Porvoo Communicators' Conference

– The Urdd Centre, Wales Millennium Centre, 16th -21st March 2006

Welcome to Cardiff – capital city of Wales. We look forward to welcoming communicators from all Porvoo churches to Cardiff from Thursday 16th March until Tuesday 21st March 2006.

Our programme will share the theme of “Come! Follow Me” with the meeting of the Porvoo Church Leaders, who will be gathering in Cardiff at the same time. However our conference will be focused on the particular concerns of church communicators. We will be using a mixture of seminars, speakers, video and practical training. The goal is to explore together the context, the challenge and the process of communicating the Gospel in the twenty-first century.

(picture: Wales Millennium Centre)

Worship - Speakers - the Monastery - Timetable - Venue - Booking

Worship

Worship will be a key part of the conference. Our main place of worship will be the ecumenical Lightship 2000, moored in Cardiff docks, a short walk away from the conference venue, which is the URDD center located within the Wales Millennium Center , in Cardiff Bay , next door to the newly opened National Assembly building. All accommodation rooms are en-suite and the center has great facilities. Our worship coordinator for the conference will be the Rev Monica Mills and worship will follow the conference theme – “Come! Follow Me”.

Speakers

Our speakers during the four-day conference are:

Jonny Baker works for the Church Mission Society developing and supporting mission and new ways of being church in the emerging culture. He has been involved in youth ministry for 15 years (most of those working for Youth For Christ). He has recently completed an MA at Kings in Youth Ministry and Applied Theology. He lectures in youth culture and mission for the Centre for Youth Ministry degree. He is a member of 'Grace', an alternative worship community that is a congregation of St Mary's Anglican church in West London and he is part of the wider alternative worship movement/scene in the UK . With Doug Gay he has authored the book ‘alternative worship' which is a collection of liturgical resources for the church year. He has co-ordinated the worship at Greenbelt Arts Festival for several years, which has been a key space in the UK for creative/alternative/new forms of worship. He is involved in various creative projects, the most successful of which has been the Labyrinth/Prayer Path which he helped design, first installed in St Pauls Cathedral, London in 2000. He is a songwriter and director of an independent record label 'Proost' on which he has contributed to several alternative worship albums.

Phil George as Head of Arts, Music and Features, led the BBC's centre of excellence in classical music. He developed a landscape franchise with hit series Visions of Snowdonia and This Land . Phil made his reputation for producing intelligent television about major world issues with Michael Ignatieff's Blood and Belonging , an international co-production on resurgent nationalism. In the past two years, as well as executive producing series and singles for Green Bay, Phil has presented 50 half-hour Value Judgement interviews for BBC radio. Further details available by going to http://www.green-bay.tv/cv_philgeorge.htm

Gwynn ap Gwilym , is the Church in Wales ' language officer, Vicar of Eglwys Dewi Sant in Cardiff , published poet and author as well as winner of the National Eisteddfod Chair for strict meter poetry. Gwynn has recently completed work on a joint project with the Church in Wales ' creative resources officer, called Wonderful Inheritance , which is an introduction to the church in Wales ' contribution to the literary and cultural history of Wales . He is currently working on a new version of the metrical psalms in Welsh.

Rev Tom Ehrich began writing daily On a Journey meditations in 1993 while serving as an Episcopal pastor in Charlotte , North Carolina . He had previously served parishes in Indiana and Missouri in the USA . Prior to seminary, Ehrich was a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal. In 1995 he moved on to writing and publishing, forming Journey Publishing Company, and to business consulting in the area of enterprise software implementations. Tom launched the On A Journey Web site, www.onajourney.org , in 2004 and began focusing on writing and leading lay and clergy workshops and retreats. He also writes a nationally syndicated newspaper column through Religion News Service. His book, With Scripture As My Compass , was published by Abingdon Press in October 2004. His next book, Just Wondering, Jesus: 100 Questions People Want to Ask , will be published in 2005 by Morehouse Publishing. On A Journey is a Web-based provider of faith development materials that reaches a worldwide audience daily with meditations that provide a fresh look at the intersection of life, Scripture and God. More information is available at http://www.onajourney.org

Ian Hargreaves is Director of Corporate and Public Affairs at BAA, the International airport management group. He is also a board member of the Office of Communications, the regulatory body for the UK communications and media industry, and Professor of Journalism at Cardiff University . Previously, he was Editor of the New Statesman and the Independent; Deputy Editor of the FT and Director of BBC News and Current Affairs. His book Journalism, Truth or Dare? was published in 2003. Ian lives in London and Pembrokeshire – south west Wales.

The Monastery

During the course of the conference we will also be watching The Monastery (courtesy of Tiger Aspect / Jerusalem Productions). This was a 3 part series shown on UK TV recently which was a 'reality' series exploring how five regular guys got on with being novices in a Benedictine monastery for 40 days and nights - with very interesting if not profound results.

Timetable

During your four days in Wales , we're keen to show you something of the capital city of Wales as well as introduce you to some of the key aspects of Wales ' past – both rural and industrial. Consequently, we'll be visiting two of the National Museum and Galleries of Wales' sites – the first at St Fagan near Cardiff and the second at Blaenafon in the Gwent Valleys . There will also be opportunities to explore the city under your own steam.

The outline time-table for the conference is as below:

Venue

The venue for the conference is the URDD Centre, located within the Wales Millennium Centre – one of Wales ' premier arts venues. All accommodation rooms have en-suite facilities. The meeting rooms are also well resourced with equipment and this will be the main location for meetings as well as accommodation. Further information about the centre is accessible from http://www.urdd.org/caerdydd/indexS.html

Unless specified otherwise, the assumption will be that you require accommodation. If you do not require accommodation, please make this known on the registration form. It will be possible to attend on a daily basis, but, in order to ensure a cohesive atmosphere to the whole conference, please make sure that your commitment to the conference includes as many of the sessions as possible, even if overnight accommodation is not required.

Application form and closing date

The closing date for applications is Monday February 27th but please register as soon as possible. Places are limited and it is a case of first come first served. Please click here to access further details and a registration form that should be filled in and e-mailed back to Siôn Brynach.

If you have any questions then please contact Siôn Brynach, Archbishop's press officer for the Church in Wales on +44 (0)29 2034 8208 or by e-mail