Daniel Parnell, Director of Welcome, Learning & Engagement at Worcester Cathedral, takes us back to a medieval summer…
Fancy hunting a dragon? Firing an arrow? Dancing like a maiden? Or want an Audience with the worst King of England? Well then, Worcester Cathedral was the place to be this summer!
The summer of 2024 was our first attempt as a Cathedral to group our regular summer activities into a “festival” offering, and draw in multiple departments to work closer together than usual in what we offered to our community.
Like most cathedrals for a long time, we have put on “family” friendly craft and activities in the school holidays, offered for free, although with donations encouraged, that cover various themes and ideas. These are usually offered for a few days together during a week or two of the holidays. But the summer is different, as the long six weeks have always prompted us to ask – how can we best play our role in the community in this regard? In the past we have tried putting something on every week on the same day, so local families know it’s there, and also tried concentrating everything together into a few days for a bit of a focused intense period.
The events & visitors’ teams have also offered their own events and activities, traditionally under the loose heading of “Discover Something Different”. But staff changes and team reorganisation as well as an office move that meant the Events, Visitors and Learning teams were all in the same office, has prompted us to try our first joined-up Cathedral summer festival.
The theme we instantly agreed on was “Medieval”, playing a bit fast and loose with what counts as medieval, but leaning into our strong heritage with this period. In the planning, ideas included movies in the Nave, falconers on the green, dress-up box available all week in the Old Bishop’s Palace with photographer available. Finances, logistics and capacity put paid to some of these, but we still managed a lot!
Key to the success of the week was the 4 Dragons that were hired to be situated around the Cathedral, along with a half dozen home-made dragon eggs that populated our Dragons’ Quest.
We had a medieval camp on College Green, on the opposite side of the Cathedral to the city, with archery (plastic) and axe throwing (foam).
Local reenactors got on board and spent the week “hanging out” at the Cathedral, adding to the atmosphere. Plus, our cathedral volunteers joined in with the dressing up too!
Toddler story time and family crafts also brought in a lot of families, and evening talks provided by local experts on medieval themes proved popular for a (mostly) older audience.
Saturday of the festival saw the culmination with King John Day, where several hundred visitors over the course of the day had an audience with “King John” and explored what his tomb tells us about his life, and in the evening, there was a Medieval Banquet in the Great Hall of the Old Bishops Palace.
Was it a success? Well, visitor numbers were up significantly, 56% on the rest of August and 75% on last year – children were up 143% on the rest of August and 3 times as many children came on this Saturday compared to the other Saturdays in August.
Financially, donations were also up in totals, although not significantly, and per person it was the lowest week of August. Both the shop and the café had their best week of the summer, with the café 16% up on sales compared to the rest of August and the shop 12% up. The charged-for activities, which included the Banquet, refreshments and merchandise in the camp (provided by partners, but for which we took a cut) and the talks, brought in enough to cover costs, but not make a huge difference to overall income.
No formal feedback with visitors was carried out, but anecdotal feedback was very positive, and the only negative feedback was when we were unable to carry out some of the smaller, hoped-for activities due to staffing levels caused by illness.
So, our experience was – it was worth it! But there were definite learning opportunities for next year. Yes – we’re going to do it again next year. Bigger…. Maybe, better… hopefully!
Daniel Parnell, Head of Welcome, Learning & Engagement
Worcester Cathedral
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