Southam - St. James

Putting the FUN in Fundraising

A BIG thank you to everyone who popped into St James while we hosted a number of artists and also displayed artwork from Southam St James Academy and Southam Primary School during the Southam Arts Trail. The diverse creativity was truly breathtaking! An even BIGGER thank you needs to go to volunteers from the church and the lovely Southam community who baked and donated yummy goodies, served refreshments, set up and cleared up, welcomed and had chats with visitors from near and far!

Then as if we weren’t busy enough (!) we then held a Sunday afternoon concert hosting Divertimento - Music for Voices. Divertimento were chosen as one of just ten choirs to perform the world premiere of Russell Hepplewhite's glorious Living Voices suite, commissioned by Stainer & Bell. We were treated to ‘Tender’ with words by Mona Arshi as well as other choral pieces. After the concert, everyone enjoyed an afternoon tea. We are very grateful to Divertimento for performing and also to Presto Music in Leamington for the loan of a piano.

Over both these events, we managed to raise just over £1000 towards the Restoration Fund and a lot of fun has been had too. You’ll hear lots more about events and raising funds as we have significant work ahead to do essential works and to restore this treasured place.

As mentioned a couple of months ago, these were a couple of comments from our community survey, ‘What Does St James Church Mean to You?’.

“I love this beautiful building and all the space it offers. Family events are needed in this town and St James offers a great place for families to meet.”

“The church to me as an outsider gave a hug at my darkest moment of need. It is a beautiful historical landmark in Southam both inside and out, supporting mental health and well-being and giving people hope and faith.”

We’ve recently been gathering estimated costs for the restoration work and over the next few months hope to have estimated costs for the church to become a warmer space, a more accessible building and with improved facilities. We know that we will need to apply for large grants, but for some grants we need to raise match funding, so we are now setting up a fundraising team and we’d love this to be made up of church and community. So if you’d like to get involved in some way, do get in touch via the church office. This may be that you’d like to be part of organising events and putting the FUN in fundraising, or you may have time to help set up, or you may be happy to bake goodies or donate raffle prizes or you my have grant application experience. There’s lots of ways to get involved and give as much or little time that you have.

In September there will be two ways that you can get involved. Andy Czaicka is literally going the distance by running a marathon in Warsaw, Poland and raising funds for the Restoration Fund. If you’re interested in supporting Andy, here’s the link https://gofund.me/ad8aa840 or check out our social media pages and groups.

Even without the bellringers being able to ring at St James at the moment, they’re keeping busy organising this event in September, again raising funds. It would be lovely to see you at St James for….

Walking Family Treasure Hunt