Faith as Art

The idea of creating art to explore our faith came out of the Yorkshire North and East Methodist District “Flourish” event held at Scarborough in 2019. Traditionally, the Methodist church has relied on words and hymns (words put to music) to explore faith. As part of our Vision project we wanted to run some workshops studying works of art from the Methodist Modern Art Collection, to teach and inspire us to create our own visuals and also to see things in different ways. 

The free sessions were open to all abilities, faiths, or none. Those who attended found new inspiration, as well as the challenge of looking at art and creating. The workshops consisted of looking at two different interpretations of the same theme, a short discussion about ‘What do these images mean to you?’ and “How would you visually show your ideas for the theme”? Most of the sessions were for the creation of artworks, in many different styles and mediums 

The Methodist Modern Art Collection was so interested in our Faith as Art events, that they sent a reporter to interview us and we were featured in their magazine (see cover) and they are looking to roll out a similar scheme themselves. A commission to create the front cover image of the new Methodist Prayer Handbook came about due to our Faith as Art events. 

Some of the work created at the previous workshops (themes; Lent and Advent) are shown below;