Day: April 23, 2025

It’s the greasiest place I’ve ever gone to meet a new client.  Set in a garage unit behind two other ramshackle motor mechanic businesses, surrounded by broken cars and broken half cars.  Inside, it’s all plastic sofas and instant coffees.  Then, into the workshop.

There are motorcycles and small cars in various states of dismantlement.

“We get these from the police, if they’ve been seized for no insurance or whatever,” said Jonny,  “The Police and Crime Commissioner helps us a lot.”

The piece de resistance, at the centre of the garage, is a fully kitted out BMW 3 series race car, in the middle of being worked on.

“We’re going to do the Amateur Touring Car Championship,” Jonny tells me, “I’ve just got my race licence, so I can drive it, but for the kids, this gets them working in a real pit, and a real race track, up against other proper teams.”

I’m at the Outkast Panda Crew.  As with all the best ideas, it’s really simple.  They take kids from tough backgrounds in Hull, who might be on the verge of trouble with the police, or who just don’t fit in anywhere else, and they direct them away from the bad stuff, by getting them involved in the greasy, petrol-headed good stuff of mechanics and car modification. 

They can show you the shiny, pearlescent painted, low to the road specials they’ve created, and they’re proud of them.

It works.  They’ve sent a lad off recently to a job with a professional racing team.  Others are studying for BTECs, and have a secure future where they might have had none.  Jonny Cahill, the founder, is a local city councillor.  He saw what his area, a massive 1970s housing estate, needed and he created it.

Our job is to raise the funds to employ more tutors, for more BTECs, to give more kids a brighter future.   Might even get them to do the brakes on my Alfa Romeo.

One of the things about being a fundraiser is that you bump into the most exceptional people.  I mentioned this in an earlier blog, when I referred to the two blokes from Bolivia to whom I spoke recently.  More of them later.

When I write ‘bump into’, I don’t necessarily mean meet.  I mean your paths cross, you intertwine, and frequently, it is incredibly rewarding.

Sometimes you encounter your heroes.  I wrote a press ad once as John Simpson, the legendary BBC journalist, and a hero of mine.  When we sent it off for proofing, he sent it back with a handwritten note, “Couldn’t have put this better myself.”  That was praise indeed.

Or the time I found myself defending Bianca Jagger from an over-enthusiastic and somewhat intrusive fan at a charity reception. Long story, for another time.

Sometimes you learn just by observing.  For years I ghost-wrote charity appeals as Terry Waite, the former Archbishop of Canterbury’s envoy who became a hostage in Beirut.  I found Terry to be clever, engaging, and astute.  He knew his own value: he knew that people wanted a bit of Terry the hostage, and that’s what he gave them.  But not for his own sake, because once people had engaged, he could tell them about the causes he supported, like the homeless charity Emmaus UK where I met him.  He self-promotion was actually selfless.  Compare that to so many.

At the moment, though, my mind keeps coming back to Salatiel and Luis, the two recovering addicts, not famous, not successful in most people’s terms, who I spoke to on a Zoom call with them in Bolivia.  I keep thinking about how Andy Partington, the CEO of Novō Communities, felt compelled, or inspired, or led, pick your term, to move himself and his family half way across the world for the sake of guys like this.  And how, sitting in Yorkshire, with a background as far from theirs as mine could possibly be,  I could connect with Luis and Salatiel through the miracle of technology, and the privilege of trying to help people just like them.

If you decide to go for a coffee with Rev Gemma Turner, the vicar of All Saints Church in Hessle, East Yorkshire, it’s best to make sure you leave a bit of time for it.  The walk between the church and a local café will take rather longer than you’d expect, because I can guarantee that you’ll have to stop a number of times for people who want to talk to Gemma.

You see, she and her congregation have made the church a real part of the community.  It’s where groups meet, where people come when they’re in need, and Gemma is somebody who everybody in town knows.  She fits right in.

I’ve always said that good clients make good agencies.  Nowhere is that truer than at All Saints.  We, at OneGilliland, were invited in to deal with a crisis.  The magnificent, Grade I listed church, built between the 12^th and 15^th centuries, had come a bit of a cropper at its last Quinquennial inspection.  The tower, mainly 15^th century, was bulging in all the wrong places.  In fact, it was bordering on dangerous, and in urgent need of remedial work.  If it didn’t get it, the church might actually have to close.  Something similar happened in the 19^th century, when the church did close for a time.  Everybody was very clear.  History could not be allowed to repeat itself.

A National Lottery Heritage Fund application was the obvious way to go.  That, of course, means meeting all four of the Heritage Fund’s investment principles.  Saving heritage, we’re pretty obviously OK there.  Protecting the environment, the works were always going to be an environmentally sustainable build.  Organisational sustainability, again, not too hard to work out.  Access, inclusion, participation:  this is where organisations often come unstuck.

However, at All Saints, they’re already welcoming the community in, they’re already inclusive, and they have loads of people participating.  So, it wasn’t at all hard to build on. 

We’re planning not just tower repairs, but a year-long engagement of the local community with its own heritage.  We’ll have school kids to pensioners involved, researching both the church and the historic town, making their own art, creating dance, original music, connecting with their heritage, and connecting with the church as it is today. 

Our application was highly praised by the Heritage Fund.  It was an ‘easy decision’, and the way we combined heritage and community really got the decision panel talk, we’re told.  I’d like to take all the credit for a great application, but actually, Gemma and her team gave me great material to work with.

I went along to All Saints to worship on Easter Sunday.  The place was pretty full, and with all ages, from babies right up.  The service was traditional, but the language was accessible.  Gemma was, well, Gemma, lively and engaging.  People said hello to me, made me really welcome.

This, I thought, is what churches should be like, and this is a church in touch with its community.

Holt Methodist Church, in Norfolk, underwhelms, and then surprises.  It’s pretty much unique amongst Methodist churches, built more like an Anglican church, allegedly to outdo the local Anglican.

Attractive on the exterior, it underwhelms when you find the sanctuary has a low, 1980s suspended ceiling of polystyrene tiles.  Why on earth would anybody have done that?  Actually, they did it to keep the heat in.

Wind your way up the tower, avoid the pigeon droppings in what used to be the choir gallery, turn around, and you see the picture at the top of this blog.  There, above the suspended ceiling, hidden from view, is a wonderful rose window, clerestories and a beautiful arched wooden ceiling. 

We’ve just recently won National Lottery Heritage Funding to put right this wrong, and to do much else besides.   The Light and Life for All appeal will pave the way for much more community use – from respite dinners for young carers, to, hopefully, adult education classes, cream teas for the lonely and isolated, concerts, heritage visits, space for dementia support and bereavement care.

For me, the place is almost a symbol of Methodism, and its huge potential.  Everywhere I go, I find Methodist churches, mostly run by older people, and mostly saying things like, “Well, we’re old, we can’t do very much”. 

Push a bit harder and you find they’re actually doing lots.  They’re involved in the local foodbank, or facilitating domestic violence support groups, or opening the church for people with all kinds of needs.  I keep finding Methodist churches full of kind, caring, liberal-minded, inclusive, welcoming people, who just don’t know how special they are.  Whose works are hidden in plain sight.

At Holt the new minister, just a Probationer, in his first church, has made a real impact on the place.  Congregations have increased. At another of our clients, in Wetherby, the church almost closed 15 years ago, I’m told.  Now about 30 local groups use it, with about 700 people passing through the doors each week.  As a result, the congregation numbers 150, with between 60 and 100 there every Sunday.

We’re told that church attendance is growing.  Even the Prime Minister wished us all a Happy Easter.  In Methodism, churches are growing by supporting their communities.  Faith is expressed in actions – by their deeds you really will know them.  This practical, accepting, open-minded faith that you find in Methodism is just what society is looking for.  I look around, and I see so much potential.