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The Dean's Report, 2008
Last year we had a difficult time. The difficulty was that in the summer of last year, Mr Stephen Anderson, who had less than a year before come as Chapter Steward, ceased his time with us. This happened at the end of August.
You will understand that it would be a wrong thing to discuss this matter in public. Suffice it to say that since this happened Stephen and I have exchanged friendly greetings, and I have written to wish him well. I would also want to thank him for some of the things he brought to the Minster, and I am only sorry it didn’t work out.
Moments like this make us aware that we must wait on God to find out what sort of opportunity is being given to us. The Chapter had a couple of days conference. This in itself felt rather daring, because there had developed around York Minster an unhelpful fearfulness about being seen to be "junketing": though nobody who saw the long hours of discussion about the Minster could reasonably call what we doing self-indulgence. The result was a further day’s discussion with the senior managers, leading to our developing, together, a plan for the future organisation of our management which we find very helpful and even exciting.
I hope a few words from me will help you understand some of the main features of all this, and my ambition will be attained if everyone here stops thinking of all this as "what they are doing" and see it as "what we are doing".
The first principle is that we want to see the Minster as an alliance of ordained and lay people. We have grown to dislike the idea that running the Minster is a matter for business people only, in which clergy (whose whole life is professionally identified with the Church) take services. Equally, we don’t believe that we can achieve what God wants from this extraordinary place without the skills that godly lay people bring to it. We are an alliance, a partnership, and the way Chapter is constituted reflects that. It is typically Church of England to think that way.
So the Residentiary Canons are related specifically to areas of our work. Canon Webster has oversight of the daily operations of the Minster – a whole department, covering the management of individual and group visitors, the security exercised by the police, the work of our volunteers, and (in certain important respects) the vergers, all of whom must work together so that the timetable for the daily life of the building can be smoothly co-ordinated. We are creating a new managerial post here, called "Operations and Visitor Services Manager", which has evolved out of the excellent work done with us by Steve Hemming, who has moved on to other work but encouraged us in this development.
Canon Draper is the Residentiary Canon particularly associated with the York Minster Revealed (YMR) Project, about which you will hear more today. The Director of YMR, Louise Hampson, is currently leading this elaborate and far-reaching work, which lives by frightening deadlines and stringent demands. Jonathan helps Chapter to see how the impact of the decisions made about YMR carries implications for just about everything we do and to think not in narrow categories but in strong themes, so that archaeology or history have educational and artistic significance which we don’t miss. So Canon Draper’s role connects naturally with the educational work done, for example, by the Centre for School Visits as well.
The Canon Precentor, Jeremy Fletcher, represents in the Chapter the work of the Music Department, and is responsible for the arrangements of Liturgy. To say less about that at this moment is only to say that we have not been making such large changes in that department.
(Illustration © Dean and Chapter. "York Minster from the Bar Walls" by Lord Habgood.)
The Dean's Report, continued
Other departments, led by other members of the management team, relate directly to the Chapter Steward. We are making a couple of new appointments. One is of a Marketing and Events Manager: who will be responsible for working with the tourist business, the press, and the many people who look to the Minster as venue for concerts, exhibitions and other events. We would like to develop our own box office in due course, and have somebody who will help us to manage the range of events both in the Minster and our other venues, in a way that will bring in revenue and be of high quality.
Altogether, we have seen it as important to strengthen and support the good team of management we have, so that Chapter can give a lead, and share a clear vision of where we hope to go; but also be responsive to the experience they have of delivering the work. Our active engagement and sharing information (in both directions) is essential to getting that right.
We are shortly going to be interviewing for the new Chapter Steward. You can see that that job is very much angled to managing the business and commercial operations of the Minster – always very important to us. The Chapter Steward will not, this time, be a member of the Chapter; but will be a daily colleague in the way we work, offering advice and being responsible for long-term planning.
Other appointments are being made. We have recently announced the appointment of a new Chapter Clerk, who will work directly to the Chapter Steward, with responsibility for the management of our many committees, and the actions that arise from them. In Andy Oates, presently a member of the verger team, we believe we have found an ideal candidate for this redesigned and focussed job. And one who already knows us well.
You will also know that we have appointed a new Director of Music, Robert Sharpe. But I shall say no more: today we are to enjoy while we can the presence of Philip, who has by no means left us!
You will be aware that we are next week going to install as a lay member of Chapter Dr Andrew Green, Managing Director of British Polythene Industries Recycling, thus maintaining a presence on Chapter of somebody closely engaged with the world of business and industry.
That I hope summarises the progress we have made towards shaping our management structure. I regularly say that any good system can be made to fail! Better to say that even when things go wrong, the right spirit can use the opportunity for good.
Let me finish by telling you just some of the things that please me – and this is not an exhaustive list. I love to see students attending our services, and finding them, I hope, nourishing spiritually; to see the stoneyard mason’s shop full of people working away on the stone, and making things of such high quality; to see how many people come to the Ebor lectures; to see the welcomers on duty at coffee on Sunday mornings; to see letters from people congratulating our team on the warm welcome they received when they have come for a special service or event here; to see scaffolding coming down, as well as going up; to see somebody at the end of an interview who is appointable to the position that we are offering!
(Illustration © Dean and Chapter. "York Minster" by Clare Carr-Archer.)
Keith Jones, Dean, 1st March 2008
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