Year: 2019

Sue Wallace, Eddie Green and I got together yesterday to talk about the future of Sanctum and plan the next annual conference.  This year’s shindig is at College of the Resurrection Mirfield from 30^th July to the 1^st August.  Tickets will be available in the next week or so.  Put it in your diary!

Now that I’ve told you about that, I have a few reflections from the day.  From my perspective, the best thing about meeting together in person was having the time to discuss our vision for the future.  “What exactly is Sanctum is for?” is the question I was keen to explore.  We’ve always said we are:

“A network of emerging sacramental  
practitioners and dreamers. 
To worship, recharge,
share ideas, pray and support in mission”.

So we talked about being creative and making space to enable others to be creative in worship.  On a personal level that means a renewed commitment to sharing resources that Ruth and I create.  This year we have planned to record more of the liturgical music we have written in ways that are accessible and freely available.  We also plan to do forms of notation and chord sheets to go with them.  So I will have to look in the next few weeks at how this blog is used.  Perhaps it is time for a redesign?  Importantly, I need to find time for some administration and a commitment to curating resources.

Secondly, I would like to find ways to create space for people to collaborate and find creative ways to create resources.  This may mean providing days for people to come together in different locations around the country to write, build, cut, stick, pixel push and develop resources together.  I am also wondering if there is a need to do this across the internet of things.  It may be good to start places to creatively splurge in the Sanctum Connect group based on a topic.

Thirdly, Ruth and I are consciously making space to write music together.  We’re off on a song writing retreat in the summer.  I will probably blog more about this in a separate post.