The Historic Religious Buildings Alliance and the Diocese of Hereford are pleased to announce that the new edition of Crossing the Threshold: a step by step guide to developing your place of worship for wider community use and managing successful building projects goes online from Friday 3rd November. This was made possible by the award of a £12,000 grant from the Allchurches Trust [Alliance member] to HRBA.
The Toolkit was first produced in 2005 by the Diocese of Hereford in response to demand from parishes who wanted to open up their buildings for use by their local communities. The toolkit was rewritten and updated in 2013 with funding from Historic England to reflect the experience and feedback from church building projects. The need for guidance is even greater now, as the last few years have seen the movement to open up church buildings for wider community use while remaining living places of worship, gain momentum and become even more important. So thanks to a grant from Allchurches Trust to Historic Religious Buildings Alliance (HRBA), the much valued 2013 edition has been further updated and expanded.
The new edition takes into account the changing funding, community, local government and voluntary sector landscapes as well as providing guidance on new governance models that have been developed over the last four years. The Toolkit provides links to up to date resources to ensure new facilities are as environmentally friendly and energy efficient as possible. New case studies have been included.