One Church, 100 Uses has received three years match funding from English Heritage. This has enabled us to recruit a Support officer, Richard Oxley.
Richard will work with all URC synods to identify ‘at risk’ listed buildings and with local congregations to support other historically/culturally important URC buildings. He will promote entrepreneurial approaches to create accessible, inspiring and sustainable historic churches, as well as developing templates that can be used more broadly.
It will be important for each church to think strategically and develop plans for a sustainable future of the building. This may involve the Support Officer researching and facilitating possible partnerships and shared-use with other organisations.
The Support Officer’s work will involve building the capacity of local churches and their users enabling them to effectively maintain the properties and innovatively approach their local heritage.
This will involve promoting the establishment of users groups where appropriate, comprising not only of the congregation and appropriate members of the church but also any community groups that use the buildings and local residents. The Support Officer will need to work with communities to inspire and engage them into taking an active role in the conservation and enhancement of their local heritage.
We are currently developing a range of approaches that will form the basis of templates/examples of mixed uses of church buildings. The Support Officer will develop these into templates that will act as a source of inspiration and guidance whilst promoting best practise. Intensive support will be provided to enable each model to be tried in at least one location. Templates can then be offered to churches more widely, possibly on a social franchise model. These could include the following:
- Artists studios
- Performance space
- Skatepark
- Community hub for a wide-range of community organisations
- Dance/music classes
- Sustainability showroom
- Food based business
- Social care-elderly, learning disabilities run by social sector organisations
- Health and care services run by statutory bodies
