Exhibitions

The church has held a Summer Exhibition each summer (minus the COVID years) since 2011.  The exhibition has been popular with local primary and secondary schools, which attend the specially planned sessions.  Each of the sessions is planned according to age group and ability.

Our Summer Exhibition for 2023 revolved around the life and work of J.R.R. Tolkien!

It was an excellent opportunity to explore his life from a historical perspective, including his time in the trenches during the First World War and his friendship with C. S. Lewis, as well as how his Christian faith informed his work. The exhibition included a short talk on the life of Tolkien, a craft activity and an opportunity to look around at the audio-visual displays and 3D-printed models!

The exhibiton was available for school visits from Monday 3rd – Tuesday 11th July, and there was an Open Day on Saturday 8th July, from 10:30am until 3:00pm, for the general public!

In the week leading up to the exhibition, Alex brought us a message highlighting Tolkien’s faith and the way it influenced his creative work:

For the primary schools that visited our exhibition, we focused on The Hobbit, and there were four different sections for the children to look around: Tolkien’s Life, Tolkien & C.S. Lewis, Friendship & Adventure, and Temptation. We also had an activity book for the children to work through, answering questions on our exhibits, including a timeline of Tolkien’s life and a glossary.

For the secondary schools, and for our Open Day, we focused on The Lord of the Rings, extending the same sections: Tolkien’s Life, Tolkien & C.S. Lewis, Friendship & Adventure, and Temptation. We also produced an activity book with more complex questions and an extended glossary. The timeline of Tolkien’s life and the extended glossary were also available for people to look through at the Open Day.

We also produced a tract entitled ‘Lewis & Tolkien: The Truth, The Myth & The Inklings’ – that we gave out at our Open Day – which goes into more detail about Lewis’ conversion to Christianity, the conversations he and Tolkien had, and how this led to the publication of ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’.

 

The theme of our exhibition for 2021 was “Michael Faraday, Man of Purpose – Man of Faith”.  The exhibition included a biography of Faraday’s life, his scientific discoveries and his faith in God.
Faraday was the first to produce an electric current from a magnetic field, he invented the first electric motor and dynamo, demonstrated the relation between electricity and chemical bonding, discovered the effect of magnetism on light, and discovered and named diamagnetism.  He also carried out research on chemicals with one of his greatest achievements in chemistry being the discovery of benzene.

Schools attended Monday to Friday and the exhibition was open on the following Saturday for the church’s Open Day.

These are some examples of the informational banners used in our exhibition this year:

The theme of our exhibition for 2015, which ran from Monday 22nd to Friday 26th June, was ‘Journey to the East’, which plots the history of how Hudson Taylor was involved in taking the message of Christianity to China.

The exhibition was multi-faceted, and therefore easily adapted for the curriculum of a variety of schools and different year groups. It provided an opportunity for pupils to look at Christianity in a cross-cultural setting, as the exhibition included exhibits and information both about the China that Hudson-Taylor visited and the China of today, as well as an overview of the development of Christianity in China.