It has been such fun to have the Spirit Justice tour in Aberdeen. The congregation from the Methodist Church and the United Reformed Church negotiated with the Trinity Centre Aberdeen and secured a corner unit to use for a month. It was a fabulous choice of disused shop with the whole space looking like a gallery in no time. A fabulous opportunity for the churches to show their joint work and mission, almost 200 people stopped by long enough to be counted. The visitors book shows that people came from all over Scotland and beyond. We had a wonderful opening, including attendees from the charity Grampians Racial Equality Council, who will be the recipients of the 40% raised from the sale of prints. The church members said that it was an excellent project to help them connect with their community and they were pleased to do it.
Eons ago, when I was a student in training for the ministry, I was artist in residence for the Milton Keynes Christian Council. We organised an exhibition called Images of God (I might have changed the name in later years), but it was a gathering of almost 700 pieces artwork from all over the new city with two and three dimensional artwork showing people’s ideas of God and of connecting with the Divine. The City Council sponsored it with display stands, David Bellamy opened it, and it was an awesome statement about a new city’s welcome of its people. It’s been a long time from that to this one-artist show and I confess that my heart is so in what just happened in Aberdeen. The comments from visitors showed how much the art spoke to them. The connections made by the churches were invaluable.
