Art and minds

Art minds

Ambitious artistic projects and huge feats of volunteer effort have helped to secure the future of a central Auckland church

What does it take to save a heritage place? Blood, sweat, tears – and a whole lot of art.

Just ask the members of The Friends of St David’s Trust – a community group that has rallied around St David’s Memorial Church in Grafton, Auckland.

There’s Shirley Blackie, who recalls spending up to 15 hours a day removing tape and its residue from the back of artworks – a task that left hands raw and bleeding. Or the group’s treasurer, Dawn Judge, who recounts hairy times hoisted 26 metres in the air in a cherry picker to attend to an art installation. Or photographer Jessica Gernat, who waited for hours on a deserted and freezing central Auckland street until, well past midnight, she could capture a perfect image of the church.

Then there’s Paul Baragwanath, the leader of ‘the Friends’, whose commitment has included taking on the biggest professional challenge of his life – an art fundraising project that raised a record $1 million.

“It has been,” admits Paul, “a wild ride.”

But well worth it, say the group’s members. Last year the church – which previously had no heritage protection and faced potential demolition – gained Category A scheduled heritage status in Auckland Council’s Unitary Plan, thanks primarily to their efforts.

WORDS: CAITLIN SYKES • IMAGERY: JESSICA GERNAT

The ride began near the end of 2014, when Paul attended a meeting at which he became aware that the 1927 Kamo heritage brick and Oamaru stone church required a seismic upgrade and its demolition was an option under consideration.

Paul has family connections to the church – his grandfather and great-great-grandfather were ministers at St David’s – and his immediate thoughts turned to documenting the church building photographically before any changes were made.

“I run an art consultancy business, so I’m aware of the

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3 About 1000 people gathered for the laying of the church’s foundation stone on Anzac Day 1927.

Paul Baragwanath, the leader of The Friends of St David’s Trust.

value of photography, and of documenting history before it’s lost,” says Paul.

“Then I thought I’d just let a few people know what was happening and there would be others who would come in and take it on. I was already really busy with life and running a business; I didn’t have time to fit in a [heritage preservation] project.”

But the pull to save St David’s – once known as the Presbyterian Cathedral of Auckland – proved too strong to resist. He made the time.

“The key starting point was building a small group – a community – around a common vision,” he says, “which was to save this place of beauty for the future so that it would serve the wellbeing of the community and society.

“The most beautiful thing about St David’s is how it lifts your spirits; it’s what church architecture is designed to do. That hasn’t gone out of fashion and it never will.”

Key to building such support for the Friends, says Paul, has been the group’s ability to connect with a broad spectrum of people, including supportive members of the congregation past and present, but also reaching out to the wider community – those with no direct historical or current links to the church.

“You need to think about what aspect of this place’s story will people fall in love with, and identify with. How do you bring a place that has been largely forgotten back into people’s consciousness, and help them understand that its history is important to us now?”

In the case of St David’s, he says, the fact that the church was built as a memorial to World War I soldiers and has many military connections was key to capturing hearts and minds.

And when a cousin gave him a ceramic poppy – one of the 888,246 created by artists Paul Cummins and Tom Piper that filled the Tower of London’s moat as part of a World War I remembrance project in 2014 – another piece fell into place.

“I thought, ‘This is it’. Art is something I know, something I understand. Imagine doing an art project around this historic building that was so beautiful and so big it couldn’t fail to captivate.”

So began ‘The Art of Remembrance’ (see Heritage New Zealand magazine, Winter 2017), in which 7000 brass quatrefoil artworks, each the size of a soldier’s outstretched hand, adorned the exterior of St David’s for three months in 2015.

The artworks were gifted by one of New Zealand’s most internationally successful artists, New Yorkbased Max Gimblett, who has a long association with St David’s. A predominant motif in his work, the quatrefoil can be seen throughout the architecture of St David’s, which Max attended as a boy.

TIPS FOR RUNNING A SUCCESSFUL HERITAGE PRESERVATION CAMPAIGN

Take responsibility: “Just because there’s a heritage building standing now that you admire, it doesn’t mean it will be standing there tomorrow. And just because you don’t own it, and don’t have the resources to fund its restoration, it doesn’t mean you can’t take responsibility.”

Don’t let a lack of money get in the way: “You may not have any money, but you have passion and that goes a long way! The support you need will come. We had $200 after months of fundraising. We then went on to raise $1 million – and ultimately achieve the Category A protection.”

Create a community: “You can’t just rely on the very small community that generally naturally exists around these great historic buildings. Places slip under the radar over time, so you need to remind people why they are so important and beautiful, and create a wider community around a common vision to hold on to that.”

Good communications: “The media space is so busy; there’s always so much to read, and look at. So how do you get on people’s radar, communicate your key values and become an entity that people want to be part of? All your communications need to be beautiful, and communicate the vision of not just where you are but where you want to be.” SOURCE: PAUL BARAGWANATH

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Paul admits it was by far the most ambitious project of his career, requiring him to personally borrow $150,000, and pull it together in just eight weeks.

The project’s launch on the eve of Anzac Day 2015 attracted hundreds, and the closing of the exhibition in July saw Corporal Willie Apiata VC present a quatrefoil artwork to the grandson of Cyril Bassett, New Zealand’s only Gallipoli recipient of the Victoria Cross. Cyril, a Royal New Zealand Engineer, was married at the site of St David’s in 1926, a year before the memorial church was built and dedicated to his comrades. The artworks were then individually sold – eventually raising more than $1 million, the largest amount ever raised through a charitable art project, requiring vast feats of volunteer effort.

Shirley Blackie was among the first members of The Friends of St David’s Trust, joining in response to an advertisement calling for volunteers.

“The church wasn’t far from where I was living,” says Shirley, who now lives in Wellington, “and I was also interested because my father’s parents were married in the church, among other family connections.”

It didn’t take long for her to become deeply involved in the day-to-day activities of the trust; this included helping to oversee hundreds of volunteers over a

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9 Shirley Blackie, a Friends of St David’s Trust patron.

Tape used to secure the artworks had to be carefully removed later.

Volunteers had to categorise the quatrefoils following the exhibition.

The results of preparing the artworks for dispatch. IMAGERY: SUPPLIED

The current church interior.

The Royal New Zealand Engineers’ memorial window.

Designed by architect Daniel B Patterson, the church has superb acoustics. IMAGE: JONATHAN SUCKLING

The quatrefoil motif can be seen around the church.

St David’s was designed with a raked floor to afford all parishioners a view.

number of months, who together worked meticulously to prepare the artworks for dispatch to purchasers.

Each of the thousands of quatrefoils needed to be removed from the metal wire and tape used to attach it to the church, carefully cleaned, categorised, affixed with new hardware for hanging, then packaged and sent.

A hallmark of the work of The Friends of St David’s Trust has been the professionalism of its projects, despite being delivered by volunteers. Over the past several years, for example, the look and feel of the trust’s written and visual communications have been produced by design and branding experts (and volunteers) Doug Hawkins and Lisa Bates of Hawkins&Co.

Explains Paul: “When you’re looking to save heritage, you have to be passionate; you have to have a strong sense of why you’re doing it and then you have to be as professional as if you were being paid a corporate salary – when you’re actually working pro bono.”

The group has since carried out other successful artistic collaborations, including the Southern Star – Te Tonga Whetū o te Rangi project with artist and jeweller Warwick Freeman, who has created a remembrance pin worn by many across New Zealand and the world, including Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

Alongside such ambitious artistic projects, consistent and professional communications have been crucial in galvanising support for the vision to save the church and keeping the community around it connected and engaged, says Paul.

Professional photographers Jonathan Suckling and Jessica Gernat, for example, have captured the images of the church since the start of the campaign, the latter also taking thousands of photographs to document the many events the group has conducted.

“That’s been incredibly important, particularly in gaining Category A protection for the church,” says Paul.

“We had documentation of the history of St David’s, but we really also needed to show its modern history. Events are history in the making, and by capturing these more recent events at St David’s, Jessica has captured the importance of this place in its community today.”

Heritage New Zealand Senior Conservation Architect Robin Byron says the group’s success in obtaining heritage protection for the church through Auckland Council is primarily attributable to Paul’s determination, tenacity and creative thinking, and his ability to garner assistance from a large and diverse contingent of committed supporters.

He also understood, she says, that a large part of appreciating the values associated with the memorial church, and gaining wide support for it, was to ensure that its heritage significance was well researched, articulated and communicated, and that heritage assessments were commissioned and peer reviewed to this end.

“It has been a gargantuan effort, through many challenges and adversity at times,” says Robin.

“What is particularly notable is that the efforts have always celebrated the worth and value of St David’s, its meaning, its heritage significance and the resonance the place has as an important part of our shared history.”

ST DAVID’S: THE SOLDIERS’ MEMORIAL CHURCH

n The foundation stone of St David’s Memorial Church was laid on Anzac Day in 1927, in memory of those who lost their lives in World War I. It was dedicated the Soldiers’ Memorial Church in October that year. n In 1928 the Corps of the Royal New Zealand

Engineers presented a tablet to the church in memory of fallen comrades. The Sappers’ Memorial

Chapel was later incorporated into St David’s. n Commemorative windows and plaques were unveiled in 1949 after World War II to commemorate the Royal New Zealand Engineers, office holders of the congregation, and those who had lost their lives in both world wars. n As a memorial church that would be attended by war veterans, and to enable the broadest access to all, St David’s was designed with a ramp entry rather than stairs, and with cutting-edge technology for the time, such as listening stations so the hearing impaired could participate in the services.

SOURCE: WWW.SAINTDAVIDSFRIENDS.ORG.NZ/HERITAGE

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