Our Response to Concerns about the Beer Festival

Following our 10th annual beer and cider festival we have received a number of concerns on both social media and through direct contact with members of our community.

We want to address these issues and make people aware that we take our site and how well it is respected seriously.

We have been successfully running this event for many years and are aware that some people do not agree with us hosting a beer festival within a church setting. We have to balance the fact of serving our community, encouraging new people into church and fundraising for the future of not just ours but other churches in our deanery. We feel that the benefits far outweigh the small number of negative comments that we receive. See another article on our website as to the reasons why we run a beer festival – https://www.christchurchswindon.co.uk/blog/2023/05/why-a-beer-festival-in-a-church/

A few years ago, we received a similar concern with regard to people sitting on and around graves. We have therefore already adapted what we do to ensure people are respectful of our site as follows:

  • We have signage around the site asking people not to sit or rest their glasses on the graves.
  • We ask in the festival brochure for people to be respectful of and not to sit on or rest their glasses on the graves. I must mention that the graves in question are in an area that hasn’t been tended by visitors for 60 years. These graves are approximately 200 years old.
  • We have a slide on our big screen asking for people to be respectful of the graves.
  • We rope off the specific areas where new ashes are buried so that no one accesses these areas. People also don’t go into the main part of the burial ground farther away from the church.
  • Our security for the event regularly monitors the site and educates people throughout the event if they notice anyone being disrespectful of the graves.

In our beer festival wrap-up meeting a couple of weeks ago, we discussed what else we could do to be more respectful. We talked about having additional seating which would encourage people to sit in the areas we want them to. We also talked about roping off more of the areas and introducing even more signage.

I would be very happy to meet with anyone to discuss next year’s event and would love their ideas of what further measures we can implement.

Please do get in touch with any ideas.

Best Wishes

Chris Smith

Christ Church Site Operations Manager

Email: chris@christchurchswindon.co.uk