Several years ago a group within the church designed and made the Living Hope banner which hangs to the right of the pulpit and is much loved and admired.

However, apart from an Easter banner which was made even longer ago there were no other banners to celebrate special times in the church year.

In February 2010 a group of about 10 ladies got together to discuss how to create some more banners. Very quickly we split into two groups, one focusing on banners for inside the church and the other working on smaller banners for the pavement window.

Because none of us had very much experience or knowledge we decided to start with banners for Harvest as we thought there was a chance then that we would get them finished in time.
 

The first thing to do was to decide on the designs and for the bigger church banner we asked our “resident artist” George Thompson if he could do something for us. George came up with a composition of fruit and vegetables which we used as the centre part of the large banner. Shelagh Weir and her team produced the design for the smaller banner after looking at examples from other churches.

Then the fun began and we certainly all learnt on the job, first of all making up the various elements at home and then bringing them together to assemble them.
  • It did take us the whole of the time we had allocated and we did get a bit panicky at times but the banners were ready for the Harvest Services at the beginning of October and were very well received.
  • One thing we also had to think about was where to store the banners as they are very big and can’t be rolled. There was only one place on the premises that had the required “drop” so, after getting rid of the cupboard that as standing there, we now have a very basic “store” made of a few pieces of wood, some ladder brackets and muslin curtains to keep the dust off.
   






Having got the first ones under our belt we decided we could do the next ones a bit faster. An Advent banner for the pavement window and the Christmas Communion Table fall were completed at the end of 2010.





In 2011 we completed the Pentecost Banner and the Advent Banner for inside the church.  This latter had four numbered panels which were removed week by week to reveal the advent symbols of Hope,
Peace, Joy and Love.




        


Soon we will be discussing what we should do next.

We have all enjoyed this exercise, got to know each other better and hopefully created something which adds to the Worship of God in this church.

The Banner Group has now completed two large banners for the inside of the church – one to hang on the wall to celebrate Harvest and one for the front of the communion table for Christmas. For the pavement window, two smaller banners for Harvest and Advent have also been produced.


Storage for the completed banners has also been provided in the secure room.






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