The former Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman famously referred to Holy Trinity Church as the ‘Cathedral of the Arts & Crafts Movement’, containing as it does treasures by leading figures of the Movement.

 

The Arts & Crafts Movement was formed in the late 19th century to combat the inhumanity resulting from Victorian industrialisation. Machines dominated manual skills and imposed harsh working conditions on men, women and children. There was pervading ugliness and little respect for beauty and nature.

 

The Arts & Crafts Movement stood for the restoration of the prestige of craftsmen, the appreciation of nature, improving the education of the poor, and ‘sweetness and light’ in architecture. The founding members were artists, poets, craftsmen, writers and architects - GE Street, William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, John Ruskin, JD Sedding and others who were passionate in their belief and compassionate to those degraded by machines.

“You cannot educate, you cannot civilise man, unless you give him a share in art.”

 

William Morris

Arts & Crafts

The Trinity Arts & Crafts Guild - Objectives

 

The Charity’s objects are to promote the Study of the Christian Faith and the Arts through:

 

· Lectures, Seminars, exhibitions and a journal to explore the relationship and resonance between spirituality and the insights of artists working through the visual arts, music, literature, drama, video and the cinema

 

· Spirituality, to explore transcendence and the place of inspiration, imagination and the capacity to wonder through the above named media

 

· To increase awareness of the importance of the arts in general for communicating to a post-modernist era, especially to those who do not see the relevance of faith and organized religion

 

· The making of Grants to suitable persons and organisations

 

· Fund raising