Sit and reflect in Sidmouth

Going to a festival can be hard work, all that walking about, all those people and, if you are lucky, all that sun! This summer, the Evangelism and Growth Team are once again attending events around the country and providing a chance to rest and reflect with their conversation couch.

At the start of August, the sofa attended the Sidmouth Folk festival in Devon. Sidmouth Folk Festival is a week-long celebration of traditional music and dance that has taken place annually since the 1950s attracting tens of thousands of visitors.

The roving "conversation couch" attended the festival as a guest of The Sidmouth Collective, an ecumenical group made up of people from the URC, Methodist Church and Salvation Army.

With the sofa on wheels, it was pushed around the town, sometimes coming to rest in the centre of Sidmouth, sometimes on the seafront and sometimes in the festival villages. The sofa hosted over 120 conversations, talking about everything from grief and heartbreak, to life highlights, to children being born, to faith and spirituality.

“Some people sit down immediately and don’t take any persuading, others are a bit more suspicious,” said Holly Adams, Evangelism and Contemporary Culture Officer, who was there to accompany the couch. “We ask the question ‘tell us about a time you were lost in wonder’ and it flows from there. But everyone finds themselves deep in conversation after a minute or two.”

“The couch creates moments of connection and helps people reflect on their lives and remember times of awe and wonder. It is amazing how much people want to talk about those moments once they open up.

Revd Steve Santry is the minister in Sidmouth. He commented, “One person on the sofa said to me: ‘it’s so encouraging seeing the Church coming out to us rather than expecting us to come to you’ and that’s really stuck with me.”