The Dean’s Report

THE DEAN’S REPORT

Pembroke Chapel

Anxiety, improvisation and risk management are not qualities that one associates with the rather stable patterns of worship in Pembroke College Chapel. Covid-19 has this year posed its particular challenges to the chapel, and I think we are emerging strengthened in a number of ways.

Walking round the Chapel with the Director of Music before the beginning of Michaelmas term, trying to work out what 2 metre spacing actually meant was a sobering experience. We could fit a choir, or a congregation, but not both. We were very fortunate that work on Emmanuel URC, now purchased by Pembroke College, did not commence in Michaelmas Term. This gave us a far larger building, originally designed to hold 700 people, and safe under Covid regulations for a choir and 30 members of the congregation. So Services commenced at the beginning of Michaelmas with the Girls choir singing on Wednesday and the Chapel Choir singing on Sunday. We scanned the regulations, marked a place for every seat, kept the windows and doors open whatever the weather, wiped and sanitised seats, and wore masks when we were not actually speaking or singing.

A number of positive things emerged from this time.

Because we could not invite preachers in person, and because a proportion of the congregation joined online, I asked a number of distinguished artists and art historians to record talks about their work, with presentations which worked as well online as they did live. The resulting meditations were diverse, vivid and remarkable – you can get a flavour of them at: https://sms.cam.ac.uk/collection/3593266

Emmanuel URC was the church of P T Forsyth, the Scottish theologian and preacher about whom I wrote my PhD. There was a particular pleasure to officiating twice a week from his pulpit. It was quite demanding to be setting up and taking down a sound system for each service, connecting up the data projector, trying to ensure that the projection screen was straight, turning recordings and pictures into videos, streaming, uploading and downloading. However, the final result was a set of recorded services which reached far more people than we have ever done in person.

Pastoral and tutorial discussions were often undertaken on Zoom, but where ever possible we met outside. The Chapel Cloister became, for days at a time, my key place of work – huddled in a clerical cloak. From there I could see the life of the college flowing past.

As the lockdown tightened, we had to do more with less – simple evening meditations, with recorded music. One or two singers, often from the same household, providing music for the Sunday morning Communion. Compline with a half choir, sometimes all upper voices and sometimes all lower.

Meanwhile we instituted a ‘Welfare Goody Box’. Each day I, or the College Counsellor, or the Director of Music, or the College Nurse put out a ‘Thought for the Day’ via Facebook and email. Each day we put out a small diversion for

students in College Lockdown. Packs of cards or packets of seeds. Marbles and walking maps of Cambridge. Origami paper and Pembroke tattoos. We received very positive feedback. Clearly this was primarily a gesture, but in difficult times it can be good to know that people have thought about you.

Towards the end of the year things became a little more normal. Work began on the URC so we went back to Chapel. A permanent streaming system was installed, so we were no longer leaping around with cables and tripods at the beginning of each service. We were able to do a lovely Havdallah ceremony in the Fellows’ Garden, guided by a Jewish student who wanted us to share the joyfulness of the end of Sabbath. The Leavers’ Evensong went ahead, albeit with the Choir in the Nave and the Congregation in the Cloister, and I and the Readers addressing both from the antechapel.

Over the summer we have a number of weddings, some of which are carried over from last year. There is the possibility of a short choir tour/retreat, and the challenge of integrating further into our worship the challenges of Climate Justice and Migrant Justice, the opportunities of increasing diversity, and need to make music and worship part of our outreach, both as a Chapel and as a College.

Pembroke House

Normally the Pembroke House report is an opportunity for me to write about the connections between Pembroke College and Pembroke House and all that we have done over the course of the year to strengthen and celebrate them. This year these connections have been virtual, to a large extent.

The most significant initiative to strengthen links has been Project PEM. This is organised by a Pembroke undergraduate, with support from Pembroke Admissions, and is creating a link between selected Pembroke students, as College Buddies for some young people in Walworth as they head towards university choices, and the UCAS application system. Pembroke College is also providing some money for the administrative costs of the scheme. The purpose is to enable the Walworth students to make the very best applications they can to a range of universities and courses, and to enable the Pembroke students to learn mentoring skills and to begin to be involved with Walworth.

I was pleased to be able to take a service at St Christopher’s just after Easter, and the Trustees have continued in active support of the Pembroke House Staff and projects, but face to face visits have not been possible this year.

However there has been an enormous amount of activity at Pembroke House itself, and I think this is best captured in the foreword to the papers for the AGM. If you are a Pembroke Subscriber you will receive these independently. Please accept my apologies for the duplication. If you are not a Pembroke Subscriber and would like to be, please be in touch at jtdg2@cam.ac.uk.

Foreword

At the start of this year, on 1 April 2020, we’d just been plunged into lockdown by the coronavirus pandemic: the greatest crisis that most of us can remember.

Over the next 12 months – faced by the most challenging of circumstances –our community showed incredible strength, resilience, solidarity, and love.

At the outset of the crisis, like so many other places across the country, we saw a huge groundswell of community spirit and mutual aid, with hundreds of local people stepping forward to help their neighbours in whatever way they could.

Even more remarkably, through all the ups and downs of the crisis, that community spirit here in Walworth has shown no sign of flagging.

Pembroke House jumped into action as soon as lockdown hit. At the start of April, we’d already set up an emergency Food Hub, kick-started a programme of virtual activities, and begun working with partners to inspire a coordinated local response to Covid-19.

Over the past year, this work has gone from strength to strength. Thanks to the skill, dedication and hard work of an incredible team of volunteers and staff we’re now in a position to look beyond the immediate, emergency response, to the part we can play in Walworth’s long-term recovery from the crisis.

But this year has also been a wake-up call. The pandemic has exposed and exacerbated the struggles that many local families face – but it didn’t cause them.

Despite the growth in our activity over the past ten years – and indeed despite all our work over the past 135 years – Walworth remains an area of vast and growing inequality.

Just as our founders did, we need to be clear-sighted – not just celebrating what works, but confronting what doesn’t.

The past year has only reinforced something we’ve known for a while: that we won’t solve deep-rooted challenges through traditional charity work alone.

We need to forge a new approach – adapting our settlement values to the challenges of today. And while Pembroke House doesn’t have all the answers – no single organisation or approach does – we do believe we have a role to play in bringing people together to find new solutions.

With hundreds of residents coming together with the local authority, civil society and the private sector to support their neighbours through the Covid crisis, the foundations for this new collaboration have been strengthened this year.

As we emerge from the crisis, we are determined to build on what we’ve achieved and learned together this year, redoubling our efforts to build a stronger and more equal Walworth.

J.T.D.G.