By the turn of the Millennium Pam and I were living in central London, just north of Oxford Street. The district is “Fitzrovia”, apparently called after the Fitzroy pub which was distinguished by the fact that Dylan Thomas, George Orwell and Augustus John had drunk in it once upon a time
The part of Fitzrovia where we lived, Whitfield Street, was in the Borough of Camden and one day I phoned up the Camden Town Hall with a query. I don’t remember what the query was, but I do remember that I was put on hold with music and then realised it was traditional Irish music. “How appropriate and clever!”, I thought. “By what kind of sophisticated tracking system do they know that I’m Irish! This technological world is a wonderful place.”
But as I kept on holding, the next thing I knew I was listening to bhangra, then after a while it switched to full-on reggae. London is home to so many kinds of people that Camden wanted to celebrate us all! I had coincidentally phoned during the Irish section of the long loop. It started me thinking. Every enthusiasm got celebrated.
By this time we also noticed that all manner of people who lived or worked in Fitzrovia shared an enthusiasm for Jesus – we counted about 40 of them who were known to us personally, in a back-of-the-envelope calculation. We would smile and nod to each other in the street.
Then some of us began to discuss the fact that our square mile was no ordinary context. Commercial enterprises used this area of London to test publicity pitches to markets far beyond it because of the publicity-sensitive nature of the workforce in this district. Many of the world’s top advertising agencies were located in just a few streets around us.
Something appeared to be happening every day – it felt like London had invented FOMO (the fear of missing out). A whale swam up the Thames as far as Westminster one day. There was nothing special about the disoriented whale but it became national news simply because it poked it’s nose into Central London. London reminded me of what Helene Hanff once remarked about New York City, “It’s like being shot out of a cannon each morning as the alarm goes off”.
So our back-of the-envelope group began to think, “What effect would it have if we ‘came out’ as followers of Jesus at the same time?” The answer to the next question was easy, “When would we do it?” – Easter. After all, people expect Christians to do something at Easter time. A wise Anglican minister cautioned us against actually using the word “Easter” in our campaign because we’d have to waste time re-adjusting the public’s ideas about chocolate eggs, bunnies and fertility rites. “Why not call it ‘Passion’”? he asked. As our wise secretary, Brian Weaver recorded, “Jesus’ passion could very well be a topic of conversation around water coolers, coffee shops, and kitchen tables.”
And so it was that a diverse group of devotees of Jesus of Nazareth called themselves “Passion Fitzrovia” during April 2004. Others appeared out of the woodwork as soon as we got started. Many of them were artists who worked on pieces of art that expressed their feelings about the Passion of Christ. Some brought “Passion” art to us that they had already produced. All kinds of art. We were covered with art. We were also accumulating art historians – we already had three good ones.
The notion that we could find a single place to exhibit all the artwork very quickly went out the window. We would have to exhibit it “everywhere”, in public spaces all around Fitzrovia which were accessible to the public but secure to prevent theft. I was given a list of potential sites to go and scout out and interview those who owned them.
My first visit was to the Holiday Inn hotel on Carburton Street. I had never done the like before, and I don’t think they had either. I talked to the guy at the desk and he asked me to wait for the manager, who turned up quite quickly. After I gave a hastily cobbled together explanation of what we were looking for he said, “Sure. Let’s put them all across the first floor for the Easter season. Would that be alright? I can get the pictures currently hanging there moved to storage. Would £100 be sufficient?”
Now I was truly out of my depth. It all sounded very accommodating but what was the £100 about? Was that their rental charge? Maybe he heard me fumbling around looking for words but he explained that the £100 was what they would pay us for the privilege!
The next stop was the building on Grafton Way belonging to the Venezuelan Embassy. They are rightly proud of that building and it’s grand “Bolivar Hall” event space. Simón Bolivar (who helped establish Venezuela – and indeed half of South America) used this house as his London base in the 19th century.
I asked the cultural attaché if we could place some art there. He agreed and knew so much about art that he soon lost me in the conversation. It was all I could do to slow him in his tracks so I could interject, “You see I’m not the artist we’re talking about here. I’m just looking for the space for these other artists during the Passion season”. Nothing daunted, he charged ahead and said, “Where are you holding the opening night?” I had no idea and no plan. “Why not hold it here!” he beamed. Since no other embassy had offered, he got the gig!
Other venues followed, like the Indian YMCA, the Clubhouse in Cleveland Street, St Charles Borromeo in Ogle Street, the “Hope” pub in Whitfield Street and All Souls church beside the BBC in Langham Place.
I should hasten to add that not all the art was pictures you hang on the wall. For starters, we needed someone to design a striking logo and Angie Moyler, a designer and a friend of the project did a great job. She took an idea that had appeared on anti-Iraq-war placards (which depicted spots of blood) and adapted it.
A proper curator saved the day on the art front. She was Kaori Homma, a Japanese artist whose background was installation art and a very fine form of etching on mulberry paper (which she made herself – from mulberry trees!). She knew a thing or two about art, she loved Jesus and she could be diplomatic about other people’s art – the curator we needed.
One form of art I hadn’t expected was film, but we discovered that we had amongst us the co-producer of a new film about the Passion. He was Christopher Gawor and his film Man Dancin’ (directed by Norman Stone), set in gritty gangland warfare, packs a powerful punch about the self-sacrifice of Jesus. The initial charity showing, in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust, was already scheduled for two months before Passion Fitzrovia, but the producers kindly agreed to show it again at the Clubhouse, as part of our programme.
It seems that films are like the proverbial busses – you wait for one and two come along. I got a message from a friend in Southern California to say that he had just been shown a test screening of The Passion of the Christ, a film by Mel Gibson. He suggested I contact the film’s PR man, Paul Lauer, to see if we could procure a showing of it. So I wrote a very polite fax saying, “Could we have a truly win-win scenario where we give the film unparalleled advance publicity in central London and in return we would gain great impetus for our multi-faceted raising of the profile of Jesus?”
I waited for a quick reply, but none came. Little did we know that Mel Gibson was, by that time, enmeshed in controversy about the film – much of it because it portrayed the death of Jesus up close and personal (it is an age 18 film). Once the dust settled in California I got a message referring us to the film’s international distribution office – which happened to be Icon Films in London just half a mile away from us. I went to see Kate Giles who ran that office and we sat somewhat startled by each other. Both of us were aiming at the same thing, previously unaware of each other. I don’t think it took her long to work out that I was not a media mogul – but she agreed to incorporating the first showing of Mel Gibson’s film into Passion Fitzrovia. In fact that showing became our opening event.
Having been buoyed up by having a major player on board, we then hit a wall of practicality – how do you arrange a film première? I scrambled to contact Chris Gawor for advice and at short notice he and Pam and I hunkered down in the Kentucky Fried Chicken on Edgware Road to sort it out. First Chris told us the bad news – there is no such thing as a go-to check list on running a première. You make it up as you go along, in whatever style you like. At that point I had so many embarrassingly basic questions: “How do we find a cinema? How do we get them to cooperate with us? How do we even get the distributors to send the film to the right cinema?”
Chris had pity on us. We didn’t need to call it a “première” because we weren’t inviting the stars of the film – that would be counter-productive if we want to give Jesus the big billing. He also reminded us that things would get simpler if we had a charity ready to receive the proceeds from the “gala opening night” event. One charity seemed to be a no-brainer – the Red Cross, which was originally started by a young Swiss businessman, Henry Dunant.
Dunant had spent his early twenties encouraging young people in various European countries to be dedicated to Christ. Then, on a business visit to Italy, he saw the carnage of war when he came upon the aftermath of the Battle of Solferino in 1859. This was so horrific to him that he formed what we now know as the Red Cross and convened the Geneva Conventions. (He then went bankrupt, lived his life in obscurity, was “discovered” again almost at the end of his life and was awarded the very first Nobel Peace Prize!)
The Red Cross in London sounded happy enough to partner with Passion Fitzrovia and the Passion film when I phoned them up. We arranged to see each other in person to settle the details. I went over to their office but when the publicity woman appeared she said, “I’m terribly sorry to bring you all this way but we can’t partner with the film. We can’t be seen to partisan in religious matters.”
My explaining “but this isn’t endorsing a religion – it’s about Jesus being on the cross” didn’t seem to help. I referred to the story of Henri Dunant which had nudged us towards contacting them. She was hazy about the organisation’s history, so I simply asked, “Did you ever ask yourself the question ‘Why is our cross red?’” Apparently, and amazingly, she hadn’t. I guess she had applied for a top job at a well-known charity and hadn’t researched their details very thoroughly. We parted amicably – but not before I took the opportunity to fill in the missing details about Monsieur Dunant and the cross.
The solution to finding an alternative charity partner was staring us in the face. There already was a charity caring for homeless people operating in Fitzrovia in which some of our “Passion” people were volunteering. It’s called “Aslan” (for All Souls Local Area Network). Their big emphasis was on personalising their contact with rough sleepers and the “hidden homeless” (people you wouldn’t actually see sleeping rough but still don’t have a place to call home – and don’t get into government statistics).
One Aslan volunteer told me about how they dealt with some of the excess food made available by Marks and Spencer. “It’s a funny thing”, he said, “to wake somebody who’s sleeping under Waterloo bridge at half six in the morning to ask them, ‘Would you like strawberries or raspberries?’” The volunteers invited rough sleepers to join them at the Clubhouse for a meal on Saturday night. They called them “guests”, served them a great meal (prepared by a chef) and they would maybe watch a film together and chat. Aslan’s director at the time, Chris Peacock, later said, “The treatment of the ‘hidden homeless’ is a disgrace to our nation”.
So it was no problem to switch our money to Aslan. Except we didn’t have money yet. We did have the cinema, the Odeon on Shaftesbury Avenue. The deal was done by one of our gallant colleagues, Amy Stroud, who bought all the 8pm seats in the cinema for 26th March on my credit card, as arranged. She sold them all again, at a good profit, to likely customers and friends of Fitzrovia. And then she stood outside the cinema on the night and sold all the returns – again. So there were “proceeds” after all.
The film lived up to its age 18 rating. There was no missing the message that Christ died for our sins. I was accompanied by another film director that evening who said, after the showing, “I was so taken with it that I couldn’t even see where they used computer graphics – and that’s what I do for a living. I was too distracted by the story”.
Since this had been billed as the “opening night” of Gibson’s film, who should turn up after the show but CNN’s man in London, Jim Boulden, plus cameraman, to sample the audience’s reaction. “People we talked to seemed to like it”, Boulden reported. His vox pops included, “I knew that it was going to be wonderful thing to see, but it really exceeded my expectations”; “I think I was expecting a bit more kitsch and I think I saw something that was very realistic and very moving”; “I did like it, but it’s a really, really hard one…I’ll think about it the whole weekend I think, yeah.”
Boulden swung the camera and asked what I thought. “People who just regularly go to the cinema on a Friday night will come here and be so deeply impacted by really the person and the teaching of Jesus.” Of course, this being central London, CNN presented the response as “the reactions of moviegoers in Great Britain”, as if we spoke for everybody.
The CNN episode had a poignant resonance for Pam and me. We hadn’t realised that, at that very time, a dear friend of ours, Barbara Newton, was watching CNN. She was sitting on a couch at home in the Venezuelan jungle where she was a missionary – and heavily pregnant. The CNN report gave her one of those “it’s worth it all!” moments.
A couple of days later we had the official reception to launch the Passion Fitzrovia project – in the Venezuelan embassy’s building of course. We asked everyone we knew to list everyone they knew and made a database for invitations. We included “the great and the good” – politicians and ambassadors and the like. We got nice invitation cards printed. RSVPs began to come in. That’s always encouraging.
The next day was discouraging. While working on the invite cards Amy Stroud said to me, kind of by-the-way, “Is that how you spell Venezuela?”. “Don’t do that to me!”, I said, thinking she was joking. But then I checked and I had indeed goofed sent out however many invitations with a mis-spelled embassy. We agreed to tell nobody and only re-print the cards that would go to ambassadors, who mercifully hadn’t had theirs yet. To this day there must be pub quizzes in London where they give a surprising answer to, “How do you spell ‘Venezuela’?”
One of the invitees who responded promptly was Nasim Ali, the Mayor of Camden. He had just been elected, at the age of 34, and so had become UK’s youngest mayor as well as the first Bangladeshi mayor. Fitzrovia was in his patch and we were delighted to have him. Not long after we got his positive response, we had an ever-so-discreet call from the office of Westminster Borough. Somebody bright person there had worked out that there is a corner of Fitzrovia in their borough. So, we were equally delighted to invite and welcome Jan Prendergast, the Lord Mayor of Westminster and we made sure that both mayors appeared in the photos.
By this time Passion Fitzrovia’s advertising had improved because one of the guys in the project, Alex Normanton, was a graphic artist in a major advertising house. He discovered that some of his contacts in the industry had space going idle that they were prepared to let Alex use. He sourced images of the cross from Mel Gibson’s people and produced beautiful ads featuring the images overlaid with key words about Christ. This resulted in oversized ads on Oxford Street’s official advertising positions: one showing Christ as “Friend” outside the Vodaphone shop, “King” outside Marks and Spencer, and “Saviour” outside a gaming shop.
Now people began to visit the pieces of art in the various locations inside the 70 streets of Fitzrovia. Some artists gamely gave talks explaining their work. One of them was a flautist and sculptress who lived up the street from us and had no particular Christian background. She produced a piece of installation art using all the equipment used in the crucifixion. She said, “As soon as I heard about this project I began to study Mark’s gospel. It took me three months and then I had to gather all these objects such as the nails that Romans would have used.” Her piece was accompanied by the sound of wind chimes and the whole effect was disconcerting.
Although we were favoured with some valuable pieces – Tiger Aspect films lent us a painting by Charlie Mackesy – the art that had the most effect on me personally was shown by our curator herself, Kaori Homma. Entitled Atoned it was housed in St Charles Borromeo and consisted of a small, heavy cast-iron duck resting on a deep red sheepskin rug.
In her talk to the visiting public Kaori explained that she and her husband Ken McLaughlin had a son who, as a little boy, was very ill to the point where his life hung in the balance. There was nothing they could do for him and they prayed desperately and earnestly. She saw this as a metaphor of our utter dependence on Christ to rescue any of us. That’s why she had dyed the sheepskin red. She had cast the iron duck using the shape of a feather-light plastic bath toy. Although it was now very heavy it was supported by the sheepskin on the floor.
A toy duck, a little boy, a strong red rug and a reminder, to me anyway, that I am also 100% dependent on Christ’s sacrifice.
David's Diaries 