Providing welcome sanctuary for festivalgoers

Each year Parklife music festival meets in Heaton Park in Manchester and welcomes almost 80,000 people through its gates across the weekend. Heaton Park Methodist Church is only a few hundred metres from one of the main gates and so, for the second year running, we worked alongside the festival organisers to provide an off-site sanctuary space for anyone who needed it throughout the weekend.

Last year, we welcomed 350 people into our church space and were thrilled to be welcomed back by Parklife’s organisers, who not only encouraged us to be part of the event but also provided us with free Hi-Vis and business cards to advertise what it is we were doing. We were also supported by a grant from the Bolton and Rochdale District that allowed us to invest in better signage and provide more refreshments and phone charging facilities, which are ever popular!

This year we welcomed around 2,300 people who came for everything from a drink of water, through to finding a safe place to recover from enjoying the festivities slightly too much, and those trying to catch up with friends that they had lost in the chaos.

In addition to those who actually came to see us, we also had a huge reach online, with one of our #ParklifeSanctuary posts reaching over 100,000 people on Facebook. So many people responded to say thank you for what we were offering even if they did not need it themselves and seeing the Methodist Church meeting people in a very unexpected space and seeking to meet a need.

With more than six times the number of people joining us this year than last, we are excited to see where next year may go too and are already planning for what we can do bigger and better throughout the weekend.

We owe a huge thank you to the church volunteers, those from other local churches and circuits and people from the community who saw what we were doing and wanted to be involved. We also want to thank the people at Parklife and Welsafe for helping us prepare and run the Sanctuary, and finally, the young people themselves who were all brilliant, and helped one another find us in their hour of need.

Rev’d Jez Hackett
Prestwich & Heaton Park Methodist Churches
Bury Methodist Circuit