A Bishop, a Mayor, James and me

Sometime in June 2023 James asked if I was still friends with the Bishop!

I had first met Bishop Martin randomly on a train to London about 10 years before. We got chatting and it turns out he LOVES cities to be full of nature and so was fascinated with what I was doing with Green Walls.

Bishop Martin and I met a few times and then one August in 2018 or 2019 he invited me for lunch (which he cooked himself - not sure why I find this remarkable but there you go!) in the Bishop’s Palace. He wanted to discuss ideas around sustainably regenerating Chichester and how he might be able to use his influence as a catalyst. I had been part of the start of the Chichester version of the Transition Towns so this was a really interesting conversation. However, for a number of reasons, this wasn’t anything I could commit to at that time.

Fast forward a few years to James’s message…. He wanted to bring his light installation to the cathedral as a way of unlocking his excellent Chamber of Culture idea in Chichester. He said “we could have a huge community impact… please could you have a word in his ear?” And then he said “I’ll buy lunch!”. Exciting! And I could see this could be different and collaborative.

Bishop Martin welcomed the opportunity to meet and talk and a date was set for the 30th August. And then a week or so before the Bishop told me he wanted to invite the Mayor of Chichester to join us. When I told James that we would be meeting a Bishop AND a Mayor he said “Wowzers! I am seriously trying not to think about this!” And his follow-up message was “Glad I booked my haircut for Monday!”.

So we found ourselves, the Bishop of Chichester, the Mayor of Chichester, James and me, sat in the Bishop’s private study discussing ideas about how the city could be positively transformed. It was scheduled to be a two-hour get-together. It ended up being almost three and a half and was refreshingly without screens or phones throughout.

Turns out the Bishop is passionate about the waterways of the city and wants to see them regenerated. The Mayor wants to see better infrastructure (transport links / conference facilities / hotels). My angle was all about the wellbeing and biodiversity that comes from creating more green spaces and reconnecting people with nature. And James introduced us all to his idea of his Chamber of Culture.

We all saw how holistic and integrated our passions were. And it was a joy to explore them in turn as well as looking at all the obvious links between them.

James was brilliant in the meeting. His ideas were so well received. He talked us through the cathedral light show, how the Avenue de Chartres car park could be turned into a pop-up venue for all sorts of things and loads more. And I know he had follow-up conversations and there was some real action and support coming.

One thing that really stayed with me from that afternoon was when he said to the Bishop “you have a higher authority than me in this city and in the Kingdom. So really what I am doing here is reporting for duty!”

I had let the Bishop know as soon as I knew that James had been rushed to hospital and he messaged to say “I am so sorry to hear about James. We met again not long ago. I will keep him and Kate, Juno, Wilbur and Connie in my prayers each day.” When I told the Bishop the news about James’s death he replied: “How terribly, terribly sad. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.” +Martin