sustain the sacred centre” that these lent activities are all about. We had an organised movement after each course so that we could speak to as many people as possible. In spite of the complexity this worked and nobody was left with nowhere to sit. We ended with the Messy Church Grace much to the amusement (or amazement) of other diners.

Following links – more engineering

As we’d failed to get into the cathedral of Saint-Etienne in Châlons-en-Champagne, I thought I’d try to find some pictures of the interior on the web. It’s not quite the same as visiting but there are usually dozens of pictures – by amateurs and professionals of any significant building. I found several – but I also found a fascinating site which resonated with yesterday’s entry about engineering. Structurae is an international database and gallery of structures. To quote the home page “This site offers you information on works of structural engineering, architecture or construction through time, history and from around the world. ... Structurae deals mostly with bridges, tunnels, dams, skyscrapers, stadiums, towers, etc. Explore this site to discover the marvellous works of structural engineering.

The site is German so there’s an emphasis on German buildings but as well as St Etienne, I found the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, the CNIT dome at La Défense – I used to stay in the hotel in this dome – it’s apparently the largest concrete shell in the world in terms of square footage of area covered per support – there are only three. There’s also an entry for the vaulting in Christ Church, Oxford.

You can see the Structurae site here.

Read a magazine – be an engineer

Wow, over a week with no postings! It’s been a busy week but I did manage to read the Times science supplement Eureka. This included an article by Lord Browne of Madingley ‘Change the world – be an engineer’ which argues for the UK to train more engineers.

Lord Browne doesn’t ask a question that has worried me for some time: why are engineers not regarded more highly in this country? In Europe – at least in France and Germany – engineering is highly- respected profession but not so here. Yet virtually everything we interact with daily is the product of engineering. I commented a while ago about the two cultures – the sciences and the arts. It’s acceptable for people to admit knowing nothing about the former – even to boast about it. But to say “I don’t know much about Shakespeare” or van Gogh or Beethoven? Never. Engineering has an even lower rating.

I think one of the problems is that scientists and engineers are not good communicators – at least in a way that everyone can understand. There are exceptions: David Attenborough, Robert Winston and the Coast presenters. But science and particularly engineering don’t get the media coverage. There are four or more reviews of theatre, films, the opera and other arts events every day in the papers but when did you see a review of an engineering achievement?

Lord Browne is a former chief executive of BP and is President of the Royal Academy of Engineering. You can read his article here and his contribution to a debate on the House of Commons Select Committee Inquiry into Engineering here.

Take a friend and go ape

I was wondering whether meeting up with an old uni frined and going to an Indian restaurant in Rugby counted. The Masala Lounge does offer ‘Avant Garde Indian Cuisine’ (I’ve always been rather concerned about ‘Indian cuisine’) We had an enjoyable evening and some excellent Indian cooking. It was really avant garde: much more delicate than your normal curry.

When we got back to our friends’ house we had a phone call from another college friend who happened to be passing (from Ely to Plymouth!) so we agreed to meet up and have lunch. We went to the Admiral Nelson at Braunston – a canal-side pub so I nearly achieved another of the suggested actions – except I want to save that for later.

So I think meeting up with two friends whom I first met in 1963 and having lunch with them and their wives counts as going ape.