On the 16th of August, we held a family film night for the community of Redcliffe. I got the idea originally from a local community group in Bristol that held an outdoor movie event at Millennium Square. I spoke to David Cousins and Andy Carruthers from The Hub to see if it would be possible for us to do something similar in the South Churchyard, and they gave me the go ahead to organise it. Thanks to Andy, David, Kelly (x) and Katie Bignell’s help, the plan started to come together.

We ran a test in the Churchyard a week before the event to see how the film looked and sounded, but the light from the sun meant we decided to move the screening indoors. We sorted out a public screening license with the fantastic help from Sam Love from the church, and screened Kung Fu Panda 4 on a big screen at the west end of the church. We arrived to set up at 5pm for the start-time of 6pm. We had some more wonderful help from Matthew Buckmaster, one of the vergers at the church. When it came time to start the film we had 8 or 9 children, then Andy put a call into the Mercure Hotel (which currently houses refugees) and lots of children came over with their parents. We had 70 people altogether! It was a fantastic evening - we even ran out of drinks and snacks in the end, and had to go and get more.

It was so nice to see the adults and the children enjoying themselves, we had lots of people from different cultures and different faiths just gathering around enjoying themselves. It made my heart fill up with joy and my eyes fill up with happy tears every time I walked into the church. We are hoping to do another one in November, hopefully with the same outcome. We are planning to show Despicable Me 4 next time and hopefully put on another one in the New Year. With the brilliant help from the volunteers from the Hub and the church it was a fantastic success, and I thank them all from the bottom of my heart because if it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t have been able to do it.

Alan (Hub team)