Down your street

It worked perfectly. more than 700 people (and those were only those we counted) discovered drumming, street dancing, model making, story telling, sequence dancing, piping, mapping filming all in the shopping centre. I'll post photos when I get them. But it was a crowd puller.

I'l pasted here the comments I made at church this morning about the event as there were a few who missed them who were preparing lunch and sunday school teachers out at the park. Lots of things happened more than just having an event and we haven't fully reflected on it so more things will be learned and discovered. It was also great fun and the time flew by.

A million thanks to the folk who helped out. They were brilliant. Lots of volunteers who gave us a lot of their time. Maybe they are the ones who should blog here about it... Go on!

Yesterday we were sent down your street into the town centre with CAOS… our community arts project… It was a big day… I don’t know how many from the congregation were able to pop along… I know one or two were there… but there were over 700 others from the local area involved in model making… pipers… street dance… poetry… sequence dancing… dream photographs… map making… story writing… and designing a new Clydebank… It really was fabulous…

There were 8 shop used… from the Coop at the bottom to the shop next to the hairdresser at the very top of the escalator… the whole length of the town… Some worked better than others… and you always learn lessons… But we had children and adults and grannies and a whole cross section of the community involved…

If you can take a wee wander through the centre today… look for the green circles on the windows… At the top of the centre you’ll see a model of the new Clydebank made by 50 or so children… if only Clydebank could look like some of the buildings they created… in fact we’re going to offer them as plans to Clydebank Re:Built when they begin building at the waterfront… Lively… colourful and a great place to live…

At the other end… the old More store at Three Queens Square… has its windows covered in stories and poems written for us by folk in Clydebank especially for the day… Go hear what they say about community… history and future… They’re fabulous… and you say quite a number of folk reading them yesterday…

We had people crowding round the doors of the shop when pipers were playing… sequence dancers were dancing and streets dancers were gyrating across the shop floor… drummers were making lots of noise and poems were read… It was surreal… There wasn’t enough room in that large shop for everyone… so that mall had a great crowd in it wanting to see…

And we took photographs of folk… sharing their dreams for their future… displayed and celebrated… and all of them were about stronger community… building better ties together… living in peace with each other beyond the prejudices and hurt we often put up with…

And why… This was funded by part of a lottery grant so we could celebrate community and engage people… It worked… And right at the heart of this unique day… was what…? The church… this community… sent out… It was delivered by volunteers from among us and other places… and they were all fantastic… giving an enormous amount of time…

But we sent ourselves out… we did something in a place we’ve never done anything before… in a way we’ve never done it before… We began the long process of building new relationships… shifting the church… playing with creativity… It wasn’t so much a fun thing to do… which it was… it was a calling… it was being sent out… taking very little… and finding ourselves with a language that people understood using community art… finding a place of friendship that people enjoyed… and inviting folk together in new ways… and folk said yes…

We went down our street… and we found God… in community… standing on a different street… a different shore… and we got our feet wet a little… but there we found a conversation and a story… about a church… and a journey… along another shore…