Who is the community and what do they miss most in this time with corona?

Research Question

First research

First mapping

NEW Brief & research

Survey

Instagram

Neat, strong color contrast, vibrant, photos often outside (architecture)

Visiters, People who marry at the church, the church itself for promotion

Interesting about the insta: almost all the photos are outside. which confirms to our idea that the laurenskerk is only iconic from the outside and less and less interesting from the inside

What do we want to research? Too much ideas

- Different interpretation of the space
- Guestbook ⇾ What is the demography of the place?

Sound
- Voice impact ⇾ How people move or relate to each other in space
- Power perform ⇾ Through sound and the voice in church
⇾ What are the dominant voices and the ones that have been silent?

- What is so specific about the sound of the church other than the ego (we already know about the ego, so something new)?
- What is the difference with your own home?
(Sound plays a bigger role during a service than the sounds we already collected).

- Sound installation ⇾ What sound represents for example architecture or the community?


Guestbook (gemeenschap)
- Guestbook as an entrance to the community - can move from there
- Community and its needs ⇾ What do people benefit from the church?
Can we conclude that from the guestbook/insta/survey?
- What do other faiths or LGBT people get from the church?
- Demonstrate the transformation of the church's value to the community


Service
- Watch a video of a service and focus on body movement and sound
⇾ Mimic this in an empty church ⇾ Isolating the behavior ⇾ Shows how weird / static / old-fashioned it really is

Survey
- Why do people go to the church?
- How can you still benefit from the church when it is closed?
- How do people feel when the church is closed?
- Other religions and background

Transform
- Can I adjust the church that those who do not feel accepted feel welcome now? for example by adjusting the colors of the wall.
- How can the church reflect community?

Intervention that queers your space - Too much ideas

Performance / Installation / Visual campagin / fashion / etc

Performance (of identity) ⇾ exaggerate wih clothes/body language

- Leading the sunday service / live stream
- Flashmob ⇾ Mimicing the movements from a service in an empty church

- Sound installation ⇾ What happens when you add new sounds to the space ⇾ How does it relate to the gender roles / behavior of the people / other things?

- Can you have a Sunday service in your own bathroom / shower?
⇾ Here you have the same reverberation as in the church
⇾ Bathroom organ concert 2020
⇾ Compare recordings with those from a live stream and then create some sort of handbooks for members of the Church


- Making a poster of the various activities in the church between the normal activities to show how normal it should be (our wild idea)

Our idea - read more down the page

We miss communication now everything is online because of corona
How can we give the community their communication and social moments? Maybe we can set up a guestbook outside of the church where people can leave a message for the next person "christelijk vriendenboekje"

Lipton tea has messages to the people on their tea bags, maybe we can give people tea with a christian message on it.

Ervaar je de verschillende religies / geaardheden in de kerk?

Hoe zou je de bezoekers van de kerk beschrijven? (geloven, toeristen, afkomst)

Bezoekers
Geloven & toeristen
Toeristen
Touristisch
Gelovigen
Geloven 5x
Gelovig
Christenen 2x
Afkomst

Barmhartig
Betrokken, open
Divers
Diversiteit aan etniciteit, veelal gelovigen
Christelijk, Nederlanders, ouderen
Toeristen en gelovigen voor een kerkdienst
Nederlandse ouderen extreem nette mensen
Christenen/met kerst erg druk
Meeste blanke mensen, eigenlijk geen mensen van buitenaf

1

2

Hoe gaat de kerk om met deze verschillende mensen?

3

Wat voor gevoel geeft de kerk je wanneer je deze fysiek kan bezoeken?
(VB: voelt als thuis, geborgenheid, indrukwekkend)

4

Lichtpuntje
Groots, veel beeldtaal
Indrukwekkend
Verbondenheid
Voelt als thuis
Voelt als thuis
Geborgenheid
Veiligheid
Geen
Sociale contacten

Welkom gevoel
Fijn om samen te komen
Voornamelijk verveling helaas
Voelt als een tweede thuis, een warme plek en een plaats voor sociaal contact en genegenheid
Vind het altijd erg fijn om in de kerk te zijn omdat het een gevoel van verbondenheid geeft met elkaar
Het samenzijn van gelijkgestemden
Onderdeel zijn van een gemeenschap
Vind het niks, niet mijn kerk
Overweldigend maar toch vertrouwd
Ik mis fysiek de kerk bezoeken voor samenhorigheid
Groots, maar toch warm

Wat brengt de kerk jou dat je graag erheen gaat, wat een andere plaats je niet bied?

5

Hoe ervaar je de diensten en de kerk nu vanuit huis?

6

Wat mis je nu de diensten vanuit huis zijn?

7

Blijf je nu met corona liever thuis of kom je nog buiten/op andere locaties?

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Zou je er baat bij hebben als er meer sociaal contact komt vanuit de kerk/religie?

9

Zou je meer tijd willen besteden aan je geloof nu je meer thuis zit?

10

Summary (English explination)

Most important in what the church offers: Social contact.
A community to relay on & peace and safety are equally important as second.

77% Rather goes to the church in real instead of following it online.

Now the services are online/at home, 78% misses the social contact.
22% misses the peace it brings. 18% doesn't miss anything.

We asked the people if they still go outside now with corona, some only would go out their house to visit the church, others only for work and groceries. 18% still goes everywhere.

74% Would like to meet more in real life to have social contact & to talk after the serve. 22% think the contact is fine just the way it is.

70% Wants to spend more time on their faith. Because without the church they spend less time on it or they just always want to spend more time on it.
30% Doesn't want to spend more time on their faith. They already spend enough time on it on their own or think the church gives them enough options to spend time on it.

62% Experience clearly different faiths and sexual orientations in the church. 48% Doesn't experience this at all.

60% says the church is open and accepts all people
20% says the church is neutral to them
20% says the church is (unconsciously) not welcoming to all faiths/sexual orietentations

Moodboard ⇾

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These teabags are made by Jonna

- Leave messages behind for the people after you and take one from the person before you.
- Tea bags with a verse from the bible that you can look up at home
- Pick a verse out of the bible and leave a note (kind of a social guestbook)

Confessional booth concept, but more relaxed. Create a place where two people can talk with eachother with a transparent screen between them because of corona.

Conclusion

The communy wants to go more offline, spend more time on their faith and most importantly: They want social contact with the people from the church!

Our idea

The survey showed us that the communy of the church misses the contact moments and socializing. We want to give back a social connection, an offline moment to bring the communy back together.

We should
⇾ Make a social interaction
⇾ Connect more to the guestbook
⇾ Connect guestbook to teabag
⇾ Do a small experience (between two people is already fine)
⇾ Film short during experience
⇾ Compair to other social moments - values

Why teabags as a medium to spread the messages? (thought behind it)
⇾ Tea with a message warms you up literally and figuratively
⇾ You can take the message on a tea bag home, while the guestbook remains in the church and a talk is also something you can't bring home. So you can look at the teabag again when you need it.
⇾ From people to the people - Revolves around the communy

What do the people need to do?
⇾ Come after the online service to the church for a cup of tea
⇾ Read the message someone left for you on a teabag
⇾ Write a message for the person after you while you drink your tea
⇾ EXTRA write in the special guestbook (thought, poem, etc)

Think about
⇾ Why is this specific church coffee/tea moment different from other tea moments (tea after service VS teabreak in a company VS at home) or what do they have in common?

Gabriel indicated during the feedback moment that he is curious about the history and origin of the coffee moment and why it is so important.

A number of websites I've come across

More research on the coffee and tea moment after church

https://oudkatholiek.nl/nieuws/2007/05/msn-is-als-koffie-na-de-kerkdienst/
https://www.trouw.nl/religie-filosofie/kerk-in-de-buitenlucht-de-behoefte-aan-ontmoeting-is-in-coronatijd-alleen-maar-groter~b8a08efa/
https://www.redemptionchurch.nl/connect
https://www.nd.nl/geloof/geloof/960349/creatief-zijn-als-kerk-geldt-ook-in-het-pastoraal-werk-het-belang

When the moment of social contact (coffee/tea)  after the church was not yet organized by the church itself, people themselves invited people from the church at their home. Within the church I asked several people if they knew the reason for the change to organizing this moment together. The results of this are that people noticed the change especially after the founding of the PKN, several (Protestant) churches have continued together under this name. The coffee and tea moment grew but most of the time the same group came together. People who thought it was too big a hurdle to come to people's homes often fell out while they thought the church was also about getting together and being able to solve your problems together.
The moment after church is also a moment of personal prayer for each other. The moment also depended on the financial situation of a church.

Some of the reactions I got to my research

'My parents also received people after the service or went for coffee (with cigarettes). Drinking coffee/tea in the church grew. And certainly with the growth in prosperity: a church center, a kitchen etc could be built. That is where the activities were organized.
I would say: it grew gradually and depended on the (financial) possibilities of each church/municipality.'

'Drinking coffee: I don't know it from the RK church. I only came across it in evangelical circles.'

'At our church in Heiloo they also drank coffee after the service. The 'Friesen' had their own corner where they could talk 'Fries'. 55 years ago'

'I know that it originated with Sufi; that it helped them to keep up the long nightly prayers and that Christians wanted to forbid it in the first place because of the Muslim background. Yet it turned out differently.'

'When I was young, my parents always invited people to come and have coffee at home. This was not done in church after the service. The change came around the founding of the PKN. Several churches continued together and in this way they were able to support each other financially, among other things.'

Persconferentie of kerkdienst?

Sunday 22-11 we went to the Laurenschurch to test our idea with the teabags. We wrote the first message and asked people who passed by if they had time for a social moment. We explained that now with corona a lot of people feel the lack of social contact with others and that we created this tea moment to socialiaze. We asked the people if they could write a message for a stranger who would come after them and after writing, taking a note from before and drink some tea with it.

The first to join us was an older couple. They just had tea, so they didn't want a drink, but we talked to them about loneliness and older people. The man worked for an older, blind lady and an organiziation that links people to lonely elderly. We also talked about corona and that they still come outside.

After this two woman (age 28-35) joined us. We had some small talk while they wrote their message.

The last ones where a young couple (age 18-22). The girl thought long about a message and the guy didn't really feel like writing which is fine. They didn't really hang around to talk, but they did read the message they recieved.

Small scale test

What we noticed

People don't approach us without us approaching first, Maybe we can make a banner with information what we are doing.

It is difficult for us to approach everyone, some people clearly avoid eye contact or walk really fast.

Everyone we told what we are doing wanted to take part in it.

Infront of the church there is a booth with books you can take for free your leave a book. A lot of people take interest in it.

Feedback

Presentation ⇾ Start from research question

Miss connection to the church
⇾ Message from Guestbook one side - new message on the other side
⇾ Message from the Laurenskerk to everyone
⇾ The church embodies something we all need today, about mentally
⇾ It shows the role what the church has nowaydays - to connect people

The message is about what the church means to people, you share it also with people who don't go to the church to spread the warm feeling.

The card
⇾ Kind of big now on the teabag
⇾ Design a real card that people want to keep
⇾ Maybe clip it to the teabag so they can easily take it of to save for later

Sign
⇾ Add a line about the research / our project
⇾ What we want people to do

Focus elements

Corona:
- not touching the teabag
- the wind is blowing away the cups
- keeping distance

Where were the people:
- benches around the square
- the public book libary
- walking in a straight line in front of the church

How does the church make you feel when you can visit it physically? Most people answer things like: feels like home, solidarity, being together with like-minded, overwhelming but save