Rock the Priory

For more information about the bands who will be playing at Rock the Priory this year, check out their websites

Sounds of Salvation
The Damage
Jacob Lloyd

More news later this year about the great pre-booking deals we have for groups coming from our churches! It'll be £5 on the door but we can offer you much better deals for groups booking ahead.

Grenbelt Youth

I just got this message through from the youth co-ordinator at Greenbelt.

If you're taking a youth group this year, why not get involved with this innovative project to get the young people excited in preparation for the trip

We are looking for groups of crafty people to help us make the Greenbelt 2013 festival site even more vibrant. Could your group help us by making some big flags? These will be 5m, eye catching flags. We hope this will be a great way for your young people to get involved and feel ownership over a part of the festival. We have also teamed up with vInspired to be able to offer nationally recognised certificates to our volunteers. 

If your groups are able to get involved (and your young people are aged 14-25) then they could count the hours given in this task towards their award. See our website for more information: 

If this sounds like something you, your friends, your church or youth group might be interested in then please get in touch with our designer Saga at vibing (at) greenbelt.org.uk. 

Some additional information: Greenbelt 2013 is our 40th festival and will take place 23 - 26 August at Cheltenham Racecourse. If you haven't bought your tickets yet you can still make a saving on the August price; Don't forget that if you buy ten tickets you will get an eleventh ticket free.

CandY at THE BIG Synod 2013 2/3/13

REMEMBER TO JOIN US FOR THE BIG SYNOD ON SATURDAY 2nd MARCH 

This will be an opportunity for the church to listen to the voices of children and young people. The synod will be looking at issues of youth unemployment as well as reflecting on our calling to be Kingdom People and the recent survey completed by all the churches in the diocese and what implications that has for the future.

Details of Venue and times coming soon.

We'd like young people from EVERY DEANERY to join us. 

Need Inspiration?

How about checking out this story from a group of young people in one of our parishes?

Hear all about their trip to Uganda and the work they did both in preparation to go and when they were there.

Hope Academies

I hope some of you may have heard about the Hope Revolution initiative to get churches of all denominations together to form Mission Academies for young people.

You can read more about it all here and a pdf booklet of information is downloadable here

In Worcestershire and Dudley, we’d like to gather together youth workers and church leaders from all the churches and Christian organizations to work towards establishing some Mission Academies for the area. Currently there are pilot schemes in places like Leicester, York and Rugby.

We’d probably be aiming to work towards Mission Academies in our area as part of the main initiative in 2014.

To help inspire us, Roy Crowne, Executive Director of Hope since March 2010, has generously offered to come and speak to local leaders in Worcestershire and Dudley on Saturday 2nd February from 10am-2pm at St Peter’s Baptist Church in Worcester

Join our facebook event for the meeting here

Roy will talk to us about Mission Academies and then over lunch we will work out how we might get things started in our area. PLEASE BRING A PACKED LUNCH as we’d like to make as much funding available for young people’s mission not spend it on lunch for us!

If you would like to be part of this day, please let me know by emailing me via wdyou(at)cofe-worcester.org.uk as this will help us get an idea of numbers.

If you know someone in another church or Christian organisation nearby who might also be interested in working together on this ecumenical youth project, please do put them in touch with me

One in a Million

The Frontier Youth trust have a great new FREE RESOURCE called ONE IN A MILLION to help churches think about the burning issue of Youth Unemployment.

This issue was discussed at general Synod in November. If you would like the church to reflect on the situation many young people face in the current job market why don’t you download their useful resource pack here or their summary of the research

Lording it up!

Young people from churches in Worcester Diocese are being offered the opportunity to visit the House of Lords and meet members of the Lords as part of a group including two other diocese.

The EIGHT young people will join with others from Derby and Oxford Diocese as well as members of the Church of England Youth Council (CEYC).

We will be meeting on Tuesday 30th October (Half Term week) to plan our visit sometime in the new year.

On the day of the visit we will be leaving Worcester early and arriving at the House of Lords for lunch before viewing the afternoon session. We will then meet with some members of the Lords for a discussion and may go on to have a tour of Westminster Abbey.

Members of our Youth Council will be among the group but there are also spaces for others who would like to participate.

Please do get in touch with me as soon as possible if you have young people who would like to take part.

Worcester suburban mission seeks co-workers

Tolladine is an area in Worcester of acute multiple deprivation. Parts of it are ranked amongst the 2% most deprived in the latest government index of multiple deprivation. Around 10,000 people live there.

The Tolladine Mission in Worcester has been chosen as one of an initial group of 10 pathfinder projects funded by the Church Commissioners and Archbishops Council to ‘Develop Church Growth in Deprived Areas’. The mission hopes to do so in innovative ways which are capable of replication elsewhere.

One of the key concepts underpinning the Tolladine Mission is that it should include a group of people living closely together in the mission area, bound together by a common purpose and sharing a simple ‘rule of life’.

The mission is now inviting people to join this group. 

The mission began as church initiative engaging especially with the young people of the area. (35 % of the populations are children or teenagers.) It ran a breakdancing session in place of evensong on Sundays, ran ‘Open the Book’ sessions in all the local primary schools and prayed with open church doors on Monday evenings; and the young people came and joined in – sometimes chaotically. A young congregation and a number of baptisms and confirmations followed. In the second phase it has been able to employ a Church Army missioner. Together with his family he lives in the heart of the area and is building relationships with the community through his presence there and through projects such as building a community garden. (This has provided an ‘out-of-school’ opportunity for youth in the area with learning and behavioural difficulties, giving them - perhaps for the first time - a real sense of achievement and hope.) In much that the mission does, it works closely with the local authority who has designated Tolladine an ‘Area of Highest Need’.

At the same time, the practical responses to the needs of the community have gone hand in hand with developing more accessible forms of worship and the strengthening of the spiritual growth of the existing church. The next phase of the mission involves growing the residential aspect. At present the missioner and a candidate for pioneer ministry live and work in the area. From this September, however, the mission has secured another three bedroomed house.

The mission is now looking for people to live in the house who are willing to be points of Christian witness within Tolladine, demonstrating in their lives and by their openness and hospitality the value and challenge of the Christian way of life. They will form and observe a simple ‘rule of life’, and eat and pray together.

• They should be people who are seeking to spend some time in urban mission – at least 9 months, but ideally from two to five years, so that there will be a balance of time spans. 
• They may be men or women of any age from about 20 upwards who are prepared to live in a ‘house of sharing’. 
• They should be able to relate to young people. They should probably have, or be willing to seek, at least part-time employment, but we are able to offer rent-free living in exchange for a willingness to dedicate some of their spare time to the mission. 

The mission is supported by the Diocese of Worcester, the Church Mission Society, and the Church Army. It is managed by a support group which includes the incumbents of the three local parishes, Bishop Chris Mayfield and three lay members with relevant experience. It is financially secure for at least the next four years. It has links with Mucknell Abbey.

Revive! Campaign from the Church of England Youth Council

For more info see their website

Rock the Cathedral Gloucester on FRIDAY 16th March 2012

As I told you last term, people from other Gloucester diocese loved our idea of Rock the Cathedral so much that they’ve decided to do one too.

After a change of date (due to BBC filming) the event will now be on FRIDAY 16th March

Members of Worcester CandY Youth and Young Adults Councils will be helping out on the night.

Some of our schools will be running coaches down to Gloucester and there’ll be pizza on sale at the cathedral as well as bands, circus skills, an acoustic café, a gallery area of all kinds of activities, a homeless street display and much more!

Watch out for fliers about: Rock the Cathedral Gloucester on FRIDAY 16th March 2012.

Tryangle awards

WCVYS IN PARTNERSHIP WITH WORCESTERSHIRE YOUTH SERVICE ARE LAUNCHING THE 2012 TRYANGLE AWARDS 

You’ve got until Friday 17th February 2012 to send in your nominations for a Tryangle Award. There are eight award categories. See the Tryangle Awards leaflet and make your nominations.

The Awards Evening is being held at Worcester Warriors Rugby Club on Thursday 29th March 2012. Just take a moment to look around you or pause for that moment’s thought and identify that young person whose efforts, skills or perseverance merits that Award. Nominate now. For further details contact Phil Street on 07540 031 953 or email phil (at)wcvys.co.uk.

News from the Pews

I thought it would be good to have some updates from some of the work in parishes around the diocese to give you ideas and encouragement. This term we’ve got news from Bromsgrove.

Lis Bereen from Bromsgrove tells us about how their youth group looked like it might fold and what they did in response:

“Following a meeting with the minister we took some time out to regroup and get more staff and we now have a team that is twelve strong. We have divided into teams for Creative and Media, Sport, Craft and Cookery nights and that seems to be working well although there is always a bit of crossover. Last summer the "chill-out" room had a complete makeover with input from members (your suggestion partly) and is now tastefully decorated with comfortable furniture, a carpet and a large flat-screen TV with x-box. This room is a useful multi-purpose room for other groups.

There was a lot of talk (and anxiety) about how to attract new members but I was confident that if we put on an attractive programme this would build organically. And build it did. We went from 5 to 20 in a short space of time. We currently have more girls than boys which is an easier dynamic in the group. We have kept going over the summer with regular Sunday games in the park which has been well attended by staff and members. * The training you gave us has been very helpful and I have seen leaders' confidence and competence grow steadily. The leader who heads up the team with me has been on maternity leave but now her son is 3 months old she is returning to youth group. We are delighted as she has been much missed. She has still been involved with the admin side all along.

Our two peer leaders will both be at University from October but will still join us in the holidays. We have two new 16 year olds who we hope will take on this role (one male one female) and a 20 year old female student who has already proved her worth during the summer holidays and who is joining the sports team. She is doing this as a placement as part of her college course in Access to Social Work.”

Positive for Youth

The Government has just launched its Positive for Youth campaign. The national Church of England Youth Council will be bringing something out to link in with this soon.

SpiritED Fund

In the summer mailing I reminded you of our second round of the SpiritED fund. The successful bidders for round two were The Outer Limits group from Longdon who bid for £50 to buy Youth Bible Study Guides written by Chip and Helen Kendall and the Inspyre group from St Peter’s Ipsley who bid for £50 for resources to help them set up a new creative prayer space for young people.

Youth and Mental Health issues

Worth watching this video then head over to young minds website to read the manifesto.

SpiritED Fund

As you will have read in the last mailing, St Mary’s Oldswinford, St John’s Greenland, St Matthew’s Worcester and St Mary’s Longdon Youth Choir (picture) bid successfully for some of our SpiritED fund. Did you miss out last time? Well it’s now our second round of SpiritED funding. SpiritED is a fund from the Department for Children Youth and Education in the Diocese of Worcester to encourage churches in the Diocese of Worcester to help those under 18 explore spirituality and prayer. If you are running a group with children and young people and want to add or improve the spiritual element of your work but need some help to resource that then this fund is for you! You can apply for up to £50 simple funding or £100 matched funding (if the children/young people raise their own money). See here for full details.

CandY dates for 2011-2012

Dates for the coming year: 

Children only: 

Saturday 12th November 2011 3.00pm - 4.30pm 

Venue tbc 

Church of England Youth Council 

Friday 18th-Sunday 20th November (2 Worcester reps) 

High Leigh conference centre, Herts 

Young people & young adults only: 

Monday 5th December 7.30pm 

The Great Hall, The Old Palace, 

Deansway, Worcester, WR1 2JE

Children only social: 

Saturday 17th December 2011 3.00pm - 4.30pm Venue tbc

Young people & young adults only social: 

Saturday 14th January 2012 Activity & Venue tbc

Children only: 

Saturday 14th January 2012 3.00pm - 4.30pm Venue tbc 

Children only: 

Saturday 4th February 2012 3.00pm - 4.30pm Venue tbc 

Young people & young adults only: 

Monday 6th February 7.30pm 

The Great Hall, The Old Palace, 

Deansway, Worcester, WR1 2JE 

Children and Youth: 

Saturday 10th March 2012 FULL SYNOD: VISITORS WELCOME

9.30am - 4.30pm Venue tbc

Children only: 

Saturday 28th April 2012 3.00pm - 4.30pm Venue tbc 

Young people & young adults only: 

Monday 21st May 7.30pm 

The Great Hall, The Old Palace, 

Deansway, Worcester, WR1 2JE 

Young people & young adults only: 

Monday 18th June 7.30pm 

The Great Hall, The Old Palace, 

Deansway, Worcester, WR1 2JE

Children’s Weekend away: 

Saturday 23rd June 2012 - Sunday 24th June timings and venue tbc 

Summer Loving?

If you’re thinking about talking about the summer riots with your youth group when you gather back, why not check out this pdf and powerpoint study guide from America about a girl who was turned in by her parents when they saw her in TV footage of a group attacking a police car. It explores right and wrong and relationships between parents and teens so could be an interesting session.

Positive Activities Consultations

Worcestershire County Council has less money than before and so changes need to be made to positive activities for young people. You might know this as the Youth Service. They have sent out the following


"We want to know what you think to make sure the money is used in the best possible way.

We are hoping that you can encourage as many young people, parents, carers and professionals from Worcestershire to complete this so the County Council can make decisions by listening to local people.

Please can promote and support your young people to attend the events at the following venues.



Tuesday 6th Sept
Churchill Community Centre, Loxley Avenue, Redditch, B98 9JL
4.00-6.00 pm

Wednesday 14th Sept
Ourside Youth Centre, Evesham, WR11 1BH
7.00-8.30 pm

Thursday 15th Sept
Rubery Youth Centre, Rubery, B45 9HY
7.00-8.30 pm

Saturday 17th Sept
Lakeview Room, County Hall, WR5 2NP
10.00 am -12.00

Monday 19th Sept
Woodrush Youth Centre, Woodrush, B47 5JN
7.00-8.30 pm

Tuesday 20th Sept
St John's Youth Centre, Worcester, WR2 4EL
7.00-8.30 pm

Thursday 22nd Sept
Café 27, Tenbury, WR15 8AE
4.00–5.30pm

Monday 26th Sept
Stourport Youth Centre, Stourport, DY13 8LA
7.00-8.30 pm

Wednesday 28th Sept
Warndon Community Centre, WR4 9NX
7.00-8.30 pm

Thursday 29th Sept
Riverside Youth Centre, Pershore, WR10 1QU
7.00-8.30 pm

The events will be run by young people from Worcestershire Youth Cabinet and Worcestershire United Kingdom Youth Parliament.

To book a place email Rachel Adams on radams2(at)worcestershire.gov.uk

Events for parents and carers to come and have a say run by Parent's Voice

Thursday 25th August
Perdiswell Young People's Leisure Club, Worcester
7.00-8.00 pm

To book a place email Rachel Adams on radams2(a)worcestershire.gov.uk

Events for professionals including paid staff /volunteers and young people from the voluntary sector to come and have a say run by Worcestershire County Council and Worcestershire Council for Voluntary Youth Services (WCVYS).

Saturday 17th Sept
Lakeview Room, County Hall, WR5 2NP
10.00 am -12.00

Worcestershire County Council urges young people to have their say

Worcestershire County Council is urging children and young people to get involved and have their say on the future of positive activities by 30 September, 2011.

Positive activities (also known as youth services) are defined as those which have a positive impact on health, social and educational wellbeing. These activities have been reviewed as part of the council's overall BOLD programme with the council needing to save an estimated £60-70 million over the next four years.

The council's legal duty, which is securing access to activities for children and young people, is met through the council's 'Plug and Play' website . The council has, however, already listened to local young people and residents' views and is now consulting on a proposal that whilst providing the saving of £1.4 million over 3 years, continues to provide around £1million annual investment in the activities themselves.

Young people, residents and anyone with an interest in these activities now have until September 30, 2011 to provide their views on a proposal which would see the council stop delivering a traditional youth service by 2014. Instead, from April 2012 arrangements could be made with local groups called Local Children's Partnerships (LCPs) which, informed by the views of local young people and residents, would commission services to meet local need.

The council is also asking for views on how funding should be allocated across Worcestershire and whether youth services should be targeted to those young people most in need. Residents can also have their say on whether money should be provided to the Voluntary and Community Sector to enable locally initiated groups to get off the ground, support the commissioning process and to ensure quality and safeguarding requirements are met.

An online questionnaire is available or paper copies of the survey are available in youth centres, libraries and Worcestershire Hubs.

Worcestershire Youth Cabinet is leading the consultation for children and young people and events are being organised for September. Members of the Voluntary and Community Sector are also being invited to book a place at a dedicated event on Saturday 17th September 2011 from 10am until 12 noon at County Hall, Worcester.

Cllr Liz Eyre, Cabinet Member for Children's Social Care and Safeguarding (Lead Member for Children's Services), said: "The County Council has looked at what we can do differently for positive activities (also known as youth services) so that children and young people still have access to the best possible activities with the money available.

"Changing how services are delivered is always more complicated than simply cutting services. I really want as many children and young people, along with anyone else with an interest in positive activities to take up the many opportunities to get involved and provide your views. This is your opportunity to shape the future of positive activities in the County and all ideas will be listened to."

At November's meeting (November 24, 2011), the Cabinet will consider feedback from the consultation, including any implications for assets such as buildings.

More information as well as the opportunity to take part in the online questionnaire can be found on the county website by searching for Positive Activities.