An extraordinary collection
Ever wondered what happened to the money you put in the offering at the Greenbelt communion service? It’s dispersed by Trust Greenbelt, and helps fund a myriad imaginative, small projects. Madeleine Davies finds out more.
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Archimedes was in the bath when he had his Eureka moment. Isaac Newton was sitting under an apple tree. Paul Wilson, a trustee at Greenbelt, was lounging in his backyard in London, in a hammock.
“It was a summer evening, and I was mulling over life when I thought ‘Trust Greenbelt’,” he recalls. “It just seemed like a nice little play on words.”
At the time, Paul was tasked with helping to decide what to do with the funds generated by donations made at the festival’s annual communion service. Every year, a collection is made in aid of charitable causes. However, this Communion Fund had a “low profile”, he says: “It wasn’t overly clear what it was for, to the average festivalgoer.” As a member of the panel deciding how to distribute the Fund, he was drawn to the idea of using it to “help fund people’s ideas, on the back of the festival”. And so, Trust Greenbelt was born.
Seven years later, Trust Greenbelt distributes the funds raised at the communion service to organisations working in arts, faith and justice. To date, it has distributed £430,000, helping to finance carpet weavers in Afghanistan, theatres in the favelas of northern Brazil, and a gospel choir in Hewell Prison in Redditch. That’s to name just a few of its eclectic range of beneficiaries.
Grants range in size from £100 to £5000, with most under £1000 – each made to an individual or organisation seeking to “walk the talk of the festival throughout the year”. Projects must reflect one or more of Greenbelt’s values of faith, arts and justice. The Greenbelt trustees review bids made by individuals and organisations. They are looking to fund things that are “innovative, inspiring and will have an obvious impact”, and applicants are advised that requests to fund air flights are regarded as “a bit dull”. The instruction to “get creative, and inspire us with the fantastic work you are doing” has been readily taken up by applicants over the past seven years.
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Many of the organisations funded are working in the UK. These include:Abbotsford Parish church, which employs a community arts worker in Clydebank to work with the unemployed, retired and drug addicts; and Men@work – programmes in Nottingham helping boys to “explore emotional literacy, and question traditional masculine stereotypes”. Others are undertaking projects abroad, from installing solar panels in rural communities in Malawi (the Christian Health Association of Malawi) to teaching the members of a youth orchestra in Guatemala to repair instruments (Balanya). Some have interpreted “justice” as relating to the criminal justice system. So, in 2008, a grant was given to Aword, an arts magazine produced by prisoners and ex-prisoners, which aimed to foster rehabilitation. Others have been established in direct response to events. After the floods in Hull in 2007, Hull Fludde used a grant to fund a theatrical response, combining local people’s experiences with a 15th century mystery play about Noah.
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A recent grant recipient is 10×9, a monthly storytelling night in Belfast, where nine people have up to ten minutes each to tell a real story from their lives. Conceived by Paul Doran, a journalist, in 2010, it came to Greenbelt in 2012, when participants told stories around three themes: “Paradise Found”, “Paradise Lost” and “Friendship”.
“We are interested in stories told simply for the value of being true, in stories that are not paid for,” says poet Pádraig Ó Tuama, who co-founded 10×9. “When people pay, there is an expectation of ‘Entertain me or amuse me’. But this is an opportunity to tell your own truth, without a political or religious agenda. In Northern Ireland, having that is a very important thing.”
Some of the grant secured in 2012 will be used to put together a website hosting stories in audio format, and to compile materials for people who want to use the method in their own communities. Already, a chaplain in the United States is planning to hold a session, as is a comedy festival, and the organisation Mediation Northern Ireland. The aim is to enable the telling of stories, free from the promotion of a particular ideology. For this reason, sessions in Northern Ireland are never held in a church. “Stories are stories and they speak for themselves,” Pádraig says. These stories have include a history of bad haircuts, and the tale of a transition of gender. One nine-year old girl, the youngest narrator so far, told a story about being alone. People are asked to tell their tale in a way that is “sensitive to the needs of the audience”, Pádraig says. “They are not telling something that will be traumatising to them or the audience.” The organisers do not facilitate any encounters that follow the story-telling, but Pádraig reports that he sees “strangers going up to each other afterwards and creating connections… To tell a story that is your own is always going to lead to a deeper understanding.”
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In 2010, Kimbilio, a charity supporting street children in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), used a grant from Trust Greenbelt to fund an art exhibition in the city of Lubumbashi. Two years later, the organisation brought artwork produced by children in the city to Greenbelt, where festival-goers were asked to add to it, answering the question originally posed to the children: “Where is your Kimbilio (safe place)?” They were then photographed, holding a chalkboard displaying their answer, and the photographs shown around the festival site. Ian Harvey, director of Kimbilio, and a mission partner with Church Mission Society, believes that the collaboration was a “great success”. He says: “For the children, it was really good as an exercise in itself, to think about issues of refuge and how their lives have been changed by the impact of Kimbilio. They loved taking photos of each other. At Greenbelt, we took the photos of about 250 people. I took these photos to Congo and showed the children, and this gave them a sense that there is this big community in the UK supporting them.”
Ian believes that there is a strong synergy between Kimbilio and the three values of the Trust. The arts have been used by the charity from its very inception. An artist gives the children lessons, and their creations are displayed around the centre in which they live, giving them “pride in their own work and achievement”.
Kimbilio works alongside the Anglican Church in the DRC, and is “very much a faith organisation”, helping the children to understand and grow in their own faith. Justice is also central to the charity’s work, with children who were “formerly the lowest of the low”, many having been rejected by their families and by society at large. Kimbilio campaigns locally for children’s rights, particularly for those accused of witchcraft.
In 2012, the grant from Trust Greenbelt was worth £500 – enough to fund two small photo printers, Congolese fabric for display boards, photo paper and ink cartridges. It enabled Kimbilio to ensure that the standing orders from its supporters continued to fund the core elements of the organisation: food and education for the children.
“It also shows that you can do really effective and creative activities with a relatively small amount of money,” Ian says. “The grants are not large, but the impact of the projects was quite huge.”
The first exhibition in Lubumbashi was visited by about 150 people and enabled Kimbilio to connect with local authorities. Three years afterwards, when the charity met with the Minister for Children and Families, she still remembered the exhibition.
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Seven years after his hammock-based revelation, Paul Wilson believes that the conception of Trust Greenbelt may be an instance of “divine inspiration”. In a typical year, the Trust raises about £40,000 and, at each communion service, festivalgoers are introduced to some of the projects that have been funded.
The next set of applications will be considered by the trustees in October/November. “It’s not a bureaucratic process,” he assures would-be applicants. “But we want to be responsible with people’s money, so we’ll ask for a report, and ask how you would you judge yourself as succeeding in what you are trying to do.”
Asked which projects stand out for him, he cites a women’s co-operative sewing network for Asian women, hosted in a church in Birmingham. “Many had been doing piecework and sewing projects at home, and were not being treated particularly well, in terms of wages, so the building was used to enable them to come together,” he says. “Some of the folks trying to underpay women didn’t like what the Methodist church had done, because it was helping them to be organised and getting properly paid, and treated for the work that they had done.”
Combining faith, arts and justice (and putting a few people’s backs up in the process), it is just one example of how money raised at a yearly communion service is helping to ensure that the values of Greenbelt blossom all year round. £40,000 from the Greenbelt Communion service this festival will go towards the Trust Greenbelt fund.
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To find out more about Trust Greenbelt, click here.
