A Spring Celebration

Monday 7 March

Wesley’s Chapel, City Road, London, shone with yellow daffodils and spring sunshine, and was scented with narcissi, for Monday afternoon’s Women’s Network event. The theme was ‘From the Old to the New’, as the Network will become ‘Methodist Women in Britain’ very shortly.

The afternoon's very varied programme comprised of several speakers (including an address from Connexional Women’s Network President 2010/11, Revd Julie Hulme), a Gospel singer, hymns and light-hearted drama (including a sketch imagining the automated voicemail for Heaven: press 1 for praise, press 2 for miracles… etc).

For my 5 minutes, I spoke about the way Methodist Heritage is seeking to make our past speak to our present for outreach and discipleship. In this case, I linked the 21stC interest in well-being and natural therapies back to John Wesley’s attempts to help alleviate human physical suffering as well as meet spiritual needs. His early meeting houses such as the New Room in Bristol were intended to be places for education and dispensing medicine as well as preaching. Wesley was inspired by his Christian beliefs to try to provide poor people with effective and affordable medicines and he published a book of remedies, A Primitive Physic (1747) (available online from Wesley's Chapel!)

Remember this was written in the 18thC.... Besides a large number of cold baths and the use of ‘electrifying’, presumably using the small electrical generating machine that can be viewed today in John Wesley’s House on the Wesley’s Chapel ‘campus’, Mr Wesley’s ideas ranged from using boiled onions and rosewater to laudanum, goose dung and horse warts! My personal favourite ‘cure’ is the application of ‘a live puppy to the belly’ for cholic!

Being in two places at once

Saturday 5 March

‘Great news’ my caller announced, ‘We’ve secured a much better venue for the Great Days Out Show. Unfortunately we have had to change the date though – you’ll still be OK to exhibit, won’t you, if we move from mid February to 5 March?’ Not really, I thought – so today I should have been promoting Methodist Heritage in Manchester and supporting our Sites’ Network in London. One of the challenges of this job is its national reach! Thankfully I can enlist the support of our site managers and volunteer stewards to help out in Manchester. Thank you Ali, Caroll and Margaret.

Last March, we launched the Methodist Heritage Handbook at the Best of Britain & Ireland (BoBI) travel trade exhibition at London Olympia. I have represented my employers on their stands at many trade shows over the years, but it’s a bit different when booking the space and approaching stand-share partners, organising staff rotas, health & safety, special guests, associated talks and commissioning graphics for the stand are all my responsibility. Apparently ‘BoBI’ was the first 'secular' exhibition the Methodist Church had attended to exhibit in 10 years. We gave away hundreds of Handbooks and met lots of group tour buyers especially from America, but also from Europe and Asia.

Our exhibition programme kicks off this year today at the Great Days Out Show at the Museum of Museums at that ‘temple of shopping’ the Trafford Centre, Manchester. I went up to set up the stand yesterday (see below right).

From 10am today, Ali Bodley, Acting Development Manager from The Old Rectory, Epworth (dressed as Susannah Wesley!), her colleague Caroll, and Margaret Veal, Education Officer from Englesea Brook Chapel & Museum, will be meeting and greeting a couple of thousand group visit organisers, from groups such as U3A, social clubs and schools.

We’ll be back at ‘BoBI’ on 16 & 17 March, then at the Group Leisure Travel Trade Show in late September; this year both at the NEC, Birmingham. BoBI attracts more group tour companies from overseas due to active encouragement to attend from event sponsors, VisitBritain.

Meanwhile, down in London, c30 heritage enthusiasts and staff from our historic sites and chapels, from Newcastle to Cornwall, Wales to Winchelsea, gathered at Wesley’s Chapel, City Road, London, to explore how ‘It’s all a matter of interpretation’.

Revd Lord Leslie Griffiths opened and closed the proceedings - you can see him here making his closing remarks. The Sites’ Network is chaired by Revd Dr Stephen Hatcher (standing at the far right), and our speakers were Revd Jennifer Potter and Thea, Heritage Steward, from Wesley’s Chapel; Museum & Heritage Consultant, Emma Chaplin; and Dudley Coates and Lloyd Thomas from Tolpuddle Chapel Development Group. Emma explored what interpretation is and ways of doing it, and encouraged animated discussion about which interpretation has engaged our team, and what has been a turn off. Rubbishing the heritage site up the road is not recommended!