Library Festival, an evening of music and conversation - Saturday 11th September 2021

i can't keep my hands to coming out myself the left [Music] [Music] 1986 [Music] [Music] am i coming out of life [Music] [Music] 1986 [Music] we can [Music] won't bother me is it coming is it coming is it coming is it coming is it coming is it coming back [Music] oh [Music] good evening and welcome to lancaster university's library festival this is the second evening that we've been celebrating incredible guests with stories to tell us and the most amazing music so really looking forward to being able to share that with you this evening of course it is a very poignant anniversary as well this is the 20th anniversary of 9 11 and some of the subjects that we want to talk about relate to community and they relate to peacekeeping they relate to the importance of the relationships that people have with each other so i hope that you'll just sit back you'll enjoy the couple of hours that we've got planned for you this evening and even if you don't manage to watch it immediately it's going to be online for quite a while so welcome to this evening and i have some amazing guests and i'm really glad to say that most of them have become dear friends as well as guests so if i go off piste which is perfectly likely and chris is already worried that i'm not going to have the script that he gave me to read this evening then we're just going to see how the evening develops one of the first people that i was told that i had to meet when i came to lancaster university was marion mcclintock and the reason i was told is because marion is a legend and i mean that in the most sincere way that i possibly can this woman has a memory ability like i have never seen in anybody else and if you wanted to know any piece of small information about the history of the university then it's always marion that we go to she was the registrar for the university between 1994 and 2006 and she's our honorary archivist she's the author of not just one but two histories you can never have enough histories can you have a university so she's the author of two histories and she'll probably be a little bit cross with me and for those of you who know mary and that's a really frightening prospect but she'll be crossed with me that we managed to celebrate a coffee and a cake event to celebrate an extremely important milestone birthday but i'm far too much of a lady to say on air what that birthday was but it was an important one but what it does do is it allows me to welcome marion and to let marion tell you just how long she has been at lancaster university marion you're very welcome how long have you been here we came in 1968 from duke university north carolina by ship across the atlantic over southampton straight up to lancaster wow you must have seen some inordinate changes in the university over those years what would you say is the biggest change obviously size and reputation the extent to which it became an international university and the extent to which it gained confidence in the subject range the research in its student types and numbers so a wonderful evolution and one of the things that happens when you arrive on lancaster station this is a big sign that says lancaster university what's the relationship like now and what was it like at the beginning between the town and the gown has it changed do you think there's more for us to do yes it's an important question you sue were at lancaster prairie earlier this week for the installation of the new vicar of lancaster and to welcome her on behalf of the university and that was an important moment because it meant that the prairie was recognizing the importance of having the university there and the university was recognizing the importance of connections we have the mill raise project we have the eden project we have the health innovation campus being used for the vaccinations all those are very positive when we came it was very different lancaster was in a bit of a sorry state it was losing its status as a county town and it was losing its manufacturing capacity as well so the university came along at just the right moment but it had been the dream child of people like the town clerk and the mayor and appeal not of every person on the street and i think there was a sense of well hesitation shall we say there is a lovely photograph students used to have a rag week in fact i have to explain it's extraordinary but used to have a ragweed when they raise money for charity by doing silly things and one of the things that they did on this occasion was to have a a flower and water fight outside the city museum and someone had the foresight to take a photograph of a bystander standing there in clothes that could have come from the 1940s with a look of absolute bafflement on her face so there is a huge contrast in where we were and where we are now but it's not something that ever can be taken for granted and i think you would recognize sue you would say back to me that there is still much to be done and work in hand that we should hope to continue and pursue i think there is because i i often tell the taxi driver story which uh for me a classic thing is if you want to know somebody's opinion ask a taxi driver because you get in and the door closes and they have you as a virtual prisoner between where you get on and where you get off and if you ask a question they're going to assume you want to know the answer and i asked them what the relationship was like between the university and the town and what he said to me i find really quite dispiriting at the time he said university's not in lancaster and that said to me oh you know there's a distance and they said it's up on a hill which for me was another symbolism of of isolation and they're awfully clever people up there but we don't really know what they do and that sang to me that that a distance had occurred between the city and the university and i think that in the last three years or so we've really tried to bring those two closer together and you mentioned the the eden project because there are many other projects as well but i do think that we're starting to make headway do do you think i'm being optimistic or do you think that's been realistic well i hope no you you are right to be optimistic but also we recognize we have to recognize that um there is work to be done at all levels there is there will come a time when people can no longer remember when there wasn't a university and that will be a significant moment when uh it's the already we're having the grandchildren of founding members of the university themselves going to university and going into jobs and soon those different people will intermingle more than they are now but you shouldn't ever take for granted i mean i was four years in oxford and even there in a wonderful setting that has a reputation worldwide there are still people who say oh having a university you know a bit of a burden so it's not it's not a natural for people and so things like tonight are our open days we had an open day in the 1980s for the first time and people were astonished because 17 000 people turned up and we were totally awestruck we had no idea we hadn't hadn't arranged for that number so there is a trust there is an interest in the hunger and i'm hoping that you approve of of our new look library and the extensions to it tell us how important the library was in the early days and why you still think libraries are important yes it started out on castle hill and it went in its house and students began to use it there and then it came through its third location was here here at beric and it's been very fortunate that the university decided to put the library absolutely at the core the vice chancellor mentioned yesterday how in cambridge the library is at a distance here it is central and i think um particularly during the last couple of years when we've had this ghastly pandemic and everyone has been separated from everyone it's been wonderful having a place where people could congregate which was open and accessible and welcoming and gave people a sense of purpose and location that so that experience mirrors the way in which the library is used we have excellent staff here and students come here because it's a excellent atmosphere they are consulted about how it should run what it should look like and they very much appreciate appreciated staff perhaps less so because they tend to use other resources these days but for students it will always be important and you're now our honorary archivist tell us what that means right a university has its own history and it's a young archive it's only 60 only material from 60 years back it starts with lancashire county council records and the requests that went to the university grants committee are really very superficial little [Music] a4 booklet um that would not pass muster for the smallest grant these days but that brought the whole university here and it's been um well yes next question [Laughter] so why why are why do you think a corporate memory is important for universities indeed because um well partly it's compliance and there's you know all the that's the boring stuff all the boring really interesting why do we need to know about why do we need to know why do students come and are absolutely fascinated by looking at documents from the beginning of the university why do staff ask questions why do topics get researched i mean obviously things like the the anti-slavery uh questions have come up recently but i get so many many questions about how the place emerged what it was about who did what how particularly about origins people are always fascinated about why things began or even why things didn't happen why we didn't get a medical school at first somebody came in and spent a whole morning investigating that question and came up with some good answers and of course it's the thing as well isn't it that that often the mistake is that archives are something that is dead and in the past but of course an archive is a living being it's what you're laying down now that people will come to in the past i shall use that thank you sue i'm looking at certain people to say yes that's a strong message and we have to pick that up there is a problem with the digital age so tell me and advise me on somebody who's so heavily involved in the eden project how do we set an archive what what should we do because we look to archives in as a historical thing right what do we need to do now well what you need to do is is produce the documents that show the arguments not the conclusions but how you got there what went wrong where where were the missteps uh where were the changes of idea how did the how did the ideas emerge stronger and better as a result of debate and so those planning documents which people think are really you know they're only drafts well actually no they're not they're really very important so please yes some photographs and some documents so those things that change that shows the arguments as it's progressing are what are really important that's that's so useful the other thing that we have really come across is of course everybody wants to be the person who was responsible for the idea yes everybody wants to own it it was me and history writes whoever it was that was important so for me the archive is not just about the paperwork it's about the voice of the people who had something to say yes so that the digital archive not just in terms of digitizing paper but in terms of that recording people's thoughts and views yes are really important because some of the digital archives that we were using um historically um in the faculty of arts and social sciences looking at what people said 70 years ago compared to now it's just priceless utterly priceless yes yes and the attitudes i mean we have these this lovely prospectus that talks about he as student you know there's no she in there there will be and that's only 60 years ago yeah and so we forget just how much change it's so vast so just just to close marian can i ask and this i think is is really important for the way we go forward was lancaster university designed to be a civic university a community university and if not do you think it can become one and is it on the road to becoming one it was well it regarded itself not so much the civic university as a play glass uh greenfield university but yes uh the way in which the it was designed around the colleges and around the sense of place with the alexandra square being at the core of it the mix of functions the human size buildings so everything is designed not to strike or but to create a sense of welcome and accessibility was all part of deliberate planning that came from our academic planning board right the way through to the architects to the vice chancellor our first vice chancellor very strongly and to the founding students who immediately blessed them came in and with when within weeks were setting up societies falling out with each other starting to rewrite their constitutions it is always such a pleasure every time i sit down with you i learned something new and now that this dreadful pandemic is on its way can we please have more coffee and cake that would be lovely that would be my pleasure too thank you and moving on uh to our first live singing performance i'd like to introduce you to emily rhodes who is a singer and a songwriter and a local singer and songwriter she's recently played at the lytham wonder hall festival as well as several solo gigs her latest single weirdos has a great positive vibe to counteract some of those more negative aspects of our times in covid and the recent lockdowns which have made live music even more difficult she calls herself a busker a guitarist a singer and a songwriter and that's a great way to start our musical diversity this evening she's also a regular introducing artist and recently shortlisted for the bbc introducing radio one life live lounge so ladies and gentlemen i've been listening to her all afternoon online please go and check out her music please give a lovely warm welcome to the most talented emily rhodes [Music] it's all because my lungs are charged [Music] days i can't believe my eyes no i don't feel safe neon flames bursting in my brain fills me up with shame but i still carry on just the same got it wrong too many times before but now i'm moving on i'm building building a world [Music] got the gaming on the cards laid out in front of me watching so that i am scarred the life here i suppose oh well these days it seems that's how it goes seems now that something's changed i've not felt no pain in days i can't believe my eyes no i don't feel safe flames in my brain fills me up with shame but i still carry on just the same got it wrong too many times before but now i'm moving on [Music] fills [Music] i [Music] on just the same got it wrong too many times before but now i'm moving on [Music] thank you very much so i'm emily and i'm gonna be playing a few songs for you tonight this next one is my recent single weirdos which is basically just about being different from everyone else and just getting along with it have you ever seen that way if you look at me and everyone's so differently have you [Music] i've always wanted to go there too so grab my hand and i will go with you i wonder what it's like on [Music] i just [Music] we both just [Music] do you ever feel [Music] [Applause] [Music] do you ever dream wonder what it's like on jupiter [Music] i'm just and i think that you are both just [Music] is where everything [Music] it is to me [Music] oh [Music] and i think [Music] escape in the world that i this next song is a cover of one of my favorite artists at the moment and this is madison by ola garland [Music] did every brain cell [Music] wishing that i was still sleeping yeah i guess i could be happier i suppose i could focus and think and yes i've been a regular [Music] [Music] [Music] again [Music] i can [Music] but i never have to think for myself so can i call you can i see you oh madison madison oh i've been thinking how you been how [Music] and is said i could be happier in that moment i knew it was true and the sadness is familiar i don't know where you're at won't you please [Music] is [Music] you then [Music] [Applause] so i've got a couple more songs to do this next one is another original i wrote it about three years ago and it's also about just standing out from the crowd and trying to be different from everyone else i really hope enjoy it it's called get out of my way [Music] it's quite difficult when you're standing in my [Music] thoughts [Music] you seem to care [Music] [Applause] [Music] what to do just because i'm different to you so leave me alone [Music] seems to bother you truth is just more minded cause you judge someone by their shoes life is too short to waste your time complaining just keep moving forward you seem to [Music] now that's not right know you can't tell me what to do [Music] i'm leaving today go back get out of my way life is too short to waste your time complaining just keep moving forward it's [Music] saying i important care what you think of me i don't care about what you said you seem to care [Music] can tell me what to do just because i'm different to you so leave me alone cause i'm leaving today goodbye get out of my way cause i'm leaving today goodbye get out of my way thanks very much this is going to be my last song and it's hopefully going to be released in a few weeks so look forward to that it's called october i really hope you enjoy it and thank you very much for listening i heard a song on the radio brings a thought you're wondering why i like the show i think it's cause it's the something that i might be missing [Music] instead of turning around it was october when i found out i'm no longer on my own [Music] in october i finally [Music] it's like a puzzle with a piece [Music] how about when someone comes along and breaks your heart [Music] in october i finally fell at home [Music] it was october when i found out i'm no longer on my own in october i would sit down and get fears are lost speaking out before they disappeared [Music] so i finally fell at home i finally fell down [Music] thank you very much emily that that was just amazing i've been listening to you online this afternoon and can i just say that online doesn't do any justice whatsoever to how you sound live that was just incredible you have an amazing talent observationally to watch things and then to be able to translate that into music and into lyrics with an incredible talent local and local grown as well and very very best of luck with that new single when it comes out and we'll all be listening and we'll all be rooting for you on it it's a great pleasure to welcome my second guest to the couch dr sunita abraham who works part-time at the university and is involved in quite a number of local communities her current research focuses on issues of race uh colonization decolonization and inequality and we first met when she stormed into my office and i used stormed in the nicest possible sense but you did you stormed into my office with a real mission because you had a focus on a particular person in this area that you felt had real skills that needed to be recognized and they couldn't evidence those skills because they couldn't get the paperwork out of the country that they came from and you were determined you were on a woman on a mission to make sure that somebody listened where does that sense of deep social justice compassion and caring come from i suppose it comes from my family background growing up in india and having a father that was in the indian army and moved around and so i saw india for what it is the rural the urban the in-between and i understood how it is foreign for different people to be in circumstances where they don't have the kind of evidence to indicate that they are good at something and it it does require other people to join up things so that they can get the chances um that they do deserve so i think it's um life in india and my experiences certainly the education and what i've been involved here in lancaster well it was intoxicating and i have to say we had great success with it which of which was tremendous and i know that we move forward in in that phase very very clear moving forward with you pushing behind very very fast at all of us to make sure that we we pay the responsibilities that i think we have as a civic university so tell us a little bit about your research and why it's so important today more than perhaps it's ever been so my current research looks into something which is called decolonization and it is a loaded word but very simply what it means is it's about power relationships what counts as knowledge and who whose knowledge counts and decolonizing is helping people to understand that what we consider as knowledge today is very western and eurocentric very much aligned with this part of the world which is considered the main part of the world forgetting the legacies of colonialism slavery and empire which have in many ways erased or hidden histories of people civilizations that are much older than what we had in europe for example when the aztecs were uh conquered by the spaniards the time proceeding that they had a civilization that you did not have in any part of europe the the advancements that were there but we don't look upon it or understand or talk about it in detail in schools so that we can help people to have a better understanding that these are not oppressed people that needed the help of western people to get them to a particular point but they were they had amazing civilizations they made scientific discoveries um and they had made fantastic contributions to art music and society but they were forgotten or deliberately overlooked the transatlantic slavery is another example of that so you're not erasing history but you're bringing to light histories that have been overlooked for very deliberate reasons and so it's that challenging the idea of whose knowledge has counted as knowledge and why other forms of knowledge have not been considered important deliberately overlooked because uh of colonialism slavery and empire and we might not have a very long history in terms of lancaster university we've been we've been hearing about it so some of our archives probably don't shed much light on the subject but lancaster of course has a very long and checkered history in in this sort of area how do we how do we manage the balance between our past and our current understanding because we've seen a lot of activity recently whether it's in the black lives matter movement or whether it's in what we've seen with cecil rhodes and such things how do we manage that to make sure that we don't actually make a situation worse but we improve it because it has to be a very delicate balancing act i would have thought it is it's about power relationships so you're going to get somebody to feel uncomfortable in order to for change to happen but it's to do that as you said in a very sensitive way so i guess the idea of how you go about making that kind of change is to work alongside the community and help them to have a better understanding of what the legacies of slavery colonialism and empire so here in lancaster we've been working um i'm associated with a group called lancaster black history and we've been um because of black lives matter protest bringing to the fore come together as a group to do something about how we can challenge systemic racism through education so that's one way in which change can be brought about um and the other way is when we're in university settings looking at our students and seeing what they're doing so here in lancaster university we have a campaign group of students called why is my curriculum white and they've been at the forefront of before staff have been involved in it in significant ways asking why is it that our curriculum does not have you know many non-white people involved in it but it's not just the curriculum they also ask about not seeing themselves reflected in the uh proportion of staff that are black and minority ethnic group of people of color so there are many different ways in which there is progress happening but there is a long way to go um to to get to where we are so lancaster university itself is built on land that was enclosed by joshua hind who was a slave from a very prominent slave trading family so we need to be acknowledging that those links and i've just been working with various groups as part of the slavery family trees research community research and our four of the students have been presenting at an earlier workshop and one of them has talked about sugar house which is again the night club of the university but it has you know sugar doesn't grow in lancaster so to have something called sugar house is linking that to transatlantic slavery but if we don't talk about what happened on those plantations what happened on the passage in the triangular trade which took enslaved people from the west coast of africa on a journey to the caribbean where they were sold many many died on the way if we don't get people to understand what it what actually happened on those ships then we won't get them to change their minds so there are many different ways that we could work on this and help people to have a better understanding of the past and the um historian professor catherine hall has put it the best way she calls it reparative history it is about repairing history by acknowledging what happened bringing it to the to light helping people to understand it better and in doing so transform the future we were fortunate in having melinda elder write a book so there was some recognition so that i hope laid the way for your work when you came along yes professor uh i mean melinda elder's uh work has been instrumental in this because no one else has written um uh about lancaster's history as she has and it's the book was it called the sugar house or no so um she's her book is about lancaster's link to transatlantic slavery and hers is the definitive book on that and she's done a lot more work alongside us as a community group and also other local historians have been working with us on that so there is we are building on knowledge that exists um but black lives matter process has really pushed into the forum and and we hear a lot as academics about decolonizing a curriculum i think there are quite a few people are a little bit mystified how you go about decolonizing a curriculum so i'm going to ask you very simply about that because i'm sure it's very very complicated but where does the library sit in that what's the importance of our library and our archive in relation to that decolonization i think everything in the library has an underlying colonial mindset attached to it the way we do indexing the way we do procurement the way we do publishing these are tied to houses in the western world um your rankings all of this is generated in the west and there is very little recognition of fantastic tests written in native languages um or journals that come out of that so it's it's and the library here in lancaster has been uh really interested involved in wanting to bring about that change they've been involved not just in initiatives here on campus in relation to decolonizing but they've also reached out to community groups like lancaster black history and supported them on their slavery family trees research project so we've been in touch very much with you marin uh in relation to that but also working with historians here because many of the academics who are here at lancaster university are part of lancaster black history group fascinating now on another side but not unrelated of course is the work that you do with asylum seekers and and refugees and i wondered if you might like to talk to us about the particular challenges that perhaps people have coming into this region but coming into the uk in general and what more can we be doing to help because of course we've all seen the the situation coming out of afghanistan in the last few weeks but of course it's much much wider than that um i think the biggest challenge is um is the way uh currently our immigration systems work and the new uh police bill that's coming in and the immigration bills that's coming in because we need to help people to understand um the truth about a lot of what's gone behind that bill but also if they understand the legacies of slavery colonialism and empire they would much better understand why afghanistan is where it is now but if we don't help people to understand that background history of a tremendously um proud nation with amazing history and architecture being reduced to where it is now that how do we enable the communities to better engage with them as equals but not as someone that they need to pity but treating them as equals and understanding that britain's involvement in afghanistan for example in iran for example in iraq for example can explain where to an extent um why those countries are facing what they are facing now and you can see that even in the middle east um other places and in parts of africa so the big challenge for us here in lancaster and mokum city of sanctuary which is um the umbrella group that works with asylum seekers and refugees here that i'm part of through two different groups that i'm associated with our biggest challenge and i really would um hope that anyone who's listening to this and has a house that you traditionally rent out to students would you consider uh renting it out via um lancaster mocham city of sanctuary in the lancaster city council lancashire county council for afghan families so we in this part of the world have agreed to have five afghan families we've only been able to accommodate one because we do not have housing for the other four so we've had um a landlord from lancaster being one of the first people to open up her doors and say instead of letting out to students i'm going to consider this is an important point and a way for me to engage with this topic of you know refugees and supporting them or you know better understanding where they come from and i think we have more of that kind of understanding there's tremendous goodwill there's um great ways of defending all of that information is available in lancaster mocom city of sanctuary website facebook and all the different groups that work with it so there's you know you can volunteer you can donate you can help people through translations you can teach english there's a variety of ways you can teach people to ride cycle there's so many different ways in which you can befriend and support asylum seekers and refugees because the headlines very recently suggested that about a third of councils in england and wales have actually come forward to offer spaces for afghan refugees in particular and so i approached our local council to ask what we were doing and how many families we were taking in and it was actually quite relieved to know we are one of those councils that is very very positive about helping and they had talked about 10 families but i'm now a little despondent in thinking that we were going to be able to help 10 families and you're telling me that all we've been able to find is is a place for one so there's a lot more for us to do lancashire i always think is having a big warm and welcoming heart it maybe needs to get a little bigger would you think i think lancashire has the heart um to an extent but it's you know i guess in a sense um different organizations and groups having a more people get getting on board with the idea that it's all right to be able to do that there's no repercussions with this um and that's a safe way to do this so it might be five ten or twenty families that we can welcome but if we don't have houses to let all the good win the all the good will in the world is not going to help so how do we educate how do we get that message out that that lancashire is open that we've got the facilities we've got how do we educate people to open their doors i think the biggest thing is awareness so this morning right up until three o'clock this afternoon i was in the lake district at brock halls with 90 women from the east and the west as part of a group that i'm involved in called east meets west that works with uh women asylum seeker refugees and and refugees and their families with the idea that if you work alongside and you i mean you you share things with people you're going to be able to kind of break those barriers because we're meeting as equals and while we were having uh we'd asked everybody to bring their own uh picnics because of kovit you can't do the traditional sharing which a lot of these families were coming from middle east and africa would like to share food we were all there sitting with these young children around us and a gentleman walked up to us and he said what is happening here and we said this is what we are doing and he said i am amazed uh because i've been thinking about this this morning and you know it's just like an answer to prayer i've seen that it you you can achieve this you can bring about change but it's small slow steps um we need to do other things in order to be able to bring that awareness and that could involve uh you know higher levels of government having policies that uh enable local councils and county councils to do uh you know be funded better to provide kind of support but also to have policies at the national level that are humane and that that um i guess in a sense treat people and understand why the truth behind why lots of people leave those situations it's not just about economic migration it is about fleeing persecution uh violence and war increasingly climate change yeah you you are an inspiration and you are utterly intoxicating you really are and i can't think of anybody better at the forefront of of moving this this area forward and you know the university is so proud of all of the work that you do but there is of course so much work to do but thank you for joining us this evening it's been just such a pleasure as always you're very welcome and it's not just me i work with groups yes i know but it also takes many voices to come together into our our next performance so it's a great pleasure to introduce scott millington who is a local singer songwriter and player of so many instruments i almost can't list them but at the end of the day they do include mandolins and banjos and let's face it you can never have too much of a good banjo he's apparently a lover of travelling and cats and experimental cooking but i'm hoping that they aren't particularly linked and this year he's released a new album which is called waymarks and i have to say that out of this the one that i loved the most was coffee dreaming because i very much related to that sitting over a cup of coffee and dreaming about what's going on with the world i'm hoping that it might be on tonight's playlist but scott whilst you're at it where's the signpost it's at the bottom of ingleboro ah there you go i knew he would know so ladies and gentlemen please can you give us a very warm welcome for scott milligan who also is playing at the lancaster music festival this october so please make sure that you support that local festival as well scott it's over to you thank you very much everybody [Music] dark nights drawing in doubt setting in like rain boats sailing out to lights on the horizon i want to breathe a different air feel the sun from a cloudless sky hesitation keeps me afraid i'm going nowhere cover me [Music] to the place i need to go snow clings to rolling hills trucks kick up jets of spring iron bridges spawning voids roads that lead you somewhere i'm heading through those rolling hills i'm going but i'd like to stay but the skyline's calling me down the road to somewhere cover me in love and light give me land and see earth and sky give me a compass point to guide me home to the and all the place i should have done all the things i could have done if i had where would i be there still a chance to see [Music] leads [Music] thank you very much [Applause] that was the road to somewhere um that's better i could hear it and i could hear it slightly out and look i can't stop can't stop this is tree in the winter [Music] hide like a tree in the winter [Music] black and frozen prone to splinters [Music] elements of life in suspension [Music] are you cause of prevention [Music] make me warm again let the river in me flow again [Music] i can't feel anything now [Music] can't let my god let you in now [Music] how can you help if you're the problem [Music] trying doors but you can't unlock them make me whole again clear the windows of my soul again i can't feel you i can't heal you i can't deal with you [Music] hide like a tree in the winter [Music] black and frozen prone to splinters thank you very much [Applause] just change guitars now this next song has a story behind it we love a good story but this story is based in rooted in lancaster's history and um in a tower in lancaster castle as one of the oldest surviving pieces of graffiti and um come on there you are it says john bailey april the 15th 1741 committed for kissing by brindle and by this picture of a tulip and a very well carved violin but nobody knows who john bailey was and nobody knows who he kissed now in the parlance of the day kissing the cheerleading having a fiddle well i'll leave to draw your own conclusions on that one but but we i wrote this song um for my my band the grievous angels we did um we took part in the documenting descent project a few years ago and recorded a small album for that and we recorded it as a duet we were trying to [Music] figure out who jim john bailey was and how he got there so this is an imagine conversation with john bailey it's called committed kissing the day john bailey died [Music] tell me all your secrets i promise not to tell and i'll tell you where i was on the day that pompey fell on early spring night we played by candle lights making music till our heads began to swim [Music] our eyes met over teleman i knew i'd only love one man every note i will play for him tell me all your secrets your trust [Music] for our love could never see the light of day [Music] but the night of april 4th the parting kiss by the door brindle came took my liberty away [Music] now i carved to the prison wall a coded message to them all with a symbol of the music that we made 300 years have come to pass my message lives on under glass and i remain undiscovered to this day so tell me all your secrets and promise you won't lie and i'll tell you where i was on the day john bailey died thank you very much jump back there was something a little bit high-wire about tuning on stage now this next song was inspired by a painting by an australian artist called prudence flint and it's called green tea ice cream and i have to thank tanita tickering for this because she posted the painting on twitter while i should have been working okay aha [Music] indian summer in november sun streaming in through the blinds humming a tune i have remembered it's too nice out there to be inside stefan's painting his house and dolly's at the sewing machine jeanette she's watching tv on her couch and everyone's busy but me go a day like this it feels like a dream sitting on a bench by the ocean seagulls and green tea ice cream judy's on the counter at the corner store giving out gossip with the she says this time last year remember it was minus four i'd like to have drove us all insane and now i'm looking at the house on the shoreline and wishing that it belonged to me i could sit out on the porch with a glass of wine watch the moon kiss the sea maybe there's someone out there dreaming the same dream sitting on a bench by the ocean seagulls and green tea ice cream but while you're out there chasing love and perfection there's a voice deep inside it's trying to catch your attention [Music] there's a chill now in the sunshine i never thought to bring a coat i think i'll sit out with some wine tonight the moon and i will drink a toast [Music] maybe there's someone out there picturing the sea a woman on a bench by the ocean seagulls and green tea ice cream maybe she'll paint me for all the world to see sitting on the bench by the ocean seagulls and green tea ice cream green tea eyes [Music] thank you very much [Applause] [Music] this is the last song of the evening for me um this is a song sue is referring to [Music] and this is written back in the days before the franchised coffee experience became a thing when they were relative naughty on high streets but this one was inspired by um a certain coffee shop in glasgow near central station they had a whopping great sofa in the window where you could sit and watch the world go by and so this is called coffee dreaming sitting on the sofa in the coffee bar down the street drinking a grande mocha with chocolate and whipped cream looking out the window at the people passing by then your eyes make mine and i break into a smile and i start coffee dreaming you are by my side i'm coffee dreaming but i'll live another life coffee dreaming of someone i'll never meet i'm coffee dreaming you're tall and dark dressed in black big red boots you got deep blue eyes and a smile that cuts me through walk around the city and we talk away the day [Music] coffee dreaming of someone i'll never meet i'm coffee dreaming so you stay the night we make love all night never know coffee tastes so good the problem with dreaming never does come true when i'd be more than happy to dream a life with you now my coffee's cold and the steamer ceased to rise you're halfway down the street when i open up my eyes but i'm still coffee dreaming you were by my side still coffee dreaming can i live this other life coffee dreaming of someone i wish i'd meet i'm coffee dreaming still coffee dreaming thank you all for listening have a good evening thank you scott and you've made an old lady very happy thank you for coffee dreaming and it's the the last track on your new album which is as you can see called waymarks so thank you so much indeed for that i feel as if i've known you forever because i've spent the afternoon watching you playing in your attic if you get my drift moving on very swiftly from there to my next guest last time we met he was interviewing me and i love a good table turn every now and again so there's a certain sense of power shift here that he's not quite sure what's coming so it's a pleasure to introduce ian juror ian is a lancaster man and he's elite chaplain and i have to read this because it's the most ridiculous title he's a lead chaplain at university hospitals of morecambe bay nhs foundation trust don't you think somebody could have made that a little bit more snappy he's also the founder of on the project lead for lancaster health festival a trustee of morecambe bay food bank and a member of sustainable food city and of course as you would expect he's got his own allotment ian um i'm not sure how nervous you're feeling given how much of a hard time can i just say it i'm on the couch i'm going to take us to something a little bit more serious because otherwise the evening could descend and that's never good never good with the cleric um tell me about a little bit about what it means to be lead chaplain at the hospital where's the difference it it's a brilliant job basically i mean being a lead chaplain allows me to run a team of chaplains or team volunteers to engage with people often in the most vulnerable moment in time as we're in a university setting it's probably worth saying as well it's one of those great opportunities to test what comes out of university so for example linda wood has done quite a lot of research which was connected with the university in the past on changes in religion and it's quite interesting to read things like the kendall project or the paper she wrote on um you know people kind of um not giving up on belief but having kind of mixtures of beliefs and saying is that true in the bedside when you meet people so it's fantastic privilege to be able to do that and and just a great job and the thing i love most about being a chaplain and certainly being lead chaplain is the freedom you get um you can go anywhere and we often joke if i put the call and i could just walk in the operating theater nobody oh it's a chaplain don't bother about it it's fine let's get on with it so uh and it is that freedom to engage and to get to to talk you know to the domestics and the porters about the footy uh to take the stillbirth funerals the next day and to be on the ethics committee the next day and to just be out on the wards that's what i love about it it's great and that caller that you talk about does give that sense of trust and a trust when when people are at their most vulnerable is extremely comforting are there times when you feel that perhaps it gets in the way rather than necessarily being something that enhances the relationship you might have whether that's with patients or with staff or or with families as they're coming in yeah it's interesting really i mean i've been through peers where i've thought that i've reached a conclusion it doesn't now because the advantage of wearing this is that even if people think you stand for something that you don't stand for you've got a starting place you know they'll threat so i went in uh on our um what i was the other day and uh he was taking communion around which he's back on the wards now now's offering and you know my name is injured and the chaplain the clues are there look you know and somebody was really quite you know sharp with me uh it was something and chucked out stuff they were some of that so i said what are you reading now then because they were onto my ipad or whatever and it was i was able to build a link simply because you know that gave me a clue as to what they thought about me really um so you just got to use everything to your advantage that's all there is to it i mean for some people it does they've had some really bad experiences at the church but you people have had benefits and business of all sorts of institutions really and you've got to take that and enroll with it um what have you seen change over the last 18 months because it's really been an exceptional time in the nhs what's your sort of distilled down views uh we're tired yeah it's a bottom line really i mean i think talking to staff um you've got to be careful i think you we took out this narrative about you know uh the nhs is collapsing it'll probably grind to a halt more than collapse i think the sheer kind of numbers coming to it and the expectations placed on it um but you can't be too dramatic because we're not the first generation to have a pandemic you've got to be realistic um but you've you've got to be balanced and it has been exhausting when i interviewed one of our nurses um last year for a remembrance service we did similar to this like you know live streamed on youtube and the exhausting thing for her was that you would have patients who would come to you he thought yeah okay they're all elderly they've got online health conditions but we can do something we'll treat them and you start treating them and then they get covered and like six hours later they're dead you know and that it was that intensity i think that kind of got to people and people are just drawing breath at the moment really but the rest of the world seems going back to normal well i'm still in lockdown so you can't go on a ward without ppe you know and those are the kind of things and it's that duality and most people i speak to are expecting a tough autumn in winter because we didn't have much flu last year everyone was interesting absolutely nobody's quite sure what's coming this year so we'll see how that goes um in in my real world as a forensic scientist but also as an anthropologist one of the things that i've noticed and missed the most is anyone will tell you who knows me i'm a huggy person and i think people have really missed that physical connection that they can have with people what do you think the impact on that lack of connection and physicality has on us as a human species yeah that wasn't a question that was on the list was it no it wasn't no no no no but it's it's a really good question and it and it's a very profound question because it touches on something that we're bad at in society anyway which is understanding uh rituals in terms of physicality and touch this came home too many years ago when i was um was living in russia and so they were the way they dealt with each other in terms of greeting each other physicality and i think he's probably done a lot of damage because um and we'll take a lot of recovery from because ultimately even a handshake is intimate and that's really kind of important certainly for us as chaplains one of the most difficult things is when it's the end of life the accepted rituals of laying your hand on somebody's head or holding your hand their hand whilst you pray with them whatever has kind of disappeared i mean we you're doing it through gloves it's not quite the same thing but it doesn't work you know um so i i think that's going to take some recovery from really and i think one of the things that it will affect us with is a degree of nervousness about how we deal with each other um i'd be interested to see how that kind of works out over time and do you think the biggest challenge facing you as a lead chaplain at the moment is is the morale and the tiredness or is there something more is there a bigger challenge there are there are two major challenges i think really there is the tightness and the morale and it's getting around and seeing people and and picking up conversations and seeing how they're doing but the other challenge that hasn't gone away that's been highlighted by the pandemic is when are we going to take population health seriously because actually we all know the major issue is not people coming to the health services stopping in the first place you know we yeah we need to get people walking we need to get people eating well we need to spy decent food in our culture with all those things are incredibly important and we kind of didn't do that really um and and just the issues have not gone away and they've just been highlighted and we we need to have honest conversation with them and if i'm if i'm truth about it i wouldn't mind seeing a royal commission on the national health service because it would be interesting because all you've got at the moment is um two parties chucking stuff each other in the next as a footballer they actually managed it with the benefit system universal credit most people don't actually realize was a cross-party venture and my wife was working in working pensions at the time and we can argue the toss about um how much money you get on your vessel credit you can argue the toss about whether know it was really slow getting going but it but it was a tidying up that made things simpler and we need something like a royal commission on the nhs so what are we supposed to do with this thing that's been around for 70 or 80 odd years and you know we don't live in that world anymore it's a behemoth that has grown in a sort of organic way with sort of slightly slightly you know un untidy absolutely messy everywhere i think i'm actually correcting saying the only organization that employs more people than we do is a chinese red army i mean it's ridiculous but it's been at the core house yeah of people's hearts minds and health yeah over the last 18 months but you are the the light and the driving force behind the festival of the lost art of living which is where we met up tell us all about that festival because this is so you and it is so lancaster thank you but it's just brilliant well we just i was just walking through lancaster one day and thinking you know we've got this big problem we have these big campaigns about population health and everybody trust knows about them but nobody outsize knows about them what do you do about that then what do we do one in lancaster well we've got this fantastic music festival you know every year why can't we have a health festival so we had to go just starting off and i think year one we we engaged with 500 people year two two thousand year three four thousand uh and then we hit pandemic but it meant let's slow things up but we're back on the march we're moving again now which is great and we've we ran one in the pandemic and won um again this year i called it myself living for a very simple reason a lovely scottish connection for you my grandfather was born in wisher and the family all originally come up from near lochte which is the name like jeweler i'm sorry it's a clue that's right it's like wearing this really that's it but i remember as a wee boy he would he he'd go for walk most nights with his mate vince and they'd walk around and and they'd have a smoke and they'd you know talk about the ggs or whatever and he who where the money was going and what life was like and he come back an hour late and that was it and he chewed the fat and and what struck me is that we've got in this absolutely balmy situation now where everyone's getting excited about sexual prescribing and you go to the gps and say what you need to do is go walking three times a week how the heck did we get to the situation where you've got to prescribe going for a walk it's mad and we've lost the art just to walk out and to talk to each other to have a conversation and we have to turn it into something kind of important now i get it if somebody is kind of full a gym membership and it's good for them to go that i can see the kind of logic but there is something that we've lost in our culture when you can't actually just say she'll just go for a walk in a chat you know why can't we do that so we're looking at the lost art of living and lost our living is these other things that i mean you get pressman buttons now i'm really on with this one but you know you know we go through the food in our culture we don't have food do we have we have a factory mess most of the time that's churned out i mean i when they're going through the 70s everyone tell you what was bad to eat i grew up in a typical lancaster working class family it was meat and two beds and that was it beans on taste if money was a bit tight that's it right um yeah i'm not ill i'm healthy i'm okay and yeah in the 70s and 80s we persuaded ourselves but having meat and two veg is really really bad for you what you need it was vesta curry or something did i mean and now our diet's all over the place we've got all sorts of illness coming from it so we've got to deal with these issues and get back on with them because food is so very often at the core of everything we do and sunita will know that when you're bringing communities together absolutely it's the sharing of food it's the cooking of food it's it's it's often the mothers and the women who are at the core of that and i know we've seen that in in some of the communities why do we have food banks very good question there are all sorts of complex reasons around that but by and large i think we have what have we done we've moved to a system where i think we have um undercut our industrial base so we don't have people doing low paid jobs whether they get themselves respected maybe have a top up from we have moved to a system where we funnel people who haven't got a lot in certain areas and therefore you create kind of downward spiraling areas we don't have a decent enough benefit system in terms of money people have to to live off and what we do to areas and i think it's really quite crucial factor in while we have food banks benefits on board is um we do things don't just say it's in university but we say the best thing you can do in life is get a good education go to university leave home and go to a city and get a good job in short we bleed talent and so we leave poor areas and there are large sways of this country that become poorer and poorer because we bleed talent and we need to turn that around facebook to ourselves what's wrong with stopping at home what's wrong with your local university what's wrong making a difference to your community and those are the kind of things that and you're a lancaster man born and bred have you seen that lancaster community change in your lifetime is it changing for the better the worse or just changing community spirit yeah it's it's changed phenomenally um and it's kind of i guess it's kind of mixed really i mean um mine now used to taking students when they first arrived here and then last bit of spare cash get him in there's a lodger really um in so many species changed for the better i mean you were quite pointing out earlier that lancaster was a northern wicking class town on its uppers basically that's where we were two major employers williamson's and uh stories were going down though i started my working life down at williamson's names as it was then in their export department um uh so it's been a huge boon i think those who have stayed who've been to the university and stayed made lives here they've made a big difference to the area you know and and that they're the positives but actually when i talk to my parents both unfortunately still around um there are two lancasters still and i don't know how you bridge that gap there needs to be some way of doing it and and and that's not just lancaster that's our country as a whole and one of the questions we've got to tease out and it is why is it in the last 30 40 50 years you end up with a demonization of the working class you know if you're a working class you're a bigoted racist whatever you know and they're difficult questions to face up to um i mean the classic example would be my grandfather was as read as you come when it comes to politics and we're a third or fourth generation labour family um you know i flirted with the toys at one stage looking like that um and went back to my roots um but if i look at my you know my grandfather my parents they wouldn't recognize the current party that we have you know and and there is so much would they recognize the community so has the community changed changed hugely they still recognize it to some extent because the streets are still there um uh people physicality physicality is really important um you know and um can the neighbors still got on well but i think the difficulty is stuff has changed large across the national patterns and trends so i think that you know one of the most disastrous things we did in this country was sell-off council housing but is there enough heart and space to overcome what might be a national policy but to turn it into the local or the community drive that changes because i think of some of the work that sunita does and that you do that that really is pushing boundaries that doesn't necessarily follow a government directive yes there is and i actually think that is our only hope really because you know we're not going to get anything nationally you know basically but we're going to have leveling up [Laughter] i'm an optimist i'm an optimist uh you know we've got to do it ourselves we've got to rediscover drive and energy ourselves and make changes ourselves because nobody's going to do it for us you know we've got a so if we want a decent food culture well we've got to set up systems where we have a decent food culture you know if we if we want um you know great places for people to enjoy themselves we've got to make sure we protect protect our green areas it's kind of down to us to do it and we've got to do that and is there a role for the university there yeah there is because actually decent study recent academic academic research opens up areas of conversation and backs the initiatives and ideas and gives us some direction you know education is a fantastic thing i mean i think one of the things i uh i think it's far better in in in scotland than england is that basically you can get a decent education if you go to the right school etc etc in scotland if you're good enough you're in sun aren't you that's basically it and there's a much more balanced view i think it's got no if we and you know but universes are important places to do important research and we've got to find ways of taking that into the into the public domain really and you know as we were talking with marion earlier the relationship between the time and the gown is important it's important but it's got to go deeper than than kind of those high level links that's the crucial thing and that's the natural that's the hard work how do you turn that and make it kind of um to use a theological term how do you incarnate it how do you get it rooted in in this area we're out of time same as better than the sermon this well i think i'm enjoying it we have one more question i'll go on the most the most important question what's growing well on the allotment right now uh radishes and my tomatoes ian ian it's always a pleasure it is always a pleasure thank you moving on now to our final musical interlude and i'd like to introduce you to jay blackburn who is a singer and a songwriter from hisham you can tell i'm local i can now call it hisham not haitian which i think i did for about the first six months before i had it beaten into me and jay has released his debut ap back in 2013 which was called ghosts since then he's achieved huge success including being played on bbc introducing radio stations his new album in this old world has just been introduced and you can download it on bandcamp either for the download or for cd so what i'm hoping and having listened to it i've been doing a lot of listening to music this afternoon i i've got a real hope that darker shade of blue it might be i'm going for not quite the hat trick but i'm hoping that if i put in a plug now then maybe that's going to appear on tonight's repertoire we'll see whether i'm lucky but it is a beautiful song and i do advise that everybody have have a look and listen to jay's music because it is quite incredible accompanying jay tonight we have craig on violin we have lucy singing and we have neve on keyboard so please give it up ladies and gentlemen very warm welcome to jay thank you good evening oliver so i think scott sang realtor somewhere did you i'm gonna sing somewhere down the road so i must have had this similar thought process [Music] i'll see you somewhere down the road to ever after chasing down our dreams upon the wind who wants to blow in all directions precious time has no voice to lose [Music] only memories to pick and choose from those just tossed aside was nothing more than i could ever give you gotta keep on keeping on even though the road is long gotta keep on keeping on even if our hope is [Music] to feel your love again [Music] so keep on shining in the dark [Music] to see our face again [Music] gotta keep on keeping on [Music] even though the road is on gotta keep on keeping up keep on keeping on [Music] just keep on keeping on just on see you somewhere down the road [Music] thank you very much so that was the opening track of my new album this is another tune off it's been very well supported by uh local radio beyond radio thanks to those guys for your support little plug there this is called build a dream hobby [Music] maybe we could build ourselves a pretty dream [Music] the prettiest dream that this world has ever seen maybe we could reach the point no return finally watch the fires burn maybe we will dance [Music] let me love you once again my love will keep you from the cold maybe we could build ourselves [Music] see a coastal scene all shiny gold pink and blue the summer sunset burning on an ocean view maybe we will dance [Music] let me love you once again my love keep you from the cold [Music] maybe we will let me love you once again my love will keep you from the cold maybe we will dance let me love you once again my love will keep you from [Music] we're gonna build a dream [Music] let's build a tree [Music] thank you very much [Applause] so she wanted the hat trick didn't you sue and coming in at number three yes the very song uh dark shade of blue hope you like it oh sorry mr craig murray everyone sorry bad habit of doing that [Music] she's been in love before you can see the buzzflow you can see it in her beautiful the blue eyes you can see [Music] you're crying out all he can stand up be a man and hold on to love and he wants you [Music] the other ways [Music] no longer [Music] long gone the other ways the darkest shade [Music] she's the one who made there are noises to the soul she's the one who made me until the days that we grow the other ways [Music] the other ways [Music] until the day [Music] [Applause] thank you very much so this one has a little bit of a story to it about 30 years ago this guy rocked up in morkum off a train and went to meet his mate uh he was going to stay with for a couple of weeks and um he went to meet him in the the skirting hotel when that used to be open and walked in and was like a wild west moment everyone stopped to turn around and who's this stranger and turned out to be a right pleasant bunch and drinks were spilt and good crack was hard and 30 years later the guy's still here and this is called a stranger strange is me by the way [Music] foreign stranger rise on the morning train [Music] trying to find a new place trying to find his own way cold streets gravel crunching underfoot [Music] what's your name son where'd you come from [Music] and are you gonna stay around [Music] are you gonna steal [Music] hmm [Music] a gentleman with no more work just singing [Music] tell the stories i fought you [Music] [Music] where'd you come from now you're gonna stay around [Music] tone [Music] a gentleman with no more just singing songs in love [Music] where'd you come from and now you're gonna stay around are you gonna [Music] are you gonna sleep [Music] thank you very much so yeah these are a few songs off this wonderfully produced piece of work if i say so myself and i've got a few with me if anyone would like to part with 10 pounds and help fund me uh fund my next project you would be more than welcome so come see me afterwards if you would like to buy one otherwise it's available on download on bandcamp as well for those online watching and uh we're going to do another one from this album and it's called echoes one two three [Music] um [Music] huh [Music] we could catch the evening time scene away from here [Music] we could take the time to really know just what's going on [Music] all the echoes around my mind [Music] my [Music] oh [Music] just a cool breeze [Music] takes us away from here just [Music] we could take the time to really see just what's going on [Music] my soul [Music] so from [Music] we lose our sense of time day's just passing by all we need is love [Music] it's just so plain to see just what's going on [Music] my soul [Music] around my soul [Music] [Music] um [Music] thank you very much we've got time for a couple more guys one more right [Music] so this is a this one's actually not on the album this is a quite an old song but i thought with craig playing tonight i thought we'd throw this on because he's got some fine fiddle in it and this was uh written three or four year ago i think and um loosely inspired by a wonderful irish family that we met on holiday and it's called pretty little pictures hope you like it [Music] pretty little pictures on the wall daisies on my mind were once so small now she's riding home to a mother's car to those pretty little [Music] with no sound now she's riding home to mother's car to those pretty little pictures on the wall daddy was a good man you could tell day he would be wishing by the well now she's riding home to mother's car [Music] to those pretty little pictures on the wall she told her every day from the age of ten to make sure that she chose wisely upon the bear on the wall [Music] pretty little pictures on the wall [Music] to those pretty little pictures on the wall pretty little pictures on the wall to those pretty little pictures on the wall [Music] thank you very much thanks for having us [Applause] jay lucy craig and neve thank you so much need for that and also for um making sure that the hit list was there for me as well ian bless's heart just leaned over to me a few moments ago and said you always managed to get your own way do you know he has no idea absolutely none that was that was just amazing can i i think i have to say that stranger is probably my favorite now on the new album so please support our local musicians so to our final guest on on the couch this evening and it's to cara cooper and cara is the methodist chaplain here at the university but she's also the university's spiritual care coordinator and what she does better than probably anyone that i've ever met is to try to build different communities and between all the diverse groups that we find at a university whether that's religious ethnic or cultural and the chaplaincy hosts a lot of events and a lot of those events seem to involve lots of tea and cake so we're back to the same subject that food is one of the things that brings people together and i think probably that's an indication of the lancaster way of things so kara we've been a colleague for the last three years and a great delight to have you as a friend and we work together on some of the most challenging things i think at times and out of my window whether it's haunting me or whether it's encouraging me out of my office window all i see are the three spires of the chaplaincy it's not a bad view to have out your windows it's pretty good and uh to to know that there is that space of community and diversity and also that space of of peace on campus which we hope that the chaplaincy center is as well so i made one of my faux pas associated with the spires and marion i know will look at me i said oops has one of the crossbars falling off the spires oh so tell i know i know i asked for forgiveness tell tell us a little bit about the chaplaincy before we get to chaplaincy sure sure so the chaplaincy center is a really wonderful rich history of lancaster and it's it's unique uh in the country really in that um lancaster university was a child of the 60s and so being a secular university was kind of innate in its ethos that we would be secular as a sign of the times and local faith communities said you know we think that actually a place of higher learning ought to have a place where spirituality might be discussed and where people might learn from each other and different beliefs so external faith groups in lancaster at the time got together and they raised the funds to build that building and then gifted it to the university now we think marion will keep me right i always regret having a statement because marion will always keep me right we believe it was the first multi-faith chaplaincy on a university campus in the uk would that be fair or in take a breath ah it was certainly one of the first okay uh i would have to check and you will i'm sure you'll let me know so that i don't get it wrong again no it wasn't it was a scene surfer and it's right at the the heart of the campus which i think is incredibly important when you look at the university's old logo not the shield that we have now it was known as the swoosh and the swoosh is of course the the three sides of that chaplaincy spar yeah and so that local faith com communities had a vision and said we believe that this is important and so important that we will raise funds not for our own benefit but for the benefit of folks up there and and 50 years on we're still celebrating that vision and how that vision now carries into the 21st century so you and i had the great privilege of celebrating the chaplaincy's 50th anniversary you were impressive in cutting the cake you did tell me marion did the cutting of the cake i just did the eating of the cake you did tell me it had to do with your forensic scientist background but um we had a wonderful celebration with marion and sue to celebrate 50 years of the chaplaincy we did and in that chaplaincy apart from your own role as a chaplain you're also the university spiritual care coordinator tell me what that means and what that brings you into contact with in terms of the diversity of a university it's another job title that i think someone should have shortened down a little bit it doesn't quite fit on the business cards um so three four years ago the university realized that its chaplains came from external faith communities and were received with gratitude and a huge thanks for all the work that chaplains do and the university said maybe we should have someone who brings all of those different groups together and maybe we should have someone at the center of that liaising with the groups and intentionally building community across religion ethnicity experience background and so the university decided to uh create a post for a spiritual care coordinator and although it's a little bit of a mouthful i reckon i have the best job in the world because as you said i get to meet with different groups i get to learn their stories i get to tell people that they matter just as they are i get to tell people that they are welcome i get to sit down at a table with food with people from what might be extremely traditional beliefs or conservative beliefs and people who don't fit in any belief system whatsoever and somehow i get to kind of hold space for both of those and i get to hold space for conversations to happen and learning and respect and and not just tolerating diversity but embracing it so as the university spiritual care coordinator i work with people of all faith or no faith there's pastoral care there's community building there's a great deal of tea and cake there's awareness raising so sunita and i have worked together on a couple of things um and working with other partners across the university to say hey this is a thing that matters for our community well-being there's a story and i love stories but there's a story that says when storm desmond hit and it hit the coast really hard we lost all the power at the university and the only building that had any power was the chaplaincy whose lights were still burning i don't know whether it's true because it was before my time it's true how important do you think that role of chaplaincy not just the chaplaincy but also chaplaincy is in those times of difficulty whether it's a something as immediate as a storm or something that has gone on but it feels like a very long time in terms of pandemic is it still as important as it was oh for sure for sure the desmond story is such a wonderful example it was the storm hit on a saturday saturday night and on a sunday morning uh some of us from christian persuasions were leading worship for our communities um it wasn't quite the only building because by no i like it to sign the only building it's a better story almost by a weird quirk of engineering the security lodge is on the same emergency power spur as the chaplaincy and so the library wasn't working the library was not working at that time we'll be changing that so mid-afternoon when we started to lose the light because it was december and students hadn't had heating because we didn't have power they saw lights in the chaplaincy center and they started coming in their ones and twos and by the end of the day we had hundreds and my anglican colleague and i we turned the building upside down for every crumb of food that we could find and we made dozens of liters of tea and coffee just to say we know it's scary there but there is light and warmth here and something about those images of light and warmth that were so prevalent in the desmond response i think is so important now as we come out of a pandemic we might have two crops of students who have never actually been on campus so not just incoming students but returning students how do they find their people how do they find the place where they belong and i think chaplaincy is so very important in saying here are people here's a welcome here's a place where you matter here's a place where your story will be heard here's a place where there is light and warmth regardless of religious affiliation and what do you think one of the biggest challenges is that's facing our students today what's coming what's the big challenge for us i i think there's a real challenge about finding your people and finding that sense of belonging students who will now be third years uh haven't had anything resembling a traditional university experience students who will be first years have no idea what's coming and for those of us who are staff who are trying to manage these diverse needs we're all kind of oh gosh oh dear i'm sure people are much clever than i am but i think that there there will be an ongoing effect of the pandemic about mental health about belonging about well-being and how we address those things ian talked about how we need to address certain health matters i also think we need to address how people fit into communities you know that i always talk about a triumvirate which is often fairly appropriate given our guests but the triumvirate that i talk about which is about well-being is the fact that we do pay a lot of time and attention quite rightly towards our physical well-being and towards our mental well-being which is a huge and increasing problem do we pay enough attention to our spiritual well-being um what do i mean by spiritual do you think sue i couldn't possibly speak for you that would be foolhardy in the extreme but foreign that's all right um i i think spiritual well-being is hugely important i think actually spiritual well-being is the thing that unites us it's our shared humanity so it's not necessarily about religion no not at all some people will find their spiritual spiritual well-being through the expression of a faith but for me and i think for you spiritual values are things that don't fit into mental well-being or physical well-being it's about expressions of kindness or compassion it's about developing a sense of awe and wonder it's about curiosity for the other it's about hearing and telling stories it's about a connectedness to the earth and an interconnectedness to each other and those are things that don't fit into a mental health list and and they're certainly not the purview of any one particular religion for some of us a religion helps us explore those things for others those values are for me at the core of what it means to be human and so i know that you've recently moved and become a resident of morecambe i have so do you think lancaster and morkum are spiritual places i think spirituality can be found anywhere that there's a connection when you have a connection with another person so in in the last song that we heard when when a stranger rocks up at a pub and someone says what's your name how long you staying that's a connection that leads to a spirituality and living in morkum i absolutely believe that morecambe has its own spirituality and celtic christianity uses the phrase a thin place and it it refers to those moments when the veil between this world and what i would call the divine others might use different language but when the veil is so gossamer thin it's almost as if you could see through to something more and that spirituality lives in our language which of course is a huge link back to the library but also to our music and to our art and certainly when you look at at the coast particularly along along morkum then you can you can really feel the awe and the wonder of nature how do you feel in terms of chaplaincy and spirituality about the eden north project oh it's just fantastic isn't it um so for me one of the those spiritual values is about a connectedness to the earth and a connectedness to one another which are two values that eden absolutely uh embodies and lives out to the fullest extent so something about i mean what i've been talking about this whole time is about community and bringing community together and eden is seems to me to be about rooting in a place drawing people in from outside but in so doing making links reaching across communities to again bring those diverse groups together i think eden has the potential for a sort of spirituality all of its own that is about deep connections to the earth deep connections and respect for one another and telling stories well stories are important aren't they because it's the means by which most of us make friends make connections and stories are things that live whether it's the story of a university it's the story of a group of people that's really at the core and of course when you go when you look at morkum and you look at lancaster there are some tremendous stories that sit in there some great storytellers and as we've heard from our music our local music today translating those into the words and into the sound it is an incredible part of the world to live in isn't it i feel incredibly lucky to live here i feel lucky to live in malcolm bay i feel lucky to work not just at lancaster university but in lancaster city i think who among us earlier said lancashire has heart i i think when i uh when i first moved to the uk um i i lived in the south and i have worked my way north um and marion i didn't know you came from duke university because i also came from duke university i just took a slightly different path but um i did my post-grad in theology there and i feel that as i've gone north i feel like i've found home so so there's very obvious to many people who are listening to you tonight that your accent is not local i i can't believe you don't think i'm like austrian well it's getting close just rude it is getting close i'm not persuaded i'm shocked how does a girl come from where you came from to stay in lancaster oh so that happened we would need an awful lot of coffee and cake to go through that whole story for me and and i believe in in i believe in a divine i believe in something other so for me there's something about a divine who guided footsteps and who nudged on a certain path um but when i was at duke university i had an opportunity to come work in the uk for a year or two that was 20 years ago and i forgot to go back we have a saying up north if you don't belong you're an inner bootcamper because you know you've come in about three generations in the churchyard that's it that's it so you know i i have to say i was always an inner bookcomer to lancaster but i think it took about a month before i actually thought no actually you know i i belong and there is something about that sense and i find it in lancashire more than i find it i think in anywhere else that sense of welcome that sense of equality which i think is so important to everything that we've talked about tonight and i think it is a very special place absolutely and as we lay down those stories the importance of those stories lies in our archives and it lies in our libraries so where else would we want to be i'm quite happy where i am cara thank you for joining me this evening i can't believe that that the evening is just about over i hope you'll agree that what we've had is a tremendous evening in a university for me there are four heartbeats and those heartbeats for lancaster university certainly sit within its academic departments because people come here to learn it lies within the colleges because the colleges give people a sense of home it lies within our library right at the heart and the center of our university and with our chaplaincy so i hope that in terms of the community spirit that we have both in lancaster and lancashire that you've understood a little bit about why people coming together are so important the people on my my sofa tonight are friends as well as colleagues and so i can only thank sunita marion cara and ian for their forbearance in the questions that they've been asked but we had so much more than chat we had music and the music that we had from emily from jay and from scott has just been tremendous but it shouldn't be any surprise and it shouldn't be any surprise because this is not a library that really matches any other library that i've ever seen or experienced before it is different and it is changing and it's going to get even more different and that happens because of leadership it happens because of somebody who has a vision and the leader of lancaster university's library no one would be surprised that andrew would choose tonight to have a room full of music and full of chat and conversation libraries for me used to be the place where you were told to keep quiet in andrew's world libraries are places where you talk you celebrate and you sing i think that's the lancaster way so i thank everybody for this evening for listening to us please go out and support our local musicians because we're a part of the partnership they make the music but it only breathes life when we listen to it and this has been a really difficult time for our musicians locally but nationally so please go out and support them and one of the things that i've learned about lancaster in particular is that there is always a welcome especially when there's a brew on so please come and join us on the university campus come and look at our most amazing library and please be a part of what we do and i can only thank all of our wizards as well who sit in the background you know who you are making sure that we look as good as we possibly can on camera my goodness me that was a challenging job for you to keep the sounds going and to make it such a seamless production it is truly a tremendous place to work and live thank you very much indeed and good evening [Applause] [Music] love [Music] [Music] a really young leader all the time [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Lancaster University

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Keywords: Lancaster University

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Length: 149min 5sec (8945 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 12 2021