Big Society mapping event

Today I spoke on the Big Society in Redbridge from a faith perspective at the Big Society Mapping Event which I have been involved in organising together with the local authority. The event has developed out of meetings between the ecumenical borough deans and the local authority and was held at Holy Trinity Barkingside.
In my presentation I said:

The ideas that underpin the Government’s vision of a ‘Big Society’ – strong families, strong communities, strong relationships through the encouragement of social responsibility – are familiar to all faith groups. "If we're searching for the big society, [religion] is where we will find it," wrote Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, in his recent article in the edition of the New Statesman guest edited by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

He had two reasons for making that statement. First, he quoted new research by the Harvard sociologist Robert Puttnam, showing that places of worship still bring people together in "mutual responsibility": “The evidence shows that religious people - defined by regular attendance at a place of worship - actually do make better neighbours.”

Second, he argued that: “Religion creates community, community creates altruism and altruism turns us away from self and towards the common good... There is something about the tenor of relationships within a religious community that makes it the best tutorial in citizenship and good neighbourliness.”

The truth of this can be demonstrated through research commissioned by the Cinnamon Network; a group of over 40 Chief Executive Officers of faith-based charities developing responses to the Government's Big Society agenda. Their research reveals that churches and their congregations contribute significant time as well as monies to their communities.

The 284 churches involved in the sample delivered a total of 439,000 hours of volunteer service in the last 12 months, which equates to 1,925 per church on average. These churches contributed £1,234,000 to finance social action work, or £7,568 per church, spent on an average of 3.3 projects. Projecting these figures against population and church going for the UK gives an estimate of 72 million hours of volunteering for Church-led initiatives over 12 months. When you add in other faith groups too that figure would be substantially more.

Equivalent figures could no doubt be replicated in Redbridge yet we do not have such figures to hand specifically for this borough. This event provides an opportunity to begin mapping the voluntary service contribution of faith groups to this borough and that will be the main focus of our discussion groups today. We know, however, that if properly mapped the voluntary service contribution of faith groups to this borough will involve the provision of buildings for a wide range of community activities and services combined with the delivery of a wide range of community activities and services.

Once we have a better map of the voluntary service contribution of faith groups to this borough, then two further possibilities can come into play. First, our buildings could be considered for the delivery of Council services and/or the services of other Government agencies. It makes no sense for precious local authority finances to be used on new builds when existing community buildings may have spare capacity? Use of existing community buildings, such as those we own, locates Council services firmly in the local community and provides support to the voluntary and community sector through rental income. That is a win win situation.

Second, faith groups, the wider voluntary and community sector and the local authority can then together take an informed look at the range of existing provision in the borough, signpost to existing services more effectively, identify gaps in provision, and work together to develop new services which meet real local needs.

Therefore, the work that we are beginning here today has real potential, not simply to recognise the real and actual contribution that faith groups make in our borough, but for developing a strategy in this borough that engages the voluntary and community sector, including the faith groups, as fully as possible in the development of the Big Society in Redbridge.

Finally, though, we also need to say that our response to the Big Society is that of a critical friend. We have many questions to ask about the direction of travel both here in the borough and nationally. The Archbishop of Canterbury articulated some of these issues in the editorial which he wrote for the edition of the New Statesman that I mentioned earlier.

He wrote that:

“If civil society organisations are going to have to pick up responsibilities shed by government, the crucial questions are these. First, what services must have cast-iron guarantees of nationwide standards, parity and continuity? (Look at what is happening to youth services, surely a strategic priority).
Second, how, therefore, does national government underwrite these strategic "absolutes" so as to make sure that, even in a straitened financial climate, there is a continuing investment in the long term, a continuing response to what most would see as root issues: child poverty, poor literacy, the deficit in access to educational excellence, sustainable infrastructure in poorer communities (rural as well as urban), and so on? What is too important to be left to even the most resourceful localism?”

Our role as faith groups is, I believe, to ask these questions at the same time as we play our part in expanding the Big Society within Redbridge."

We also heard from John Powell, Director of Adult Services and Housing in the London Borough of Redbridge and Tasnim Iqbal, Redbridge CVS and Chair of the Big Society Working Group for the borough. In small groups we discussed what kind of services and facilities faith groups in the borough currently provide and ways of working more closely with the local authority.
The event's aim was to gain an overview of the types of services and facilities that faith groups in the borough currently provide and how faith groups and the Council can work together to develop new opportunities. There was general surprise at the wide range of activities and services delivered by faith groups in the borough while issues of housing and homelessness were identified as the most pressing issue curently where new initiatives are required.

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Arcade Fire - Ready To Start.

New Church Art Trail (5)

 'Nativity' window by Louis B. Davis

 'Christ & St John' window

'St Agnes & St Joan of Arc' window

Whitefriars mark on the right of the 'St Joan of Arc' window

Thanks to researcher Roy Albutt, we have been able to attribute the stained glass windows at St John’s Seven Kings in what was originally the baptistry and is now the Sanctuary. The clue was the Whitefriars mark on two of the windows which led Roy Albutt to the Whitefriars lists of stained glass, compiled by Dr Dennis Hadley, to be found on the NADFAS website, which contains the following information:

'Essex
Seven Kings St John
1908 2l (lights) L Davis
1931 2l Baptistry incl John Coakes, Hogan
1938 2l Baptistry incl Joan of Arc JH, JHH, Board E'

Roy Albutt writes that:

“The 1908 window, which I take to refer to the Nativity window, was designed by L. Davis. Louis B. Davis worked for Powell's from 1898 to 1909. He was an important Arts and Crafts stained glass artist. His windows at Dunblane Cathedral, Stirling are stunning, some of the most impressive stained glass I have seen. Davis trained with Christopher Whall, THE Arts and Crafts maker and teacher from c. 1893 until he moved to Powell's.”

Louis B.Davis was born and grew up in Abingdon. During the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries he became known as a talented watercolourist, a playwright, book illustrator and above all a distinguished glass artist, continuing his work in the tradition of the Arts and Crafts movement. When referring to the splendidly translucent, glowing colours Davis loved so much, as evidenced in his windows at Cheltenham College chapel, Nikolaus Pevsner identified him as the last of the Pre-Raphaelites.

The obituary of Davis in the Abingdon Parish Magazine noted that ‘His colour and design satisfy the sense of beauty, and the actual craftsmanship will always be a wonder to those who understand the art of glass-making.’ The Times obituary commented: ‘Mr Davis may be said to have inherited the side of the pre-Raphaelite movement which was concerned with medieval glamour and Celtic twilight rather than with the method of fidelity to nature... Davis was so thoroughly imbued with the spirit of his school that he used all its devices and mannerisms with an easy, natural skill, and the sentiment of his pictures never seemed forced or affected...’

Among Davis’ most important work, in a distinctive Arts and Crafts style, was his scheme for glazing the choir windows at Dunblane Abbey (1913); several windows in the chapel of the Order of the Thistle at St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh; glasswork at Colmonell Church in Ayrshire; Paisley Abbey; Wemyss Castle; St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin and Welbeck Abbey. He also decorated the private chapels of the Marquess of Londonderry at Wynyard Park, County Durham and the Duchess of Bedford at Woburn Abbey. In southern England examples of Davis's work can be found at Littlemore Church, Oxford (1900); Abingdon School Chapel (1924, inserted 1952); Barton Hartshorn Church near Bicester; Foxley Church, Wiltshire (1901); Stoke Poges Church, Buckinghamshire (1899); St Silas's Church, Kentish Town, London (1900) and at Pinner (1900) and Hatch End Churches (1903–1932) in Middlesex. At All Saints' church, Longstanton, Cambridgeshire a depiction of Faith, Hope and Charity (1938) re-uses the figure of Hope from St Silas's Church.

After 1917-18 Thomas Cowell (1870-1949) played a significant part in re-working or adapting earlier designs by Davis. Cowell was for many years the principal glass-painter for James Powell & Sons who translated Davis’s designs and cartoons into stained glass.

The Christ and St John windows were A.F. Coakes and James Hogan, while Hogan was also involved in designing the St Agnes and St Joan of Arc windows, together with E. Board. All were also Whitefriars designers.

The most enduring and successful glasshouse in Britain, the Whitefriars Company made stained glass, table and ornamental glass, and scientific glass. It had a reputation for innovative design and retained an identity distinct from that of other British glass making centres. There are Whitefriars windows reflecting the glory of God in cathedrals and churches all over the world - from St. Paul's Cathedral, London, to St. Thomas's, New York; from Wellington Cathedral, New Zealand, to the great twentieth-century Anglican Cathedral of Liverpool, and village churches throughout the shires of England.

In 1720, a glasshouse was established on part of the site of the former medieval 'White Friars' monastery, situated south of Fleet Street. The factory really came into its own when James Powell a London wine merchant and entrepreneur, purchased the factory in 1834, the idea was to give his three sons a viable occupation. The Powell’s were related to Baden Powell, the Scout Movement founder.

The Powell’s were initially ignorant of the art of glass making, but by necessity soon acquired the skills needed and adapted and improved upon the new technologies of the industrial revolution. A Victorian barrister and archaeologist, Charles Winston, the authority for cathedral and church window restoration, had investigated the properties of medieval stained-glass, analysing the colouring agents used in the Middle Ages. He persuaded Powell to produce such glasses. By 1854 they were experimenting with the chemical mixes to achieve mediaeval coloured glass [quarries] for Winston. This innovation set them up as leaders in the field when hundreds of new Victorian churches were being built across the country and indeed the world.

Through Winston’s recommendation Powell was supplying Edward Burne-Jones with stained glass muff with the right mix of air bubbles and brilliant natural colours to match mediaeval glass. Soon Powell was commissioning cartoons from Edward Burne-Jones, Henry Holiday, Anning Bell, Edward Poynter, Ford Maddox Brown and George Cattermole. During the later portion of the 19th century the Powell’s became closely associated with leading architects and designers notably T G Jackson, Edward Burne Jones, William De Morgan and James Doyle. Not to mention Philip Webb who designed glass for William Morris that was manufactured by Whitefriars. By the late 1850’s the firm’s attention began to include designs and production of domestic table glass after manufacturing glass for William Morris's revolutionary Red House.

James Crofts Powell, his cousin, ran the stained glass department from 1876 using in-house designers and famous artists like Burne-Jones for important commissions. Under Crofts Powell the stained glass department did traditional work but also developed mosaic techniques to the Byzantine standards of Ravenna. His opus sectile mosaics were tilted to deflect the light and gained sufficient credit to be used by William Blake Richmond in his work at St Paul’s Cathedral.

The 'Whitefriars' trade name was added only in 1919, four years before the firm relocated from the City to a new site at Wealdstone, Harrow. In 1973 the Whitefriars Company closed its stained glass studio, and came under increasing financial pressure. When the company closed in 1980, the Museum of London acquired its archive of business papers, photographs, designs and pictures; some manufacturing tools and equipment; the contents of the glassworks' museum; and examples of the factory's final products.

This information will now be added to that included in our local Church Art Trail and will be of particular interest because our neighbouring parish of St Paul's Goodmayes also have several Whitefriars windows.

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Keith Green - Stained Glass.