Almost time...

We're a week away from opening the doors to our 'Sing for Joy' Flower Festival, and things are getting busy...

It's not just about the flowers, you see. They are the main attraction, of course, but we also have an army of bakers producing refreshments, stewards lining up to oversee proceedings, stall holders getting their wares ready to sell, marquee men ready to put up a tent for the stall holders, people making paper people for our woodland trail, and the festival booklet being finalised before printing.

In the last week, I have:

- painted a backdrop to cover our altar and make it look like the one in CSI St. Mary's, Pudukkottai.

- hand copied the beginning of the hymn 'Come on and Celebrate' onto a board.

- wrapped canes and test tubes in coloured wool.

- invited some VIP's to the festival.
- laminated signs and hymn words for the woodland trail.
- consulted with the maker of the quiet room altar cloth.
- made last minute adjustments to the festival booklet.
- sourced blue fabric for the vicar's special arrangement.
- supplied photos from a previous festival for a press release.
- practised tying a flower garland - Tamil style.

- tried to find a source of dried locusts to go with the honey...

Behind the scenes, the rest of the arrangers are no doubt working out all their last minute details too, but the fun really starts next Wednesday, when the flowers arrive from the wholesaler and we get conditioning...

And if you'd like to come and see us, here are the details:

Sing for Joy!

The Flower Festival is coming up much faster than I'd like it to! (August Bank Holiday weekend...and we're already into April!)

Our theme this time is 'Sing for Joy!', based on hymns and worship songs. 

Originally, I had the bright idea of asking the congregation for their favourite hymn and going with the top twenty, but when I started to look at the wording of hymns, I realised this probably wouldn't be possible. For a start, there are over 600 listed in our hymn book - potentially, every person in the church could come up with something different. I toyed with the idea of picking around thirty titles and getting the congregation to vote on a shortened list, but even that was difficult. When you look at the words, the themes that we feel are so important to interpret are somewhat nebulous to capture in flowers. How DO you capture 'hope' or 'spirit' or 'goodness'?

So we left the congregation out of it. A few of the flower team trawled through the hymn book instead, to find titles that would be recognisable - for both churched and non-churched visitors - and interpretable. We are great believers in presenting arrangements that are not simply floral art; we are Christian and we have a message to portray that cannot be hidden too deeply. (I also have memories of going to festivals where I've admired some of the arrangements but wondered how they linked to what they were supposed to be representing.) Anyway - back to the hymn choosing. It took ages. We ended up with a decent list though, just short of twenty I think, and the flower team met to decide who was going to do which one.

For the first time ever since we started holding festivals, we had multiple arrangers wanting to do the same arrangement! Everyone ended up with what they wanted, but it took some sorting. As one of the 'organisers' of the flower side of things - and I use that term loosely! - we don't prescribe what the arrangements should be. We give ideas for starters, but we believe that the individuals should have the freedom to design their own arrangements, not least because we believe our Festival is a God-given opportunity to share how we feel about our faith with others - and God speaks to us in many different ways.

We're due to have another meeting soon, to see what everyone's come up with design-wise. I've got mine sorted, though I have some mechanics to source for one of them...

The raw materials of a previous festival...