The Arts Crafts and Music Festival held over the first weekend in October at Holy Trinity Church was a great success even though the organisers deliberately didn’t aim to pack the church because of Covid precautions. This was a free community focused event and both stall holders and visitors told the organisers how much they had enjoyed participating in the event itself. The interior of the church was warm and welcoming and open to people of all religions or none. Some stall holders were raising funds not for themselves but for charities. WaterAid benefited by £200 and £200 was raised for the Leprosy Mission.

The first Trinity Festival event took place on the Saturday evening where the sociallydistanced audience in the church was treated to a splendid ‘last night of the proms’ concert. And very well it went. The audience lapped up a wonderful first half (see more below) but if we had thought that all we needed to do was sit back and listen, then a surprise awaited after the Bach double concerto (renamed ‘Dark Bubble’ by one of the players) at the 
start of the second half. It was time for some fun audience participation, which meant standing and singing. And so, in our rather British way, we got to our feet. But once we’d got into the swing of things, we all did pretty well in Jerusalem, Fantasia on British Sea Songs (we even had to clap in that one), Pomp and Circumstance and ended up never walking alone with Rodgers and Hammerstein. Or Gerry and the Pacemakers. Or Liverpool Football Club when they let a crowd in, depending on where you know it from.

The first half had seen us enjoying organ and piano solos from Jeremy Kimber, who then accompanied Philipa Jackson in a Schubert song, which also acted as a warm-up for leading the singing in the second half. Along the way we heard the Carillon string quartet, led by Kath Eastwood-Paramore, (who formed during lockdown) play Haydn and some violin duets by Shostakovich with Jon Barwell. The same pair were then the soloists in the ‘Dark Bubble’ at the start of the second half.

And if you missed it all, then it is here

On the Sunday afternoon arts and crafts came to the fore. There were sixteen stall holders displaying a wide range of crafts from painted glassware, embroidery and knitted toys to paintings of local scenes and maps. It was really enjoyable walking around talking to the stall holders or just admiring the work on display, such as that produced by Hall Orchard students. Their Pharaonic necklaces really brightened up a pillar!

Musicians played in the background for the first two hours then a rush of new visitors just before 4pm signalled the beginning of an hour of entertainment which included Barrow children as part of dancing and singing groups. All in all, it was a varied and well structured event which must have involved much hard work from the team of seven organisers. Will there be another one next year? I hope so.

Gaynor Barton and Guy Silk with help from 
Kath Eastwood-Paramore