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| Clare Hayns (photo by Neil Craigan) |
What is not often told is the story of how the somewhat shambolic, shoebox under the bed, scrounge for free venues and performers festival of the first few years, became the (still somewhat shambolic), but properly funded and administered festival that is now in its 13th year.
This is in many ways down to two women. The first is the irreplaceable Megan Boyd, our festival administrator, who is rarely to be found at the front of an event, but who works quietly, throughout the year to make sure that the laughter-filled planning meetings are translated into an actual, properly funded, promoted and safe (at least in terms of health and safety if not conceptual terms) festival.
We employed Megan after the 2015 Festival, in a bid to get our act together, ironically after what had been, on the face of it, one of our most successful events up until that point “A NIGHT WITH MESSY WOMEN.” This involved the sometimes shocking stories of the five women named by Matthew in the genealogy of Jesus – Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba and Mary, told by Biblical storyteller Wendy Johnston. Wendy had no idea how critical that night of storytelling was to the history of the 4 Corners Festival.
It took place in the Canada Room in the Lanyon Building, at Queens University, a room which we had finagled through a member of staff, with a make do and mend approach to tech and staging, but we thought it was an appropriate venue because of Michelle Rogers vast painting at the front of the room “Out of the Shadows” featuring serried ranks of women emerging to take their place in a new, post-agreement Northern Ireland (prophetic, given the gender makeup of the new Executive office ministerial team).
As the start of this Friday night event approached, the room started to fill up, largely with people who had never been to a 4 Corners event before, most of whom were women. Our promotions strategy for events up until that point was somewhat haphazard, based on paper programmes, word of mouth and a few of us blogging about events ahead of time. But we had no pre-booking system. So we had absolutely no idea where these people had come from... nor indeed, as we carried more and more seats into the packed room, what the actual legal capacity of the room, and who would be legally liable if something (God forbid) went wrong. One of our two founders (who shall remain un-named) was on the verge of a nervous breakdown – while the other was so overjoyed by the success of the event he was oblivious to the potential disaster.
Thankfully nothing went wrong and it spurred us on to get our acts together and 8 years further on we almost know what we are doing.
There was only one complaint on the night and that was from a woman in the audience who was annoyed that there were no men on the post-performance panel a group of prominent women of faith in church and public life who were responding to some of the issues thrown up by these Biblical stories. That criticism was valid. I can say that as the organiser and the “Fiona Bruce” of that panel, fielding the questions from the floor.
But my question was why were there so few men in the audience, never mind the panel? We didn’t bill it as a night FOR women (messy or not). But very, very few men turned up.
9 years further on we had a curiously similar experience last night with the first Sunday evening event of this year’s festival (although without any fears of a potential health and safety disaster). At Fitzroy Presbyterian Rev. Clare Hayns, College Chaplain at Christ Church, Oxford was speaking about her recent book "Unveiled", telling the stories of some of the less known women in the Hebrew Scriptures, beautifully illustrated by her son Micah, who also ran a short drawing workshop for a privileged few. It was also a joy to welcome back 4 Corners Festival favourites Beki Hemingway and her husband Randy Kerkman, to provide a musical accompaniment. (You can catch the video on YouTube here.)
There was a satisfyingly large audience, despite at least one “competing” event locally. Some of those present were 4 Corners veterans, who we are always glad to see… but I suspect that the majority were people who had never been to a 4 Corners event before, and most of those were women. Again, very few were men.
Claire largely used 3 stories of women from the life of Moses and Exodus/Numbers to encourage us, not only to remember the importance of these often overlooked women, but also the importance of telling and listening to each other’s stories, no matter how insignificant we may think them to be. That lies right at the heart of our theme for this year “Our Stories: Towards a Culture of Hope.”
Here in Northern Ireland we have a sad history of being unwilling to listen to each other’s stories, be that politically or theologically. Globally that is increasingly the case along so many fault lines, and that is paradoxically being reinforced by the toxicity of social media interactions and the algorithms of different platforms. There is also evidence that an increasing dimension of this is a gender divide in the social and political (and probably theological) attitudes of young people, with larger numbers of young women emerging into a more equal world having more liberal/progressive attitudes, while some young men, threatened by this state of affairs are displaying more conservative/reactionary attitudes. Anecdotal experience would suggest that this is even more pronounced in religious communities…
Against that background, my question is, how do we get more men into the room (any room) to listen to the stories of women… Not just from the Bible, but the women of our families, churches and communities?
When introducing Beki Hemingway last night, Steve Stockman told the story of him standing with his ear pressed to the door of a women’s event in his home in the Derryvolgie Halls of Residence years ago listening to her wonderful voice.
I’m not too sure how many men have their ears pressed to the proverbial door to hear women’s stories at the moment, but we need to open the door and let those voices be heard…
Selah
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