Church Tourism

The acting Tourist/Visitor Advisor aims to help Benefices or Parishes to make their church buildings more accessible to visitors, and to attract more visitors. This is done through a number of ways:

Through membership of the Churches Tourist Association, discovering best practice and new initiatives in other Dioceses.

• By liaising with Local Authorities, Tourist Information Centres and Heritage sites where this is possible
• By encouraging parishes to think about the importance of welcoming visitors to their church.
• By offering an assessment of what is already in place to welcome visitors in that parish
• To help parishes reflect on the mission aspect of welcoming visitors of all sorts, and how they can make provision for them and engage with them.
• To make parishes aware, through this website, of resources that are available.
• To produce simple leaflets looking at some of the tasks involved – these can be downloaded from this website
• To share good practice with other places: examples will appear on this website
• To encourage partnerships, with other parishes or with local heritage sites or any other group that might make promotion easier
• Especially to encourage parishes within a Deanery to think how they could develop events such as Ride ‘n Stride and other Deanery occasions to reach out on a wider public.

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Forthcoming Events

• April 19 2012: National observation of the Millennium anniversary of the death of St Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury and murdered by the Vikings at Greenwich. Alphege confirmed the Viking leader Oleg Trygvason on the site where Andover, St Mary now sits and they will be holding a special celebration.  Knights Enham is linked by the attendance of St Alphege as Archbishop of Canterbury at the King's "Council of Enham" in 1008. Knights Enham will be holding a Flower Festival on "Saints" through out the weekend of April 28/29 with evensong at 6pm on 29 April 2012.
• May 12 2012 Wherwell Pageant entitled "The River is Flowing" is being held to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. This is a community event and the pageant will start at 5.30pm at the Priory in Wherwell and finish at St Peter & the Holy Cross Church; participants include children of Wherwell School, the Wherwell Singers, member of Andover Town Band a choir from Andover.  
• June 3 2012: The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. There will be a service in Westminster Abbey that day at 11.00 – some parishes are thinking of hiring a big screen and making the service itself a community event. In London this will be followed by “The Big Lunch” and the CTA has suggested that parishes might wish to hold a local “Big Lunch” underwritten by fund-raising so that it can be offered free.
• July 13/14: The Olympic Torch will be in Bournemouth on 13 July and then on 14 July it will travel through Christchurch, pass near to Ashurst, on to Brockenhurst then from Lymington on to the Isle of Wight and up to Southampton for an event in the evening. It is suggested that bells may be rung as it passes or other local events planned to co-incide with the passing of the Torch
• July 27: The Olympics start. Please don’t forget that this will be followed by the ParaOlympics and so the whole event will last some time. How can you build on all the publicity associated with this?

Resources

These are relatively simple leaflets which look at aspects of making our churches more accessible to visitors and tourists. Knowing the pressures that so many parishes face, these leaflets try to offer a gradual approach so that the process is not a great burden. They also point you to further resources

• St Alphege (pdf)
• Hampshire rivers and churches (pdf)
• Pilgrims Way (pdf)
• Sharing our church buildings (pdf)
• Opening up the church (pdf)
• Welcoming visitors (pdf)
• Telling the story (pdf)
• Working with others (pdf)
• Churches that can't be left open (pdf)
   

A lot of work has been done throughout the UK to help churches cater for visitors. The Churches Conservation Trust produce a large booklet called “Exploring Churches” which includes material on “Why visit churches”, “Churches now”, “Creativity”, “History Detectives”, “Investigating structures” and “Recording the Evidence”. It includes resource pages to be photo-copied for use with young people. See www.visitchurches.org.uk

Do all visitors speak English? We often assume so. Overseas, material is often available in English and some English attractions do make good provision for non English-speaking visitors with leaflets in several languages. Top marks in this respect go to Christchurch Priory whose provision includes Bulgarian and Chinese and more than a dozen other languages. These days we don’t have to hold stocks of leaflets but can print domestically as we need them. Even “Welcome” in 10 different languages gives a sense of outreach. 

Contact Details

The Revd Canon Graham Trasler - Tourism Adviser (voluntary)
costadelanton@gmail.com
01264 359843
Write to me at 30 Cole Close, Andover SP10 4NL

• Introduction
• Parishes
• Mothers' Union
• Readers & Parish Officers
• Parish Share
• Confirmation
• Parish Stewardship Promoters
• Resources for Treasurers
• Churchwardens
• Resources for Parish Officers
• Tourism