Just another day at the office
Greenbelt creative director Paul Northup writes:
I’ve worked for Greenbelt on and off for the last nine years or so. Like any job, some days are better than others. But yesterday was a distillation of everything I find energising about the work here. Yesterday reminded me what a privilege it is to be part of the Greenbelt journey.
It was a combination of things. Greenbelt is always a combination of things.
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It was reading email updates and tweets and seeing photos posted from our Greenbelt group of artists and friends out in Israel-Palestine as they journeyed down from Nazareth via Jenin and then onto Bethlehem for the first Bet Lahem Live festival, which starts there today.
Greenbelt trustee Gaynor Bradshaw is on the trip. Here’s an extract from her messages back to the office:
Reading the Beatitudes on the Mount of the Beatitudes. Sitting on the shores of the Sea of Galilee looking at the Golan Heights and thinking of Syria. Being with a Christian community at St Paul’s Parish church in Shef Amer. Watching the musicians sing and inspire; Thomas Trilby making the children smile and laugh – as well as a group of nuns! Seeing all those thoughts in the air!
And Martyn Joseph and Stu G have been tweeting reflections, too. Here’s one of Martyn’s:
And you can see Stu’s photo reflections on his website here »
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And then it was meeting and talking with Michael Battle, over in Canterbury for two weeks as one of the Archbishop’s Six Preachers. Michael told me his Greenbelt story. How, as an American over here to study, he used to volunteer on the Drivers team for the festival back in the late 1980s. Then how he’d gone on to study for a theology PhD back in the States where he’d resolved to do his research dissertation on the theology that underpinned Desmond Tutu’s politics and activism. And how, rather than this being a removed, abstract and book-ish exercise, Michael was invited to live and work with Tutu for a few years in Capetown, serving as a sort of chaplain to the great man and absorbing his Ubunto theology by osmosis. How since then his life and work has been about sharing that transformative communitarian theology around the world. And how he made a return to Greenbelt last year in 2012 as a speaker – you can see his filmed short talk ‘Is God Black?’ here »
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But it wasn’t just what Greenbelt is involved in doing and connected to elsewhere in the world. It’s also the here and now, right here, right now. It was being in our monthly staff day meeting – grappling with the final details for this year’s festival, our 40th, and also with what Greenbelt will look like and how it will work beyond that. When Life Begins. It was deciding to make a joint funding bid with our sister festival, Solas in Scotland, to commission a piece of classical music to be performed at both festivals in 2014. It was working together with our new CEO Beccie D’Cunha on the seeds of a vision for the next forty years’ creating these spaces and openings – whether in fields in these shores in the summer, in the West Bank, or globally online. Spaces where many more can find a home and inspiration for the journey.
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On the train home last night, I reflected on how when I first came to Greenbelt as an 18-year old, back in 1984, I felt immediately at home. My life, my faith (such as it was then), my art, my interests, my loves, my politics all made sense, and all belonged together in that space. But I never dreamed I would end up having the privilege of working to shape and make that space all these years later. Just another day at the office? Yes, you bet.