Fifteen years ago MBC mounted one of the most challenging projects in its then fifty six year history. It was called What Matters and it ran between Friday the 16th and Sunday the 19th of September 2011.
The object of the initiative was to ask not just the people we knew but local school children, churches and community groups to show and tell what matters to them.
After weeks of planning and prayer the result was an art installation of more than three hundred photographs which ran the height and width of the sactuary, alongside ten display boards that between them explored the myriad themes their captions revealed.
Without doubt, however, the longest lasting legacy of What Matters is The Wall.
Still there in our Sports Hall, what you see on The Wall is what you get when you ask forty or so teenagers to show you what matters to them. The answers, from clean running water to ten pin bowling, and from family and friends to recognising national flags was an illuminating insight into what they truly felt.
The next time you’re in church, why not pop into the Sports Hall and have a look at The Wall for yourself. And if you’ve got time, pause and look carefully at each of the painted breeze blocks and ask yourself what if anything has changed.
Oh and while you’re there you might like to take a minute or two to try and fathom out where the letters that make up the WHAT MATTERS headline came from.
But if you haven’t, don’t worry, here are the answers… WHAT MATTERS is made up of…
W = Waitrose
H = Homebase
a = Manning Stainton Estate Agents
t = Comet
M = Metro
a = a long gone Chinese takeaway on Stonegate Road
TT = Netto (in the Meanwood Shopping precinct
ER = letters taken from Marks and Spencer at Moortown
And S = Sainsburys
