Faith tourism, faith in tourism

-

Faith tourism, faith in tourism - Professor Maddy Gray

In recent years, heritage tourism has been one of the few growth areas in the Welsh economy – and a lot of it revolves round the heritage of religion and belief. From Neolithic burial mounds to nineteenth-century chapels, faith tourism is part of the stock in trade. The Welsh Government recognised this back in 2013 when the Faith Tourism Action Plan was launched. Unfortunately – as so often happens – once we had the strategic planning document in place, it all went a bit quiet. The plan was (and I quote from the document) that

'By 2020 Faith Tourism is recognised as an integral component of the visitor experience in Wales, adding significant value to the destination offer, contributing to the well-being of the visitor and host community and enhancing local, regional and national ‘Sense of Place’

Has this happened? – well, not really. That is not to say that we haven’t had a huge number of heritage projects that are all or in part about faith tourism – the North Wales Pilgrim’s Way, the Ancient Connections project working on links between SW Wales and SE Ireland, the Marian Way trying to conserve the ruined church at Chapel Hill, the Village Alive Trust in north Monmouthshire, my own Cistercian Way, and many many more. But there hasn’t been any sense of co-ordination, and sometimes different projects are working on the same stories but not aware of each other’s existence. There is also a need to widen the scope of faith tourism to include all faiths: we aren’t just interested in medieval churches and abbeys.

Chris Catling, Secretary of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, also chairs the Welsh Historic Places of Worship Forum. He has been increasingly aware of this need for connection and co-operation. Working with John Winton, who used to head the Churches Tourism Network for Wales, and with some crucial financial support from the University of South Wales, we were planning to establish a network, to be launched with a big symposium on – wait for it – 6 April. We had international keynote speakers, Visit Wales talking about resources, examples of successful projects from Wales and elsewhere, work-shopping sessions ...  we had well over 100 delegates booked in, from a range of faith communities ...

Well, that didn’t happen. What we are doing now is to use the delegates’ list to try to establish a network online so that we can share ideas. We plan to rearrange the symposium, possibly in the autumn, and we hope that by then we will be better informed and able to develop the network further.
The elephant in the room is, of course, the future of the whole tourist industry. Even if we could ever get back to travelling as freely as we used to, is this something we should do? Knowing as we do how much damage travel does to the environment, should we be encouraging people to fly to Wales and drive around when they get here? Faith tourism, though, can be part of ‘slow tourism’. Properly done, it encourages people to engage with local communities and their history. Walking and backpacking holidays are particularly good for the local economy. If you are on foot or on a bike, you have to shop locally, and you will probably stay in locally owned accommodation. Walking pilgrimages are not for everyone, but walking just a bit of a pilgrimage route can be a moving and rewarding experience. Most churches are nowadays wheelchair accessible and there are accessible sections of a lot of the pilgrimage routes. We know there is a lot more to do in this. We do feel, though, that this is the kind of tourism we need to be encouraging in the future.

You can see some of the projects we are working with on our blog - https://faithtourismwales.wordpress.com/blog-2/ . We are also tweeting news of projects in Wales and elsewhere from @faithtourism1 . If your project is already on our radar and we haven’t had a blog post from you, do consider writing one. And if you haven’t been in touch already, do email us at madeleine.gray@southwales.ac.uk or naomi.preston@southwales.ac.uk .

Professor Maddy Gray

Editor's comment
I had not heard of Faith Tourism and I am glad that Maddy has brought it to our attention. We have unconsciously been following it in our events programs and so I attach a few pictures of events which can be termed Faith Tourism. Some relate to faith in former cultural times. We will certainly refer to Faith Tourism on future visits.
The Church of St Jerome, Llangwm Uchaf, We visited with Maddy


The Roman Temple at Lydney with Dr Mark Lewis


St Woolos Cathedral with Jeremy Knight

A visit to Newport Museum and Art Gallery. This Celtic head was found at Caerwent and may have already been very old in the 4th century. The asymmetrical left eye (deliberately less well carved) is a phenomena noted in Bronze Age and Iron Age wooden figures.
Keith Underwood dressed as a Cistercian monk our guide at Tintern Abbey

This model in the 'Wales Is' Gallery at St Fagans which we visited with Dr Elizabeth Walker' is based on the molar and milk teeth of an 8 year old boy and were discovered at Pontnewydd Cave north Wales.


The tombstone of Tadia Vallaunius in the National Roman Legion Museum


The importance of music in faith. The organ in National Museum Wales, Cardiff

Professor Maddy Gray probably walking the Cistercian Way
For her latest post from her own blog see below
https://www.heritagetortoise.co.uk/2020/04/lost-farms-lost-settlements/

Popular posts from this blog

The Crumlin Branch of the Monmouthshire Canal

-
Image
The Crumlin Branch of t he Monmouthshire Canal Many people have been using the canal system to carry out lockdown walks and the Crumlin branch of the canal is a favourite for people in and around Newport. Anne Dunton has sent some photographs of her daily walk during lockdown. She usually walks up to the top of Ridgeway in Newport and then takes the path down through the woods of  Allt-yr-yn Nature Reserve   to the canal . The reserve  occupies the 32 acre site of the former Allt-yr-yn House and lido, and an old stone quarry.  The lido has been turned into one of the ponds and only a few stones of the house remain .   Thus Anne is   walking through the grounds of  Allt-yr -yn house .    lt was  situated to the west of Newport and was surrounded by woodland and fields.   She remembers swimming in  Allt-yr-yn  lido  and this link is to a page from Newport Past. The lido was  opened by the Deputy-Mayor in 1934 and closed  in  the mid 1960s.   Now the remains are overgrown and obscur
Read more

Growing up in Llanarth

-
Image
Growing up in Llanarth by Peter Nash Llanarth Court: Photograph taken by Peter’s parents I was brought up in the village of Llanarth, half way though the last century. My parents had come to the village in 1949, to take up jobs as teachers in Llanarth Court in the recently opened boys’ preparatory school, Blackfriars, run by Dominicans. I was born 10 months after their arrival and my mother stopped work. We lived in the Pitt House, a 17 th Century farmhouse with a priest’s hole in the central chimney: Llanarth was and always had been a Catholic village. In 1953 mum then got a job in the village school, Clytha RC, but known to everyone locally as the Pitt School. It had two teachers, upstairs for juniors, where Eileen Badham, ruled with a rod of iron, and downstairs for Infants, where my mum held sway. There were about 40 pupils at this time. I started school, before my fourth birthday, as a dispensation for my mother.  I soon learned that the highlight of the
Read more

A Vanished Castle in Newport - Ebboth or Greenfield Castle

-
Image
A Vanished Castle in Newport Ebboth or Greenfield Castle A sketch copied from the the Tithe Map and with features such as the possible motte copied from the  OS map 25" to the mile. The existing mound is small and might not be a motte.  In March 1457 Jasper Tudor, earl of Pembroke and Margaret Beaufort, the thirteen year old widow of his brother Edmund, were guests of the duke of Buckingham at his castle of Ebboth (or Greenfield).   We would now call this Maesglas, part of Newport close to the river Ebbw.   So where was this castle that was fit to receive such visitors, and why not use the duke’s castle at Newport? Margaret had given birth two months earlier at Pembroke castle to her only child.   He would eventually become Henry VII, the first Tudor king, and father of Henry VIII.   She was a tiny person, the birth had apparently been difficult, and travelling was not easy.   The likely explanation is that as a rich and under age widow Margaret needed to find
Read more