Friday 25 November 2011

Christmas Present - Advent 1

Christmas Present - Mirror Mirror


Ordinary People - Ordinary Places - Extraordinary Story


So the long awaited Christmas Present project is live!  As part of this journey I will be posting a fresh blog each week of advent.   Each blog will show one of the pictures from the project which will also be the focus of services in local Methodist Churches for that week.


Details of where to view the pictures are on the attached flier. 


This week we focus on the expectant Mary and Joseph as they travel to Bethlehem. To help us reflect on this journey have a listen to this spoken word track Mirror Mirror and please leave your comments below.    



Spoken word track engineered by Tom Roberts
Words - Rob Wylie 
Printing and production of the images by trendy-art http://www.trendy-art.co.uk/
Photos by Kat Timmins http://ktimmins.co.uk/


Thursday 17 November 2011

Christmas Present


Christmas Present

Ordinary People - Ordinary Places  - Extraordinary Story

Christmas lights going up in  Knaresborough
Last year I heard a friend talk about a Christmas photo project that he put together. You can read about it on his blog http://vfxhanley.wordpress.com/do-you-wonder/ . This got me and a local Methodist minister thinking about whether we could do something similar here in the North East. They did it slightly different to us in that their images were in 3D and they had them up in one place, but other than that it’s basically the same idea.

We have taken a series of photos of local people, in local settings from the North East, who take on the persona of some of the key characters in the traditional nativity story.  Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus, the Magi, angels, shepherds etc. We will be placing these pictures in public spaces for people to view, and we have agreed to have some put up in our local Costa Coffee in Whitley Bay and other local cafes/bars. Then, in the final week before Christmas, we are putting all the photos together in one place for people to view.  The pictures will be on display from the first week in December in various places, look out for the connected flier, and they will also be able to be seen in the weeks to come on my blog.

Alongside this, we got together with a few creative folk to put some worship material together that will be used around a different image on each Sunday through Advent. So if you live nearby to North Shields and Whitley Bay why not invite a friend to come along to church with you and see what it’s all about.  Also over the four weeks in advent I will be posting something each week which relates to one of the pictures we have taken.

The idea behind this is about engaging our local community with the traditional Christmas story in ways that ask the question... what do you do with this story?  This project is about putting the nativity story in a modern context and I suppose asks a challenging question about what do we do with the traditional story that God came to earth as a small vulnerable baby. Why not, as you view the pictures, ask these questions

Is Christmas present for you?

What is Christmas wrapped up in for you?