jonnybaker

alternative worship - offering clues for renewing worship

alternative worship offering clues for renewing worship has been posted on musicademy. you may have read it on here before. it was originally written for anglican renewal magazine resource

you are the message

you are the message, originally uploaded by jonnybaker.

as part of the week we taught at lancaster seminary the students created a worship experience. it was around a passge from 1 thessalonians 1 - not an easy one! we only had around an hour we spent planning but somehow pulled together a really amazing worship experience. the central idea in the passage is that the apostles imitate christ, the macedonians have imitated the apostles, and now the thessalonians are imitating them. it's like a chain of modeling. but it is effective because in the end if it is real it will be visible in peoples lives. i guess it's like leslie newbigin's idea of the hermeneutic of the congregation, or like christ's simple words - if you love one another people will know you are my disciples. so taking this idea the central ritual involved people coming up and looking in a mirror which had an icon of christ on and of paul, the idea being to see how we might reflect christ. as people walked back to their seat they passed another mirror with the words you are the message written on - simple but very powerful. that line is from the message translation of the passage...

lancaster linkage

if you came to the workshop jenny and i led at lancaster theological seminary hi! in no particular order here's a bundle of liinks to things we mentioned...

alternativeworship.org is a great intro site to alternative worship. this piece how to make it happen (click through the pages) formed the basis of the session i led on the process of putting together worship. and how to get started is another intro piece, this time on the grace web site. i didn't mention this but the grace site has an archive. click on services or liturgy to find a lot of stuff such as communion by numbers or we hang our lives on your mercy

smallfire.org is a collection of photographs of alt worship services and events. it's a great site to get ideas and it's so much easier to see the services than just have them described.

i mentioned the worship tricks that i have compiled on my blog over the last few years. these are now in their third series. these can be a prayer, an idea, a whole service, a movie loop or whatever. have a browse through series 1 | series 2 | series 3

proost is a small company i help run. we produce creative resources out of the pool of wonderful people and communities doing this kind of stuff. there are a mix of movies, books of homegrown liturgies, and albums. the best deal is to subscribe - this gives you access to all the downloadable content when you like plus new content for a year. if you type in the coupon code PRSUBBG that will give you 10 percent off (any other readers feel free to use the same). i plan to set up a US page where people can buy the pocket liturgy books direct in hard copy through lulu but lulu have just changed the weight of paper so we have to redo all our book covers first (aaaargh!). btw have a look at lulu.com - useful for publishing your own book of ideas an liturgies once you get on a roll after this week's workshop!

sophia is jenny's blog which is packed with good stuff.

emergingchurch.info is a site we set up to collect stories of new expressions of church. fresh expressions is the anglican movement encouraging newness which followed on from the report mission shaped church. all these things are part of a wave of mission in our own context(s) - postmodern or whatever you want to call them. i lead a team for cms encouraging mission in the uk and europe, training and networking leaders.

other things we mentioned... flickr is a photo sharing site. some photos are published with a creative commons license which means you can use them if you credit the photographer. choose creative commons from the explore menu. the beauty of flickr is that there are both amazing images and they are often at a good size. click all sizes above the photo to choose a larger size. there are of course a load of other places to access images though create your own as well!

movies - i haven't checked these sources out but these were published in the youthmultimedia discussion forum the other day. it's a pretty useful group run out of australia - lots of useful answers to geeky questions! anyway the links for free movie loops were (let me know if you find anything good as i am yet to look) - archives.org architectsoftomorrow.com lucidhouse stockfootageforfree nara vjvault Of course none of this beats getting your camera out or getting someone else to - have a look at the flip if you want an easy way to shoot footage.

i also mentioned curation as a model for thinking about leading worship. i said i'd send round the notes we use as a guide at grace. well they are included in this blog post . this was the first of 5 posts - this last one has links to the others if it's of interest.

i'll add photos of the worship service to my flickr pages when i get back and get round to editing them...

guerilla worship on crosby beach

on the plane on the way over here i read the improv everywhere book and really enjoyed it. i think there are lots of possibilities for thinking creatively around alt worship type events in public spaces. anyway i just noticed dream are planning a second guerilla worship event on 18 july on crosby beach (a wonderful place to visit anyway) so if you are anywhere near liverpool head over...

alternative worship in the USA...

jen and i have arrived in the US and are teaching at the summer academy at lancaster seminary. we are doing a week on alternative worship. we kicked off this morning which seemed to go well... each year bruce epperley plans to have a week like this at lancaster with an emerging culture focus. next year i think doug paggitt is booked to come...

so it may be a little quiet on the blog but a few links meantime

run video is a new site launched by run - slightly different emphasis to proost though this makes us look brilliant value!

i can't remember if i have blogged this before or not (old age?!) but rob ryan tells his story so far of starting out as an ordained pioneer in rochester from nothing which is a wonderful read...

and i liked this story surprise surprise from tom brackett - a cheap sustainable way of planting a church in the episcopal setting - pay an ordained priest for doing the essentials and that's it! nice...

turbulence at the boundary

several years back at greenbelt we did some silent movies for worship - 4 alt worship groups rose to the challenge. i really liked the whole thing...

turbulence at the boundary was vaux's offering. if you never got to experience it that is now up on proost. it's silent but there is a recommended soundtrack at the end of the movie and on the movie page. it's 20 minutes long and is a bargain at the regular movie price of £1.99

The M25 is 120 miles or thereabouts of road looping round London often known as a car park due to its clogged lanes of traffic. This film from Vaux turns a trip round the M25 into a meditation on ourselves, on our cities and on God finding turbulence at the boundary. The film is shot on Super8 and has four sequences/meditations:
Looking back
Looking Out
Looking in
Looking forward

If you live in the UK London's M25 is iconic. If you are elsewhere it's urban spirituality that we hope will connect.

worship curation [5]: creating a public

worship curation [1]: opening up a series of reflections
worship curation [2]: the making of a world
worship curation [3]: negotiating newness
worship curation [4]: curating beyond the canon

a museum director's first task is to create a public - not just to do great shows, but to create an audience that trusts the institution

so says pontus hultén in a brief history of curating. this struck me quite forcibly for the simple reason that most of the people i know involved in curating worship at least in the alternative worship tradition (?!) are most interested in the creative process. i include myself in that. the processes of articulation, imagination and continuity are energising. dreaming up ideas and working out how to make them happen out of few resources, both alone and in a group of artists is like breathing air - easy and we don't have to think about it too hard. but there are a lot of events and installations and so on that are wonderfully creative and take my breath away but there is only a very small group who is fortunate enough to find this gold mine.

it's true you've got to do more work to engage in this kind of worship - it requires more than sitting in a pew and singing some songs and listening to a sermon. and i think there's something about taste - [good taste obviously!] - it's a marginal pursuit for arty types who like the leftfield rather than the mainstream. these are probably scripts we play in our minds as to why events are small. but i think it's probably that the kinds of people creating this worship simply don't get round to or think about creating a public.

i had a meal with someone new to ealing recently who was involved years back in abundant, a huge christian network and club in london 15 years or so back run by my younger brother steve and others. for that they used to have reps in every church they could think of, send out fliers and campaign like crazy. so the first question this person asked about grace was how people in other churches might know about it, did we have promoters, how did we advertise locally... i mumbled somewhat embarrassed that we didn't really do a lot of that. we had a web site, an e-mail list, an annual flier (but even that doesn't get used properly), blogs (and some of those are not bad). but it was clear to me that we haven't prioritised creating a public (or a tribe if you have read seth godin's tribes). don't get me wrong we do have a public, but it's smallish...

that's it for this post - it's one thought, one blind spot i think in many people who are curators of worship or artist-curators. maybe it's time to apply the same creative energy and process to this as to the construction of a wonderful worship experience/event?!

listing - a gem

every so often something surprises me in a delightful way. i love it when that happens. the latest was when chris goan sent us at proost an idea for a book. it's a collection of poems and meditations riffing off lists in the bible - the beattitudes, the fruit of the spirit, a time to be born... i have fallen in love with the book. it really is lovely in every way. of course we said yes! and it's now out on proost this month as of yesterday. chris is part of aoradh - here's the foreword i wrote:

“Maybe the poet is gay but he’ll be heard anyway
Maybe the poet is drugged but he won’t stay under the rug
Maybe the voice of the spirit in which case you’d better hear it
Maybe he’s a woman who can touch you where you’re human”

This is penned by Bruce Cockburn in his song Maybe the Poet, a writer Chris cites as an inspiration when it comes to crafting words. I can’t help wondering if Cockburn had been reading Walter Brueggemann’s book Finally Comes the Poet in which he suggests that it is poetry rather than prose that we need too hear to shatter our settled world to create the way for newness to come.

This book is a little gem, a surprise that came Proost’s way over the horizon from Chris. He loves crafting words, playing with words, chewing over words, creating and re-creating worlds with words. His poems and meditations are a delight, spinning off from and opening up new takes on familiar verses of ancient wisdom from the scriptures.

It’s the second book from Chris on proost. The first is the wonderful meditation he wrote to go along with Si Smith’s images of Christ’s journey into the wilderness ‘40’.

“Pay attention to the poet
You need him and you know it…”          Proost

you can order a copy or purchase a download copy from proost

worship curation [4]: curating beyond the canon

worship curation [1]: opening up a series of reflections
worship curation [2]: the making of a world
worship curation [3]: negotiating newness

curating beyond the canon is the title of one of the chapters in curating subjects. sadly i can take no credit for the term. in it okwui enwezor says this

I have always tried to work outside the canon and do it within culture. This is not to say that the canon is bad but that the canon already has a highly circumscribed notion of what artistic practice could be. I think is already embedded within a very large historical determination that is in many ways very much set. It is un-giving. I am really interested in curating within culture, even when I am drawing from the canon in order to unsettle the kind of methodological issues that have become so situated in one place. To curate within culture is to take a space of culture in the present as an open place of working and that means that you have a greater mobility in terms of bringing in procedures of making art that may not have a place in the broader context of contemporary art. I suppose this is the realm within which most curators work except when their ambitions change and they want to make an exhibition of Andy Warhol. What could be more generic? When their ambitions change, when they want to become more institutionalised, they want to prove their commitment to the canon. This is what usually happens, it is more strategic. You can see immediately the intellectual poverty of some of those gestures and I completely understand what you see when the move happens. The curators have already reached a threshold when they want to have a permanent job... it doesn't mean giving up the canon but findng a way to re-jig the canon.

nice eh? try replacing art with worship in that paragraph. i think there are a lot of resonances with alternative worship . alternative worship has sought to curate beyond the canon in a number of ways -

1. i like the recent tendency to move things into public spaces within culture - art installations such as the advent beach hut calendar and stations of the cross, in cafes and bars and proximity spaces. johannes cladders being interviewed by hans obrist talks about the attempt by sanders and others to bring art and life completely together and either give up the institution of the museum or totally rethink it. i like the telling of a debate about museums where there is a discussion of whether it would be ok to play ping pong in a museum and cladders says yes as long as the art is taken off the walls first as it would be a distraction! cheeky playful and subversive. cladders goes on to say

i still wanted the museum but i said that just because you put another label on a bottle doesn't mean that the wine inside changes; it is the wine that needs to be altered. it is the inner attitude that we have to alter. we finally have to stop defining art as only those objects that have been accepted as art by society. we have to concentrate on on allowing art to evelove through how it is received.

2. theology - depends a bit on where you start from but curators within worship are often discovering texts that are beyond the canon at least of where they started. the initial wave of thinking around alt worship had a discussion forum called postmodern christian i seem to remember and feminist, liberation, black theologies all came to influence thinking. the discovery that were a whole swathe of texts beyond what had been the canon. this is also about where the canon is read from or through whose eyes and it came to be read with postmodern eyes. i can also think of a friend who tried to introduce contemplative practices into a charismatic church and this caused a lot of heartache - it was beyond the canon of that particular church culture/theology. the use of a lava lamp caused consternation because it was a distraction or peripheral!

3. the content of particular experiences being curated. this might be something simple such as the articulation of liturgy - i can think of a eucharist at grace on hospitality that drove hard for a radical inclusion at the table, certainly confronting the assumed theology of who can come to the table for bread and wine.  the liturgy suggested that if jesus was able to share bread with judas knowing he would be betrayed by him that pretty much blew open the ring fencing that goes on. i think of the use of technology and culture in worship - mac classics on the holy table or discmans in st pauls cathedral, playful, messing with things, matter out of place. i think of themes explored - dirt by vaux which included throwing the bread and wine dramatically and the use of language that shocked projecting the words god is found in the shit on the back wall, or queer by ikon, or being greeted by the welcoming group dressed in contamination suits at grace.

4. some groups have not had denominational ties - so they have done what they like which is clearly beyond the canon

there's a mistaken notion of liturgy at play in lots of places in the anglican church for example - that there are prescribed liturgies that need to be recited by rote. identity is tied up with perpetuating this. but this is a very stagnant view. ironically curating beyond the canion is precisely the kind of tactic that will lead to renewal of the canon. so somehow a new set of permissions needs to be created that frees up worship practice within denominations. in practice this has happened in several places. the way we have negotiated this in grace is to get permission from the bishop to do liturgies that are more experimental and canon law is covered because there is a service available as prescribed by canon law. but not everyone has been that fortunate in negotiating space. there was a small booklet/paper produced off the back of a lambeth conference (down to earth statement). i think it was in 1998. anyway this tried to address the issue in the anglican communion globally. the motivation is that the canon had obviously been written from a western perspective so this document sought to encourage and give permission for contextual liturgies - or to use the language of the document - inculturated. here's a couple of quotes that get to the heart of it...

Our lack of inculturation has fostered both the alienation of some Christians and an over ready willingness of others to live in two different cultures, one of their religion and and the other of their everyday life. Other Christians again have left our churches because of this cultural insensitivity. Similarly non Christians have found the foreignness of the church a great barrier to faith...

...True inculturation implies a willingness in worship to listen to culture.... it has to make contact with the deep feelings of people. It can only be achieved through an openness to innovation and experimentation, an encouragement of local creativity, and a readiness to reflect critically at every stage of the process, a process which in principle is never ending.

as in many mission issues the church has had to think about the canon in relation to global contexts but hasn't applied the same sense on her own doorstep. but the problem is exactly the same on our own doorstep. in the book trickster makes the world lewis hyde talks about the trickster character in mythology and suggests that although trickster is an uncomfortable character, with his ruses (such as messing with dirt, crossing boundaries, or disturbing notions of truth and property) he is key to renewal, so cultures need to make space for trickster rather then silence or kick him out. totalitarian regimes silence artists.

lastly i found it fascinating that the desire for a permanent job is seen to be a threshold in the art world by some. i guess there are the same set of tensions around where to locate yourself in relation to the institution and powers that be and the edge. i touched on this in the last post...

worship curation [3]: negotiating newness

worship curation [1]: opening up a series of reflections
worship curation [2}: the making of a world

i have just finished reading A Brief History of Curating by Hans Ulrich Obrist (thanks nic). his concern is that curation may be forgotten and so has conducted eleven extensive interviews with well known curators to help the memory live on. i say well known but part of the curator's role is often to disappear behind their work so i didn't really know the names very well at all.

it's fascinating seeing the themes that surface again and again in different ways in the interviews and with the lens i bring to reading i am looking to scrape off the surface themes that resonate with curation in worship. one of the strongest is negotiating newness in art in the midst of the public, artists, museums, galleries, benefactors and patrons, and the range of institutions and powers at play in the art world. in short the curator is most definitely a negotiator, a middleman or middlewoman even if that wasn't what they signed up for! (sound familiar?)

some curators locate themselves at the independent freelance end of things so they have the creative space to fulfil their vision. they problematise the institutions and the art world and haven't got time for them. so seth siegelaub calls the museum 'a cemetery for art' with its focus on historicisation. and sees no point in working with a museum because of its vested social and structural interests. art institutions can be very detached from artists which ends up being a real problem so why bother with them? in an article i want to come back to in curating subjects it made me smile when okwui enwezor says that the day curators want a permanent job they have reached a threshold! it so sounds like the debates around mission and sustainability and ordination/full time paid or not...

on the other hand there are plenty who managed to take roles inside the museums and used that to negotiate permissions for artists to do amazing things in and around those huge spaces. obrist suggest in questions to curators that a couple of keys to the curators who have managed to create the most impact in and around museums have been their own closeness to artists and their ability to create trust in the interplay between the institution, the public and the artists. without that trust you won't be able to do much but once it's there who knows what can happen? sandberg talked about the courage to run a museum in a non academic experimental way - but you're not going to do that without a lot of graft in building trust.

there have been a couple of significant changes in museums in particular. one was that museums stopped just seeing themselves as showing permanent collections. but warehoused the artworks to create different kinds of themed shows bringing the good stuff out from time to time and showing it in different ways, making different articulations and connections with it. and the second was a shift in some museums seeing themselves as sites for experimentation. at art historians day in 1970 michael diers says that it became clear that museums had to say goodbye to their isolation, to their function as an aesthetic church (!). out of this emerged the idea of the museum as a workshop or laboratory. johannes cladders talked about the museum as a space of risk (which I love). i remember going to an amazing evening at the victoria and albert museum in london with DJs and projections, and an evening of installations in traditional spaces by onedotzero – that definitely had this laboratory feel. i suspect that if you rewound, things used to be a lot more stuffy!

my response to this debate is pretty similar to how i feel about the wonderfully creative mission leaders, improvisers and worship curators who have been part of the emerging church/alternative worship movement that has subverted, shaken, deconstructed and brought newness to the christian faith in the soil of postmodern cultures at the edges and in the heart of the institutions. let's have both and everything inbetween! i love it that there are curators who want to sail off the edge and do things that the institution cannot imagine or permit. and i also love it that there are those who patiently earn trust and negotiate space within the heart of the church. the beauty of the new environment is that it's so easy for those people to connect and share their learning and stories and journey together. can you imagine a cathedral employing a curator to play in their cathedral which they see as a laboratory and a space of risk with a wealth of artworks (theological capital?) that's been warehoused but that the curator can bring out of the cupboard to create new articulations with imagination holding up and subverting the continuity of the tradition? renewal that comes from the centre and the edge

spotify collaborative playlist - worship trick 67

matt who co-ordinates the DJs for the grace cafe each month came up with a fun idea for last week. he created a collaborative playlist on spotify and then invited a few of us to contribute in the week. you simply drag and drop tracks into it. then at grace the soundtrack in the cafe was that playlist on random play... collaborative DJing! worship trick 67 series 3. apologies if you are in a country where spotify isn't licensed!

in the spirit of collaboration i have created a jb blog readers collaborative playlist. so if you are a blog reader of mine and want to drop some tunes you are listening to on spotify in there then here's the http link and the spotify url

wii bell choir - worship trick 66

alt worship has always loved playing with technology in worship. here's a new one - a wii bell choir (QT movie) at COTA. worship trick 66 series 3.

worship curation [2] : the making of a world

this post is the second in a series on worship curation
[1] opening up a series of reflections

what is it that a curator thinks about in relation to curating worship? in the first post i laid out a very practical list that i drew up for people taking the curation role in grace - thanks to the people who have commented btw. if you follow in a newsreader you're missing that part of the conversation. i'm beginning to think this is going to be a really interesting conversation as it plays out. i have started to and fro-ing with a few people via e-mail and plan to publish a series of interviews over the next few months.

in retrospect i'm not sure if such a practical post was the best way to start. maybe it was too functional? so let me come at the question of what it is that a curator might think about by suggesting it is three things: articulation, imagination and continuity. this is not my original thought! it's from an essay in curating subjects by simon sheikh on the techniques of the curator where he suggests that as curating looks to the future it should centre round these three notions.

worship imagines a world, nothing less. sheikh suggests in relation to exhibition making that if the curator is happy with the way the world is now they should continue to make exhibitions as always and repeat the formats and circulations. but if they are not content with the world they are in in a broad sense, and in the art world, then they will have to produce other exhibitions. i find this such a resonant idea. i'm not content with the world - globally, politically, or indeed the church world or the way worship is played out and imagines the world. so if you are curating worship what kind of a world do you imagine, do you make? maybe that is the most important question any of us can ask and it will probably take a lifetime to answer? if you are restless perhaps it is because you don't like the world being made for you by other imaginaries? i was talking with someone yesterday who had been at a christian exhibition for their organisation running a stand talking to the punters at a conference. but they were next to a stand that was selling worship cds for your church - if you didn't have a worship band, you could simply plug in their cds and sing along. the music played non stop for three days and nearly drove my friend insane. but the point is what kind of world is being imagined?! i want to create a totally different one. reflecting on alternative worship, which is where the notion of worship curation has come from, i think it has been about imagining new worlds, new relationships, new strategies and tactics, and counter-publics, about saying that other worlds are indeed possible, that business as usual simply will not do.

so these three themes...
articulation. this is how sheikh puts it (substitute worship for art or exhibition as you read any of these quotes):

a work of art is at best an articulation of something as much as it is a representation of someone: it is a proposal for how things could be seen, an offering but not a handout. articulation is the formulation of your position and politics, where you are and where you want to go, as well as a concept of companionship: you can come along or not.

worship is an articulation of something, of how things could be seen. i think this is really helpful. as a community or a curator you have a vision, a take. it might not be fully worked out but it is definitely not a neutrality. i think we sometimes want to pretend about this. if i reflect on this in grace, taking something like communion, we have articulated a radical vision of hospitality and welcome around the table in most of our liturgies - this is deliberately in the face and counter to the imagination of a world where only the insiders are welcomed. in the song table of christ one of the lines is 'come if the church stops you at the door'. this is articulation. articulation is also around more subtle things like deconstructing the front, or the role of the expert or priest, around posture and layout, and around the use of culture and popular culture in worship - making a world out of the stuff of everyday life rather than articulating a world which runs in parallel to the rest of life. i love the phrase 'an offering but not a handout'. art rarely works when it shouts - maybe punk is the exception?! and worship is the same. it's good to have clarity about what you want to articulate but it needs to be offered and explored rather than shouted and dictated. the tone and posture are really important. i also like it when art is multi-valent - functions at many levels and meanings so people can find a number of pathways through. but let's not pretend that this doesn't then have an articulation...

imagination. i go on and on about imagination and creativity. it's what it means to image god - such a gift. and the curating is a process about imagination. it's the fun part. at a macro level it's about ways of seeing, imagining another world, but it's also about imagining at the level of the process of coming up with ideas and dreaming things that have not been done before or have a different take. i will come back to the process of how people come up with ideas in interviews with people i hope. but it's so exciting to be involved in the making and producing in this way. i like to think sometimes that the angels sit in the rafters or on the balcony thinking what on earth are these crazy people going to do to worship today?! and we keep surprising them and bringing smiles to their faces. beach hut advent calendars, stations of the cross in public art galleries, embedding prayers in slabs of concrete, slapping containers of installations in city centres, sending surprises through the post, welcoming people dressed in contamination suits, guerilla worship... - i love what you guys dream and have dreamt and is yet to be dreamed. imagination - it's a muscle that can be developed and needs to be flexed and there's nothing better for it than being around other people flexing imagination, maybe it's a habit that can be caught.

continuity. i'll pick up on this more in interviews. but art/worship has a history a narrative or histories depending on who does the telling no doubt. there is a tradition, a line of ancestory, a communion of artists/saints worldwide and down the ages. to curate is to locate in this line sometimes straight, other times kicking off from, subverting, giving a new spin to, and opening up the traditions. it's how traditions get remade and taken forward. and the beauty of the art world and church world is that there is so much to play with. but it is a continuity whatever way you look at it even if sometimes a rupture is brought to that continuity. if you are located in a particular denominational setting (as we are in grace) this affords certain rules/logic/grammar. if you are outside of that, continuity will play out slightly differently. but the point is as a curator or team how are you locating in relation to continuity of the worlds before and the world to come? alternative worship in this respect was much keener to stress continuity and location in tradition in contrast with the modernising moves of worship in the 70s and 80s that broke with continuity going for the new.

this was going to be a quick post over breakfast and has extended a bit!... but a final quote from sheikh

producing a public is making a world. it is also making other ones possible.

worship curation [1] : opening up a series of reflections

curation is a term usually used in the art world for the role of imagining and overseeing an exhibition space or spaces either working with one or a group of artists. it's a term that has been adopted by quite a few people in alternative/creative worship. in my memory it's mark pierson who came up with this as a helpful way of thinking about worship leading both in the prodigal project and in the cd rom fractals. we have adopted this as a term to describe the person who leads a creative team putting together worship in grace and found it a helpful way to think about it. mark pierson describes a worship curator as

A maker of a context for worship rather than a presenter of content.
(The content would be prepared by others.)
A provider of a frame inside which the elements are arranged and rearranged
to convey a particular message for a particular purpose.

however... i realised the other week that whilst i go to quite a few exhibitions i actually don't really know a lot about curation in the art world other than experiencing the fruit of the work. what is the discipline? what is the process? what are the skills? what makes for good curation? so when i was in a gallery bookshop i bought a book called curating subjects - a pretty obscure text in some ways - that is a series of pieces on curation and what it's role is and where it's headed. i have been so struck by the richness of the ideas that as a result

a) i think if i'd taken another set of turns in life i would love to be an art curator!
b) i'm going to try and blog a few pieces in relation to ideas in this book that might connect if you are involved in worship creation/curation.
c) i think this could be an ongoing series where i want to reflect on particular curators of alternative worship and interview them about how they go about things (i haven't asked anyone yet but it's an idea!)

so first up a pragmatic post. i wrote some notes for people taking a lead role in planning a grace service a few years back when we were first shifting to working in smaller creative teams rather than everybody planning everything (why did we ever think that was a good idea?!) and they might be of interest. they don't really get under the skin of curation. but it's how things get done!

At Grace we have been experimenting with giving one or two persons this lead responsibility role as a way of sharing the load a bit. Maybe after 6 months or so we are better placed to reflect on how that's going and what it involves. When we first discussed it we came up with this list of tasks below. It's pretty good. I have now tried to embellish it a bit. What I am thinking is that we should come up with something as a document so that anyone curating has it as a reference point.

• facilitation of planning meetings
We usually have two planning meetings set aside for planning a service. Sometimes it is less if it is a simple structure such as 'nine'. The first meeting is usually a free flowing brainstorm, drawing out ideas and inspiration for the theme. The second one is the time when the ideas are knocked into shape for a service and reponsibilities delegated for the various components. The role of curator is to chair both of these meetings and keep them focused and on track. It is also worth doing some thinking for both ahead of time to have things to throw in to the mix for the first meeting and maybe some notions or ideas of how this might take shape before the second. Part of the meeting role is either taking notes on the discussion and order of service or asking someone else to and then e-mailing them round the group.

• reflection on emerging direction and content between meetings
After the brainstorm sometimes there is a clear idea for a service that is going to be easy to pull together. But other times the discussion may not have produced too many concrete ideas. In the latter case the curator should take the initiative to think what might help nudge the process on a bit before the second meeting. This could be e-mailing round some thoughts for discussion before the second meeting. Or it might be finding a few new ideas to throw into the mix, or suggesting a litugical framework or an idea of using stations or whatever to help give it shape.

• ensuring distillation of service order
It is crucial that by the end of the second meeting there is an order of service with names allocated for tasks. This must be circulated soon after the meeting as this second meeting is usually the Monday before Grace. As curator it is your role to fill the gaps - the order is sometimes less than complete!

• ensuring allocation of tasks
There are several areas of tasks. Each of these needs to be checked.
1. Tasks for the service order - hopefully most tasks for producing stations/prayers/liturgy/video etc will have been agreed at the second planning meeting. But it may be that there were gaps and you need to ensure that those gaps are filled. This may include asking people who were not present at the meeting.
2. Audio - somebody needs to be at Grace who knows how to run the sound. Usually we now plug into St Mary's PA system. But we can easily use the Grace PA instead. Your role as curator is to check that someone is there who can set this up (assuming there is audio required). You will also need to check that the music or songs required are able to be played via double CD player, ipods or whatever means.
3. Visual stuff - somebody needs to be at Grace who knows how to set up and run the visual side of things. This might involve drapes, slide proctors, TVs, data projectors, video mixer, laptops, and mac classics. These aren't all necessary but your role as curator is to help decide which of these are required and how they will be used in the space.
4. Cafe - ensure that some one has agreed to get food for the cafe and set it up and run it.
5. Welcoming people - this is soething that sometimes gets overlooked especially is setting up gets behind and there is a general sense of panic. But it is important that you ask someone to welcome people at the door. And if setting up is behind so that the service is going to start late, let people know over the microphone so that they know what is happening. At the end of the service someone should give a notice to invite people to stay for the cafe.

• mailing round of service order
Once the order of service is planned e-mail it round. You should ideally e-mail round the brainstorm notes and then the service order after meetings one and two

• checking that people are doing their tasks, have necessary help/support to deliver
usually everyone does their tasks (albeit on the day of Grace!) but if there are tasks that are more complex (e.g. making a new video piece that needs to run on a dvd loop such as we had to do for the Creation installation) these are the things to check are happening ok.

• arranging cover or alternatives if someone can't deliver
If it transpires that someone is ill, unable to be at Grace, or just too busy to do what was planned, you need to rework the order of service - this might mean finding someone else to do the task or it might be finding or getting someone else to find something to replace whatever it was.

• ensure forthcoming service is advertised
There are four usual ways we advertise services: a) e-mail the grace mailing list. It is helpful if you can write one or two sentences to send Mike that describe or intrigue people about the service. b)put the next service on the front page of the web site. Again a few sentences or something intriguing or a visual image if you have one can help in this. c) if appropriate e-mail St Mary's asking them to include it in the news letter. There is only any point in doing this if you can do it after the first planning meeting. It's too late after the second. d) enourage members of Grace to plug it to friends and in any of their avenues of communication

• oversight of setting up
On the day it is your role to have thought about how the space will be and oversee the setting up process. If there are particular items that are not always there (e.g. bread and wine and cup and plate if there is communion) you need to ensure that someone is bringing those. It is also worth checking who is around to help set up and clear up. There have been occasions when very few people are there to set up. It is always easier if you check in advance.

• collecting service material afterwards for publication on grace website and grace noticeboard
Please collect any bits and pieces from the service for the web site.

• collecting feedback about the service [from team or congregation] and reporting to team afterwards
We usually have a brief moment to reflect on the service at a meeting. You can lead that or if you prefer e-mail round for feedback.

and finally...
These notes are meant to be a guideline to ensure the bases are covered. But curation is an art we are all learning so there are probably gaps in the notes and you may have other creative ways of facilitating the process via other communication means etc. So don't let the notes hold you back. There may also be certain services (e.g. Ten) that require much more planning and a different kind of process.

if there are particular worship experiences/events/installations that spring to mind that you think it would be really interesting to know how they were pulled together leave a comment. i want to compile a list of people and events to explore in conversation. if you blog and want to dive in the conversation on curation please do and send me a link if you write something so i can track the dialogue.

musicademy

i have been invited to contribute to musicademy - a worship blog/community. the posts there will be occasional and mainly things on worship i have reflected on here...

it's interesting that there seems to be a growing restlessness about contemporary worship from within the communities that have led it not just from those of us who have taken a different approach - see for example this piece bored with contemporary worship? or this piece on worship songs (i love the fact that the url is spelled brain maclaren!!!)

guerrilla worship - trick 64

in the comments on the via luminosa post nic was toasting the new itinerants, the new walkers, the new turn in the organism formerly known as alt worship that is seeing it wandering in public spaces.

well on that tip dream held a geurrilla worship flash mob. they have a video of the event and describe it as follows:

We began scattered among the shoppers. At the signal, we all stopped and took off our shoes ... an ancient sign that this is "holy ground". God lives in shopping malls as well as churches!
We then made out way to the park at the centre of the mall where we sat together to form a cross ... and prayed silently for a few minutes. We remembered Easter and the cross. We prayed for the current economic situation ... for those who have lost jobs ... and for God's blessing on our city ... we prayed for hope.

i don't know what you call this turn or trend but i am going to make guerrilla worship (it was called spontaneous worship at greenbelt) a worship trick - no 64 series 3.

via luminosa

i forgot to look at this in the run up to easter and today is the last day it is on! but if you are in york have a look at the via lumnosa, an after dark series of projections following the journey of the passion. i am hoping there will be some photos to follow... again it's alt worship getting into the public space rather than church space which is a welcome trend. sue wallace and visions are the team behind it.

i think i mentioned it before but beyond in brighton had a similar public art journey - easter path which needed ongoing attention it semms . they say this about moving into public space...

It is time we stopped huddling away in our churches concentrating on our own little rituals and iconic observances and found ways to engage with those around us who are looking for some hope and inspiration and Easter is a great opportunity for that.

easter vigil - worship trick 63

grace fire logo from jonny baker on Vimeo.

i have posted a set of photos from the grace easter vigil on flickr. it was a wonderful service. in case you have not come across it (and i hadn't been to one before) it begins with an easter fire - adam had drilled a grace logo in the side which looked brilliant. after some opening words and prayer then the paschal candle is lit and everyone takes a candle and lights it from the paschal candle. people process around the church three times before entering the church. it was drizzling with rain but somehow that made everything more beautiful with the reflected light off the wet surfaces. there is then a period of waiting and reflecting with readings and meditations. at the gospel reading everyone stands and the lights are turned up. baptism vows are renewed - adam had created a sprinkler so that everyone got wet. then at midnight(ish) the bells are rung and fireworks let off to celebrate easter. prayers and the order of service will get added to the grace archive which i will link to then...

i have added some videos to my vimeo page - easter fire | vulnerable flame | grace fire logo | flickering grace

i am making the vigil a worship trick so i have a record of it - i will come back and add the detail... that is number 63, series 3

12 stations meditation freebie - worship trick 61 [series 3]

it's good friday so we thought we'd throw up one of proost's pieces for free. this is party because there was a glitch in the file we uploaded originally so some people have had problems downloading it so we feel bad for messing a few people around. and because we felt like putting something out there on good friday anyway. to view this i have embedded it full size so stretch your browser window so that the whole animation is in there and then you click through the slides on the bottom right. if your window is too small, download it - see below. the movie 12 stations is a great accompaniment if you haven't seen it. thanks jon for agreeing to give the meditation away. if you've paid for it already and feel hard done by e-mail me and i'll create a coupon for you to download something else. if you are a proost subscriber you could access this anyway. you can download it here and use it either with flash player or open it in a browser if you want to use it offline.

i had a scroll back through the worship trick series and these are other things i noticed related to the season. if you have things you have come across leave a comment and i'll take a look

bitter journey
seven sayings - which has now moved to here
three days
ecce homo
a couple of animations
tenebrae
dead man waiting
good friday stencil
graffiti stations of the cross
easter liturgies
shooting jesus images
holy week reflections
passion pictures

if you were at spring harvest...

if you came to the teaching that joy and i were doing on the theme of apprenticeship/discipleship i have uploaded our slides for you to download as a pdf file apprentice. i really enjoyed working with joy - we were very different stylistically (- spot the difference in our slides!) but i think that difference brought very different edges.

if you came to the sessions i led on prayer, my wife jenny is better in this area than me. a few resources you might like that she has written are tune in chill out, and heart soul mind strength. you can download the breathing prayer here and there are a couple of examens here. sleeping with bread was the book i mentioned on the examen.

if you came to the worship we led, we loved having you there. grace has an archive of prayers and liturgies some of which we used - see wounded and slow for example. and i run a series of worship tricks - 1 | 2 | 3  which you can scroll through for ideas. if you had to describe the worship i guess it was contemplative but it comes out of a movement known as alternative worship. i have co-written a book or collated a book called alternative worship. and in recent years proost is a web company i help run that has a ton of resources - music, books of liturgies, and movies. harry was amazing this week and people loved his poetry, half of which was written on site. he goes under the name dubb and is on myspace here. i think we invented a new genre of worship mixing chants with rapped invocations! we will be putting an album out on proost of his stuff in the summer. laurence keith goes under the artist name harronell - his music is beautiful and he has an album harronell on proost that you can buy to download. listen to the track archangel on his myspce - one of my favourite tracks of last year.

if there was anything else we did that you want to know where to find it let me know in a comment or e-mail.

i work with cms and chatted to lot sof people about the current exciting shift to community

it's the first time i have been at spring harvest for 7 or 8 years i think. for those of you who haven't come across it, spring harvest is an evangelical mainstream christian festival. it caters for families really well with a very good childrens and youth programme. then there's a mix of bible teaching, seminars, and a celebration in the big top with lots of singing, preaching and all that (i was in the bar last night having my own celebration as chelsea beat liverpool so brilliantly at anfield!!). it won't surprise those of you who know me if i say it's not where i am most at home these days. in fact i feel like i hardly connect with this world - i don't even know any of the songs. and it seems pretty similar to when i was last here. the worship we were doing was on the edge, an alternative - always a place i feel more at home. called reflective readings we attracted a crowd who really didn't like the big top either because of taste, or because it was simply too noisy. we ended up with an older crowd but we so enjoyed them - they didn't have any of the usual postmodern angst!! a highlight was an evening where we went and lit a fire and built a cairn on the beach...