A round up of what’s on this Summer at a Cathedral near you. Here we look at Sheffield, Liverpool, Chester and St Albans
Sheffield has deckchairs to stay a while and brick pits to keep the children occupied, Liverpool has new sculpture exploring Being Human, Chester is to host an exhibition recreating its city’s medieval past while characters from St Alban’s Tudor past will take visitors on an historic journey this summer.
This is summer in our cathedrals.
Every one of our cathedrals – and our partners from the Church in Wales – has a rich summer programme for visitors of all ages to discover from dinosaurs to deckchairs under the stars. All this plus outdoor theatre, cinema screenings, art exhibitions, family-friendly themed activities and events, and a daily programme of worship, space to light a candle or simply just to sit and be in our beautiful, historic sacred spaces.
And over 80 per cent of all our English Cathedrals and St Davids in Wales have been awarded a TripAdvisor Travellers’ Choice Award 2022 – putting them in the top ten per cent of attractions in the world!
Visitors are invited to take part in ‘An Expedition of Extinction’ as Sheffield travels back in time with a little help from 15 dinosaur sculptures, the Brickosaurs.
In partnership, Sheffield Cathedral is the only stay and play site in the cathedral with its deckchairs on the forecourt and is Brick pits and LEGO® Graffiti Walls in an interactive play zone inside. Plus there are dinosaur-themed storytelling and crafts for children too – and all for free.
Liverpool Cathedral is asking visitors to explore what it means to be human with a four-part exhibition from artist and sculptor Peter Walker.
At the centre of the exhibition called Connection, Creativity, Identity and Reflection are two sculpted hands, each towering two metres high and spanning ten metres wide with a gap between, to symbolise our connection to each other and highlight the importance of human contact and the isolation that comes with being apart.
Reflection features the artist’s Leaves of the Trees installation, 5,000 steel leaves each engraved with the word hope which Peter created as a reflective memorial to the pandemic. Creativity recreates Peter’s own studio space, and Identity is a photo booth for visitors to put themselves in the art space.
Revd Canon Dr Neal Barnes, Canon for Mission and Faith Development, said:
“The challenges of the pandemic have been tough for many and I hope visitors will use this latest exhibition as an opportunity to reflect, consider their faith and focus on what is most important to us as human beings.”
Photo: Peter Walker, Sculptor and Artist.
The exhibition is free and open from 10am – 6pm daily until 30 August.
Visit liverpoolcathedral.org.uk.
Chester Cathedral will host Medieval Chester Retold bringing the 14th century city to life through digital recreations and displays of rarely seen medieval and early modern artefacts.
Historical replica objects including keys, chests, shoes, coins, devotional tokens and ceramics can be held in the palm of visitors’ hands and their stories will ‘lead’ them around the exhibition and its rooms set up as the 14th-century sites.
The exhibition brings to wider attention these everyday historical artefacts from the Grosvenor Museum collections and reveals the ways in which objects allowed people in the past to move across thresholds and boundaries, from public to private spaces, from secular to religious spaces and across global trade networks.
Katherine Wilson, Associate Professor of Later Medieval European History at the University of Chester, said:
“We’re excited to bring the Medieval Chester Retold Exhibition to Chester Cathedral.
“Hundreds of people visited the exhibition at the Grosvenor Museum between the end of April and the beginning of July – and this provides another chance, in this incredible setting, to be transported to medieval Chester.”
The Very Revd Dr Tim Stratford, Dean of Chester, said:
“We are looking forward to welcoming Medieval Chester Retold to Chester Cathedral this summer.
“It will be a unique and captivating experience for our visitors to be immersed in the medieval culture of our fantastic city.”
The exhibition opens in the cathedral on 22 August.
Summer at St Alban’s Cathedral offers a range of activities, storytelling and crafts that centre on their Tudor history.
Find out about the Summer events at Portsmouth, St Davids, Newcastle, Chichester, Peterborough, Worcester and Bradford here.
And Carlisle, Lichfield, Gloucester, Rochester and the dinosaurs at Peterborough here.
News Date : 16th August 2022
