Keeping the faith
Religious buildings have traditionally had little or no interpretation, but this is changing. Simon Stephens finds out why
Visitors to St Paul’s who resent paying the £12.50 adult entrance fee might not realise that the London cathedral has charged for admittance since the late 18th century. But whatever the amount people had to pay then, today’s visitors get a lot more for their hard-earned cash.
This summer St Paul’s completed a £40m restoration programme that coincided with the 300th anniversary of the Christopher Wren-designed cathedral being declared complete by parliament in June 1711.
As well as the cleaning and repair of the interior and exterior, the restoration also included the introduction of improved interpretation of the building for visitors. The main elements have been a touchscreen multimedia guide, developed with handheld supplier Antenna Audio.
The guide is available in 12 languages, reflecting the cathedral’s appeal to overseas visitors – more than 820,000 paid to come through the doors in 2010.
The other major form of interpretation is Oculus: An Eye Into St Paul’s, a film created with exhibition designer Ralph Appelbaum Associates that aims to bring the 1,400-year history of the site to life.
Interpretation
St Paul’s is not alone among UK cathedrals in trying to improve the level of interpretation it offers visitors. Consultant Anne Fletcher, who led the interpretation at St Paul’s, has also worked on improving interpretation at Rochester Cathedral and is currently working with York Minster.
“At St Paul’s it is an acknowledgement that we have to charge, but we now feel that we give really good value for money and you will leave with a really good understanding of the place and a passion for it,” Fletcher says.
Many of the other important UK cathedrals charge an entrance fee for visitors, including York and Canterbury, while others such as Salisbury and Durham encourage donations.
These institutions receive no direct funding from government so earned income is important. In 2010 St Paul’s received more than £8m from ticket sales, the crypt shop and events.
But it is not all about making money. Many of those in charge of religious buildings are keen to improve people’s understanding of their work and providing interpretation is one way of doing this.
“At the outset of the interpretation project at St Paul’s, one of the things that the Dean and Chapter [the governing body] were very worried about was that market research showed that lots of visitors did not realise this was still a church,” says Fletcher.
“So one of the big aims of the interpretation strategy was to bring this understanding of St Paul’s as a working church to visitors, but without alienating people who don’t have faith or are of other faiths.”
The danger of alienating non-Christians is one of the challenges faced by those interpreting religious buildings of that faith. The solution seems to be not to be too evangelical and to look for commonalties rather than differences.
“Right from the start, the idea at St Paul’s was that it should be very subtle,” says Fletcher. “What it should do is explain Christianity, how people worship and how this building is used, in an inclusive way so that people who are not Christians are not put off.
“Everybody is struggling with the same issue, which is how do you interpret faith, and they all treat it slightly differently,” Fletcher continues.
“There is the recognition that if you are a Christian church you are interpreting Christianity, you are not telling a multi-faith story. But you are trying to tell that Christian story in a way that is accessible to all.”
An inclusive approach includes looking at Christian practices that have similarities with other religions, such as the ritual use of water. And it means explaining the basic terms that are used in Church of England architecture and religious practice.
“A lot of interpreting faith is about getting back to basics,” Fletcher says. “It’s a much more secular society now. When medieval churches were built, you’d expect everyone to be able to read the iconography. You can’t assume that any more.”
Cathedrals often turn to exhibition designers to help them appeal to wider audiences. Event Communications has worked on interpretation at convents, churches and cathedrals, including Canterbury, where there were similar concerns to St Paul’s.
Secular and sacred
“There were lots of people who visited Canterbury’s great historic building, but the Dean and Chapter were concerned that it was being looked at without any real understanding of the role of the church today,” says Event Communications chairwoman Cel Phelan.
She believes that cathedrals such as Canterbury provide a rich source of material for interpretation as they are full of important objects and the buildings are artefacts in themselves.
Exhibition design firm Haley Sharpe has worked with a number of religious buildings on interpretation projects, including St Martin in the Fields church in central London and Hereford Cathedral.
The project at Hereford centred on interpreting the medieval heritage of the cathedral and the iconic treasures that are a legacy of that period, such as the Mappa Mundi, a 13th-century map that reveals how scholars interpreted the world in spiritual and geographical terms.
“The exhibition at Hereford formed an important layer within the cathedral’s offer, which, together with the cafe and the shop, caters for a wide visitor profile without compromising its central role as an important faith institution,” says Haley Sharpe’s head of new projects Stephen Richards.
“These additional layers obviously increase dwell time and are important for visitor spend.”
There are numerous such projects underway at the moment. Hereford is currently working on the £5m Cathedral Close project, which includes new interpretation and improved access and infrastructure.
Durham is fundraising for its £5m Open Treasure project, which will open up spaces for wider public use as well as creating more exhibition areas for displaying a greater number of its Saxon artefacts, medieval manuscripts and other objects.
And York Minster is working on York Revealed, a Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF)-supported programme that will restore and conserve the building and improve interpretation.
Community significance
It’s not just the big cathedrals that are making efforts to improve interpretation and provide a better welcome for visitors.
Tim Bridges, a museum curator for 20 years, is involved in a number of organisations that care for and support churches, and was appointed as the church buildings support officer for the diocese of Hereford earlier this year. He says that there are a number of factors driving church organisations to move beyond their core religious role.
One reason is that grants to improve buildings are often dependent on providing some form of interpretation for visitors. And as village schools, pubs and post offices close, churches are often the only public buildings left and there is a demand for them to do more to reflect this.
Churches are also an important part of the tourism industry and there are various initiatives that use religious buildings as a basis for people to explore areas.
Joanna Booth is the development officer for the North West Multi-Faith Association (NWMFA), which supports faith tourism by helping sacred sites to be open and welcoming.
One of the main aims is to help religious organisations become more sustainable, with churches able to access straightforward advice on attracting visitors and ways to interpret their buildings.
“We want as many faith sites open and welcoming visitors as possible,” says Booth, who is one of the regional church development officers funded by English Heritage under its Inspire programme. “It is about bringing visitors in and using that to increase income and make sure a church that has been there for 1,000 years will be there for another 1,000 years.”
As well as improving the sustainability of religious organisations, one of the aims of the NWMFA is to promote interfaith harmony.
“It is also about community cohesion and increasing understanding,” says Booth, who works with mosques and synagogues as well as churches and cathedrals. “It is ignorance that leads to intolerance, fear and distrust, so we want these places to be accessible.”
Although bodies such as NWMFA are helping religious buildings to survive, many churches are closing, although the rate is slowing. A 2010 English Heritage report, Churches and Closure in the Church of England, found that since 1969 there have been 1,795 closures. This represents about 11% of the Anglican building stock.
Some of what are known as redundant churches end up with the Churches Conservation Trust (CCT), a non-religious body that is funded by government. The trust now has responsibility for 340 properties, which attract 1.5m visitors a year in total.
The organisation is in the process of appointing a consultant to help it develop an interpretation strategy for its sites. And even though it does not have a religious purpose, the CCT shares some of the issues faced by active churches, such as financing interpretation and maintenance.
New relevance
“We are going to initially need to prioritise as resources are tight, as they are for most government-funded organisations,” says CCT deputy director Sarah Robinson. “We have got lots of ideas, but as usual it’s a question of finding the funding and resources to develop them.”
One the approaches being considered is to focus resources on the 20 CCT churches that already receive visitors. Robinson describes this as a gateway strategy in which those venues will be used as a way to provide information about other local trust churches.
One of the trust’s properties, All Souls church in Bolton, is to be turned into a multi-purpose community centre. It has received £3.3m from HLF and there will be an interpretation area dedicated to the building’s history.
Projects such as these can provide a fascinating insight into the UK’s past. But many visitors need a bit of help in understanding religious buildings and their significance.
“People think churches are dusty, dead and irrelevant, especially if they have never been in one before, and those are the people I’m interested in,” says Booth.
“Once you start unlocking the secrets of the buildings, then everyone is fascinated. We are a secular society, but I think if churches disappeared it would be very sad.”
Interpretation in churches is often very different on mainland Europe, and reflects specific countries’ religious history and traditions.
In Spain, religious objects are often very much part of current religious practice. In the Castilla y León region in the north of the country, the Las Edades del Hombre (The Ages of Man) religious exhibition has been running for 16 years.
It has traditionally taken place in different cathedrals, but this year it has been divided into two and is being hosted by churches in the villages of Medina del Campo and Medina se Rioseco. It runs from May until November.
This year’s theme is the Passion and features about 180 works of religious art. They include works that are still paraded through the streets as part of the Holy Week religious processions that take place in the region each Easter.
Some of the objects in Las Edades del Hombre feature particularly graphic representations of Christ, which would be shocking to see in an UK church, although UK museum visitors were given a taste of this at last year’s Sacred Made Real exhibition at the National Gallery.
The capital of Castilla y León, Valladollid, features Museo Nacional Colegio de San Gregorio, a museum of religious sculpture and one of Spain’s oldest museums.
www.turismocastillayleon.com
When Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service got rid of its church museum in 2000, one of the options was to turn it into a wine bar.
Kate Weaver, who used to work at the Churches Conservation Trust, was horrified: “I thought the idea of making it a wine bar was absolutely hideous, so I said let’s think of something we can do so we can at least keep it like a church.”
The solution was to turn St Peter Hungate, a 15th-century church in the centre of Norwich, into an interpretation centre for Norfolk’s medieval heritage. Weaver worked with colleagues to secure a lease from Norwich Historic Churches Trust and to fundraise to conserve the building.
Hungate Medieval Art opened in 2008 and has a permanent exhibition that looks at stained glass in Norfolk. The aim is also to direct visitors out to see the medieval art hidden in the county’s parish churches.
Weaver is keen for redundant churches to have uses that make visitors feel they are still entering a religious building.
“These buildings have been deemed redundant for regular worship, but they are still stunning. It is not like a museum where you are interpreting religious objects – you want to get a sense that you are going into a religious building.”
Money from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) supported Hungate Medieval Art in its first two years of its operation. But in March a £300,000 HLF bid that would have allowed it to expand its work was turned down.
Weaver says the organisation has now reached a crisis point and new funding is desperately needed to secure its future.
www.hungate.org.uk
This summer St Paul’s completed a £40m restoration programme that coincided with the 300th anniversary of the Christopher Wren-designed cathedral being declared complete by parliament in June 1711.
As well as the cleaning and repair of the interior and exterior, the restoration also included the introduction of improved interpretation of the building for visitors. The main elements have been a touchscreen multimedia guide, developed with handheld supplier Antenna Audio.
The guide is available in 12 languages, reflecting the cathedral’s appeal to overseas visitors – more than 820,000 paid to come through the doors in 2010.
The other major form of interpretation is Oculus: An Eye Into St Paul’s, a film created with exhibition designer Ralph Appelbaum Associates that aims to bring the 1,400-year history of the site to life.
Interpretation
St Paul’s is not alone among UK cathedrals in trying to improve the level of interpretation it offers visitors. Consultant Anne Fletcher, who led the interpretation at St Paul’s, has also worked on improving interpretation at Rochester Cathedral and is currently working with York Minster.
“At St Paul’s it is an acknowledgement that we have to charge, but we now feel that we give really good value for money and you will leave with a really good understanding of the place and a passion for it,” Fletcher says.
Many of the other important UK cathedrals charge an entrance fee for visitors, including York and Canterbury, while others such as Salisbury and Durham encourage donations.
These institutions receive no direct funding from government so earned income is important. In 2010 St Paul’s received more than £8m from ticket sales, the crypt shop and events.
But it is not all about making money. Many of those in charge of religious buildings are keen to improve people’s understanding of their work and providing interpretation is one way of doing this.
“At the outset of the interpretation project at St Paul’s, one of the things that the Dean and Chapter [the governing body] were very worried about was that market research showed that lots of visitors did not realise this was still a church,” says Fletcher.
“So one of the big aims of the interpretation strategy was to bring this understanding of St Paul’s as a working church to visitors, but without alienating people who don’t have faith or are of other faiths.”
The danger of alienating non-Christians is one of the challenges faced by those interpreting religious buildings of that faith. The solution seems to be not to be too evangelical and to look for commonalties rather than differences.
“Right from the start, the idea at St Paul’s was that it should be very subtle,” says Fletcher. “What it should do is explain Christianity, how people worship and how this building is used, in an inclusive way so that people who are not Christians are not put off.
“Everybody is struggling with the same issue, which is how do you interpret faith, and they all treat it slightly differently,” Fletcher continues.
“There is the recognition that if you are a Christian church you are interpreting Christianity, you are not telling a multi-faith story. But you are trying to tell that Christian story in a way that is accessible to all.”
An inclusive approach includes looking at Christian practices that have similarities with other religions, such as the ritual use of water. And it means explaining the basic terms that are used in Church of England architecture and religious practice.
“A lot of interpreting faith is about getting back to basics,” Fletcher says. “It’s a much more secular society now. When medieval churches were built, you’d expect everyone to be able to read the iconography. You can’t assume that any more.”
Cathedrals often turn to exhibition designers to help them appeal to wider audiences. Event Communications has worked on interpretation at convents, churches and cathedrals, including Canterbury, where there were similar concerns to St Paul’s.
Secular and sacred
“There were lots of people who visited Canterbury’s great historic building, but the Dean and Chapter were concerned that it was being looked at without any real understanding of the role of the church today,” says Event Communications chairwoman Cel Phelan.
She believes that cathedrals such as Canterbury provide a rich source of material for interpretation as they are full of important objects and the buildings are artefacts in themselves.
Exhibition design firm Haley Sharpe has worked with a number of religious buildings on interpretation projects, including St Martin in the Fields church in central London and Hereford Cathedral.
The project at Hereford centred on interpreting the medieval heritage of the cathedral and the iconic treasures that are a legacy of that period, such as the Mappa Mundi, a 13th-century map that reveals how scholars interpreted the world in spiritual and geographical terms.
“The exhibition at Hereford formed an important layer within the cathedral’s offer, which, together with the cafe and the shop, caters for a wide visitor profile without compromising its central role as an important faith institution,” says Haley Sharpe’s head of new projects Stephen Richards.
“These additional layers obviously increase dwell time and are important for visitor spend.”
There are numerous such projects underway at the moment. Hereford is currently working on the £5m Cathedral Close project, which includes new interpretation and improved access and infrastructure.
Durham is fundraising for its £5m Open Treasure project, which will open up spaces for wider public use as well as creating more exhibition areas for displaying a greater number of its Saxon artefacts, medieval manuscripts and other objects.
And York Minster is working on York Revealed, a Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF)-supported programme that will restore and conserve the building and improve interpretation.
Community significance
It’s not just the big cathedrals that are making efforts to improve interpretation and provide a better welcome for visitors.
Tim Bridges, a museum curator for 20 years, is involved in a number of organisations that care for and support churches, and was appointed as the church buildings support officer for the diocese of Hereford earlier this year. He says that there are a number of factors driving church organisations to move beyond their core religious role.
One reason is that grants to improve buildings are often dependent on providing some form of interpretation for visitors. And as village schools, pubs and post offices close, churches are often the only public buildings left and there is a demand for them to do more to reflect this.
Churches are also an important part of the tourism industry and there are various initiatives that use religious buildings as a basis for people to explore areas.
Joanna Booth is the development officer for the North West Multi-Faith Association (NWMFA), which supports faith tourism by helping sacred sites to be open and welcoming.
One of the main aims is to help religious organisations become more sustainable, with churches able to access straightforward advice on attracting visitors and ways to interpret their buildings.
“We want as many faith sites open and welcoming visitors as possible,” says Booth, who is one of the regional church development officers funded by English Heritage under its Inspire programme. “It is about bringing visitors in and using that to increase income and make sure a church that has been there for 1,000 years will be there for another 1,000 years.”
As well as improving the sustainability of religious organisations, one of the aims of the NWMFA is to promote interfaith harmony.
“It is also about community cohesion and increasing understanding,” says Booth, who works with mosques and synagogues as well as churches and cathedrals. “It is ignorance that leads to intolerance, fear and distrust, so we want these places to be accessible.”
Although bodies such as NWMFA are helping religious buildings to survive, many churches are closing, although the rate is slowing. A 2010 English Heritage report, Churches and Closure in the Church of England, found that since 1969 there have been 1,795 closures. This represents about 11% of the Anglican building stock.
Some of what are known as redundant churches end up with the Churches Conservation Trust (CCT), a non-religious body that is funded by government. The trust now has responsibility for 340 properties, which attract 1.5m visitors a year in total.
The organisation is in the process of appointing a consultant to help it develop an interpretation strategy for its sites. And even though it does not have a religious purpose, the CCT shares some of the issues faced by active churches, such as financing interpretation and maintenance.
New relevance
“We are going to initially need to prioritise as resources are tight, as they are for most government-funded organisations,” says CCT deputy director Sarah Robinson. “We have got lots of ideas, but as usual it’s a question of finding the funding and resources to develop them.”
One the approaches being considered is to focus resources on the 20 CCT churches that already receive visitors. Robinson describes this as a gateway strategy in which those venues will be used as a way to provide information about other local trust churches.
One of the trust’s properties, All Souls church in Bolton, is to be turned into a multi-purpose community centre. It has received £3.3m from HLF and there will be an interpretation area dedicated to the building’s history.
Projects such as these can provide a fascinating insight into the UK’s past. But many visitors need a bit of help in understanding religious buildings and their significance.
“People think churches are dusty, dead and irrelevant, especially if they have never been in one before, and those are the people I’m interested in,” says Booth.
“Once you start unlocking the secrets of the buildings, then everyone is fascinated. We are a secular society, but I think if churches disappeared it would be very sad.”
For the faithful and the curious alike
Interpretation in churches is often very different on mainland Europe, and reflects specific countries’ religious history and traditions.
In Spain, religious objects are often very much part of current religious practice. In the Castilla y León region in the north of the country, the Las Edades del Hombre (The Ages of Man) religious exhibition has been running for 16 years.
It has traditionally taken place in different cathedrals, but this year it has been divided into two and is being hosted by churches in the villages of Medina del Campo and Medina se Rioseco. It runs from May until November.
This year’s theme is the Passion and features about 180 works of religious art. They include works that are still paraded through the streets as part of the Holy Week religious processions that take place in the region each Easter.
Some of the objects in Las Edades del Hombre feature particularly graphic representations of Christ, which would be shocking to see in an UK church, although UK museum visitors were given a taste of this at last year’s Sacred Made Real exhibition at the National Gallery.
The capital of Castilla y León, Valladollid, features Museo Nacional Colegio de San Gregorio, a museum of religious sculpture and one of Spain’s oldest museums.
www.turismocastillayleon.com
Renewed purpose
When Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service got rid of its church museum in 2000, one of the options was to turn it into a wine bar.
Kate Weaver, who used to work at the Churches Conservation Trust, was horrified: “I thought the idea of making it a wine bar was absolutely hideous, so I said let’s think of something we can do so we can at least keep it like a church.”
The solution was to turn St Peter Hungate, a 15th-century church in the centre of Norwich, into an interpretation centre for Norfolk’s medieval heritage. Weaver worked with colleagues to secure a lease from Norwich Historic Churches Trust and to fundraise to conserve the building.
Hungate Medieval Art opened in 2008 and has a permanent exhibition that looks at stained glass in Norfolk. The aim is also to direct visitors out to see the medieval art hidden in the county’s parish churches.
Weaver is keen for redundant churches to have uses that make visitors feel they are still entering a religious building.
“These buildings have been deemed redundant for regular worship, but they are still stunning. It is not like a museum where you are interpreting religious objects – you want to get a sense that you are going into a religious building.”
Money from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) supported Hungate Medieval Art in its first two years of its operation. But in March a £300,000 HLF bid that would have allowed it to expand its work was turned down.
Weaver says the organisation has now reached a crisis point and new funding is desperately needed to secure its future.
www.hungate.org.uk