Church Council approves next step in CC2020 project looking at refurbishing the church

The CC2020 display board in church

This month All Saints Parochial Church Council took the next step in the CC2020 project - refurbishing the church for 21st century worship and community activities. It approved an initial outline brief for an architect and a process for selecting an architect. 

The brief is based on the ideas from the extensive consultations with the church and wider community over the last year. 

Two new members were added to the CC2020 team - Ian Brooks and Ian Hopkinson - to assist in the process of architect selection and discussion of plans. This process will continue through 2016.

From the consultation process seven core needs for the refurbishment of the church were identified. These are:

1. Retain the feeling of being a holy place, keeping the heritage of more than 800 years of worship, with an altar as the focus of the church

2. Enable a variety of types of worship to take place for small groups and large, including formal Eucharistic services, services appropriate for young people, particularly for our own school, with its special needs unit, worship in the round, meditative services, Messy Church, labyrinth, café church. It will provide intimate spaces for small scale worship and space for very large numbers of people to worship, for example at Christmas, and school and civic services

3. Provide an auditorium, exhibition and entertainment space for church and community events, particularly concerts, in what is a very high quality building and one of the largest indoor spaces in Wokingham

4. Be open seven days a week providing a suitable environment for private prayer and reflection

5. Be hospitable, with an area for welcome, a kitchen, and toilets on the premises, as are essential in a public building, particularly one used by children. We need facilities that would enable coffee after services and receptions after funerals, weddings and baptisms to take place in the same building

6. Be fully accessible, providing good facilities for all the disabled, with good audio and video systems, good lighting and level access

7. Provide a quality environment in terms of visual appeal, physical comfort, heating, lighting, audio, video, communications including WiFi and storage. Sustainability and low running costs are important considerations.

Project team leader and churchwarden, Anne King said;

"The brief is only a very outline indication of what we want, just a starting point. It does not commit us to any particular design or facility."

The need for church refurbishment came out of the initial consultations with the congregation during the process in 2014 of setting a Mission Action Plan for the church.