Enterprising Wakefield Songs of Praise

Let me give you some clues as to where we are this week.

We're in one of the world's leading areas for exhibiting sculpture.

You can find cutting edge architecture that is transforming the city.

It's world famous for producing this, forced rhubarb.

The cathedral is reopening after a thoroughly modern makeover.

You might be surprised to learn we are in West Yorkshire.

Welcome to Wakefield.

In this week's Songs Of Praise, I'll be finding out

how the enterprising people of Wakefield are transforming their city.

I'll be visiting the Hepworth Wakefield

to learn how faith inspired the city's most famous daughter.

We step inside the newly transformed cathedral.

In the week we celebrate St George's Day,

our congregation have dressed especially for the occasion.

Like many former coalmining areas,

Wakefield has been down on its luck in recent years.

But all that is changing.

Thanks to an enterprising spirit,

the city is enjoying a period of regeneration

and there's a real positive feeling as you talk to people here.

Stepping up onto centre stage is Wakefield Cathedral.

After a year-long renovation project,

it's ready to reveal its new look nave.

In January last year, the congregation sat in the pews for the last time.

After the service, the nave was closed

and the main doors were locked.

15 months later, the first stage of work is complete.

I don't know about you but I can't wait to see inside.

We've been wondering in recent weeks whether the darkness would ever end

but with luck, and God's blessing, the light will come.

Three, two, one...

ALL: Ah!

What did you think when they first said,

we're going to renovate the church and take out the pews?

I was devastated.

What do you think of it now?

I think it's wonderful. I really do.

There was a lot of people that didn't like the pews going

but I'm sure they will have all come to terms with it.

It's wonderful to be here at the start of a new era

but to many people of course, tradition is just as important.

Last Tuesday was St George's Day and we begin with a hymn

written especially for England's patron saint.

To accompany us, we have members of the Carlton Main Frickley Colliery Brass Band,

recently crowned Yorkshire champions.

The man with the vision and determination

to oversee the £3 million project to create a 21st-century nave is the Dean.

I've been amazed and delighted how so many different people have come together in the project.

People from all over the city who hadn't been in here before

have rallied round to help it happen.

Why was it necessary?

A lot of the infrastructure was failing so one motivation

was to actually safeguard the building for the future.

The second is, this cathedral belongs to the whole community

and we wanted to make a space where we could use it for the whole community

and where they'd all be welcome.

The pews very important to some people.

Ingrained with history and for some people,

it's just not a proper cathedral if there aren't pews there?

I quite liked them but we needed flexibility

and you cannot have flexibility with pews, so they had to go.

When you undertake a project like this,

you have to be aware of what you're leaving behind as well.

How did you set about protecting that?

I thought, 2012 is a leap year, we'll have a project, 366 days,

and we'll try and get a different photographer to come in each day and take a photo.

And we did that and we created a website

and I think it's been a marvellous way of bringing the whole community into the project.

Local amateur photographer Mick Wilson

had never been inside the cathedral before volunteering.

I took two photos, I came in twice

and the one I did on 16 December, I asked if I could dedicate that

to the memory of my great niece who sadly died at birth in October.

The cathedral were glad to do that and they said prayers for her,

for Olivia May.

It was nice. The whole family found it a loving, caring thing to do.

The idea of doing something on January 6th, on Epiphany,

when we celebrate the visit of the Magi.

I just thought, if I could find that phrase, the three wise men.

When I found these guys out here laying the stone,

I just thought it would be great fun.

It was brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

I loved the fact that you could come and spend as long as you wanted

just wandering around and taking photographs.

There was a window where people could peer in.

I noticed that there was a woman there.

I thought, "Wow, let's take a photograph of this."

I posted it up on the 366 Days website which said, "Peering In!"

This, you see, gives us a tremendous documentary,

not only on how the nave is changing,

but how the cathedral remained very much alive,

right through the time the work was going on.

This area, closer to the high altar,

will be the next part of the cathedral to get a makeover

and while building work was going on down there in the nave,

for services, everybody had to squeeze in here.

Among those working hardest to keep things running smoothly are the choir.

# My soul doth magnify the Lord... #

It kind of added percussion, if you like,

with the hammers and the sawing and whatever,

so when we've been practising for Evensongs, it has been quite noisy.

I remember quite recently

that there was so much dust in the cathedral

that we couldn't wear our surplices, the white robes that we wear,

because all the dust would just gather on the surplices

and essentially make them black.

We weren't allowed the heating on so it was absolutely freezing.

You could actually see your breath coming out of your mouth

and that was really quite freaky sometimes.

But it didn't really affect our singing at all.

It still sounded pretty good.

That characteristic sound of young voices singing choral music

is of course a wonderful heritage of our country

and it's celebrated every year when young people

sing for the title of BBC Radio 2 Young Chorister Of The Year.

If you're a chorister or know someone who is,

you can find full details of the competition on the Songs Of Praise website

and just click on Radio 2 Young Choristers Of The Year 2013.

I was chosen to be a finalist in 2011.

That presented me with a brilliant opportunity

to go and sing in St Martin in the Fields in London.

I would recommend entering for anybody,

because it was definitely a fantastic experience which I would love to do again.

# Lord, I have loved the habitation

# The habitation of thy house

# The place where thy glory dwells

# The place where thy glory dwells

# The habitation of thy house

# The place where the Lord dwells

# The place where the Lord dwelleth

# Bless us O Lord who tarry in this cathedral

# Grant that what we sing with our lips, we may believe in our hearts

# And what we believe in our hearts

# Show forth in our lives

# Through Jesus Christ, our Lord

# Lord, I love thy habitation

# The habitation of thy house

# The place where they glory dwells

# The place where thy glory dwells

# I love the habitation

# The habitation of thy house

# The place where thy glory dwells

# The place where thy glory dwells. #

Just down from the cathedral by the River Calder

is a stunning new art gallery, the Hepworth Wakefield.

The gallery has been an extraordinary success story,

drawing visitors from all of the world, generating millions of pounds for the local economy

and putting Wakefield on the map.

The Hepworth Gallery takes its name from Dame Barbara Hepworth.

Born in Wakefield in 1903, she went on to become

one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.

Much of her work has a spiritual element.

I really think all good works are an act of praise

and they are essentially religious throughout the history of man,

from the cave drawings.

One of the gallery's biggest supporters has been Stephen Platten,

the Bishop of Wakefield.

One of the things I'd say about regeneration here in Wakefield

is that we desperately needed it.

The coal industry, the woollen industry had died

and so economic and social regeneration have been crucial.

But those on their own aren't sufficient.

There is a sense that you need spiritual regeneration.

In a purely religious way, in the background of Christianity,

but it can also mean more than that in a way that...

OK, it's always important to have enough money in your pay packet

but there's a stage beyond that where somehow

our hearts need to be taken and lifted up.

If you look at a piece like the Crucifixion we have here though,

you might not identify it as anything to do with the Crucifixion.

You might not although of course, if you look at it,

there's an obvious cruciform structure to it

and one of the things she herself said about it

was that she wanted something

that somehow represented what crucifixion was,

but also something that you could almost walk into.

But I very much wanted to make a crucifixion which enabled one

to recognise the figure of Christ on the cross

and the rudimentary forms.

And to bring one, as it were, to one's knees.

So in a way, this captures, in a modern context,

that sense of Christ's suffering

happening through very ordinary objects.

Well, I think looking at the view behind me now,

where you actually see the cathedral framed by the crucifixion

by Hepworth, is really rather a marvellous characterisation

of what that might be about.

She was born here in Wakefield and baptised in the cathedral.

-Did she draw her inspiration for her work from here?

-Unquestionably.

In two rather different ways.

First of all because of the Yorkshire landscape.

Even around here where people, I suppose,

think much more of mills and mines,

actually, of course, there's marvellous countryside

outcrops of rock and so all of that will have helped her

in her artistic inspiration.

Created in Yorkshire is a cooperative

set up by Lynne Thompson.

Members work at home to produce a range of crafts

and then they share duties to ensure the shop is staffed and organised.

At a time when many high streets are struggling,

Lynne is confident that an enterprising spirit

and plenty of hard graft can bring colour and inspiration to the city.

I just love it. I just love the shop.

I love the fact that we're sort of bringing something

that's unique to Wakefield.

I think that Wakefield's sending out a message that we're no longer going to be a town that's dying.

That's what we are, we're a community and to stand in the background,

watching the different members, they're all helping each other.

Catherine Knowles is one of the founder members

of Created in Yorkshire.

I take a copy of a child's drawing.

It could be a family portrait or their favourite place or a pet,

anything, you know, the wonderful pieces of artwork that children do.

And parents give them to me and I translate them directly onto fabric

so you end up with an embroidered version.

Community, for me, is about having things in common with people.

Things that bring you together and things that you can share.

So it doesn't have to be the community of people who live on your street.

Many of us don't know our neighbours any more and certainly,

in our house, we haven't lived in our town for very long

so we don't have a very tight local community.

The three things that keep us are our school and church

and Created in Yorkshire.

Those are the parts of my life where I feel part of a bigger group.

I think Wakefield is a wonderful place. It's got lots of promise.

There's lots of regeneration in the city

and I think Wakefield is definitely back on the map.

Replacing the floor of the cathedral

provided an opportunity to install a new spiritual tool, a labyrinth.

A labyrinth's a sacred path.

They've been used by different religions,

different cultures over many centuries.

I hope that this will be another tool in which people can feel welcome

and they can encounter the divine.

It can be used by people who have a Christian faith

or another faith or no faith at all.

It's absolutely gorgeous!

How lovely that the community are going to have such an instrument.

I'm open to the process and, yeah, we'll see what happens.

Hoping it's going to be peaceful.

A bit of peace, yeah.

The journey into the centre is about releasing the things

that are dragging you down.

And then when you reach the centre of the labyrinth,

it's about listening to the divine.

And then the journey out of the labyrinth is about returning,

returning to our everyday lives.

That was amazing.

Peaceful, beautiful, joyful.

It's made me smile. Erm, surprisingly touching.

It made me think about my life really, basically.

That you're following a path and that's how I felt

when I walked in the labyrinth, yeah.

It's like a journey into the labyrinth and in a sense,

taking God with you.

Reaching the centre and then bringing him with you out

so in a sense, God's around you all the time,

on all the journeys throughout your life.

Singing for us now from the centre of the labyrinth

we have Jonathan Viera.

I looked down and there was this labyrinth

and actually this song is I Want Jesus To Walk With Me,

incredibly appropriately.

A story about our humanity really, in our sorrows, in our joys,

in our trials, he walks with us.

That is the kind of mystical and wonderful belief

that we as Christians have and I love the song.

It's simple and it's a great song

and I'm playing with my fantastic son so there we go.

# I want Jesus to walk with me

# I want Jesus to walk with me

# All along my pilgrim journey

# I want Jesus to walk with me

# On my trials, oh Lord, walk with me

# On my trials, oh Lord, walk with me

# When the shades when the shades have fallen

# I want Jesus to walk with me

# In my sorrows walk with me

# In my sorrows, oh Lord walk with me

# When my heart

# When my heart is aching

# I want Jesus right there to walk with me

# In my joys, oh Lord, walk with me

# Oh in my joys, oh Lord walk with me

# When my life is filled with laughter

# I want Jesus to walk with me

# In my trials, oh Lord walk with me

# In my sorrows walk with me

# In my joys walk with me

# I want Jesus to walk with...

# Me. #

'Heavenly father, in our ever-changing world,

'give us the vision to embrace change

'and welcome the opportunities it brings.'

'Help us to make the most of our creativity

'and to use of God-given talents to bring joy to others.'

'Bless the enterprising work that we do in your name

'and may we feel your love guiding us, day by day.'

May Almighty God, who has given us the desire

and hope to recreate this cathedral

and to transform our city

grant us grace also to renew our lives in faith and love

and the blessing of God Almighty, the Father,

the Son and the Holy Spirit be among you and remain with you always.

CONGREGATION: Amen.

Before we leave Wakefield Cathedral,

you may be wondering what they did with all the pews.

They were turned to crosses like this one

by inmates at Wakefield Prison

and were then handed out to the congregations of local churches.

It's a lovely reminder of our trip here

and what better way to finish than a hymn written by this gentleman,

William Walsham How, the first Bishop of Wakefield

when this ancient All Saints Church

was granted cathedral status in 1888.

Next week, David meets actress Danniella Westbrook,

adventurer Bear Grylls

and Lord Taylor of Warwick to discover how they deal

with fame and faith in the public eye

and to hear the hymns that inspire them.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd