00:00My name is Richard Godley. I'm the project officer for the George Stevenson project within Holy Trinity Church.
00:08It's a two and a half year project based around the GS200 anniversary, which is George Stevenson's 200 anniversary of rail in this country.
00:18And this is obviously where George Stevenson was actually buried.
00:22He lived a good proportion of his life within this area and lived locally at Tapton House.
00:28He's buried in Holy Trinity Church and we wish to make a little bit more of a celebration as part of the 200th anniversary to do with George Stevenson.
00:38And today is a soft launch to introduce that to people and also just to gain a lot of knowledge from other people.
00:47They may have artefacts, they may have information that we can tap into.
00:50But more than anything else, we've got lots of leaflets that we'd like to give away to people to tell people about the project and what it's all about.
00:58Over this two year period that remains, we will be doing some new interpretation about George Stevenson for exhibition purposes, both within the church and also for a travelling exhibition.
01:11There will be a new interpretation centre within the back of the church, which will be there for people to come and see stories and information about George Stevenson himself.
01:22Especially for school children, because a lot of the Derbyshire and Nottingham schools are interested in coming to Holy Trinity Church.
01:28We're going to produce an education pack that's going to be all about railways and just a big shout out really for the Heritage Lottery Fund, who funded a lot of this in conjunction with cross-country trains and also East Midlands Railways as well,
01:45who are contributing towards the restoration works in the back of the church, which will also add new toilets and a new kitchen facility as well.
01:54So the fundamental underlying project has got lots of community activities, which will have a community project which will be about George Stevenson in the community, which will be basically a trail.
02:10So we're going to put together a trail of George Stevenson, which will be an AI type of approach that people can have on their app on their phone as well.
02:18There will be trail leaflets, there will be activities that will encourage children to learn more about rail safety.
02:26Hoping to work closely with EMR on that one as well and introduce that to the local schools.
02:31The big kick-off for us is today, but the big civic event is going to be the 27th and 28th of September.
02:38The 27th of September is a Saturday where normally the George Stevenson day that they have in church is usually June, which is work in conjunction with just Phil Borough Council.
02:50We've moved that to the 28th, which is a big date in the railway calendar.
02:55And the 28th of September is going to be a civic event in Holy Trinity Church for the dedication and rededication of various things associated with George Stevenson as well.
03:05So we're going to have a two-year programme where things will be popping up and we'll be inviting people to tell us about stories of rail travel in Chesterfield,
03:15which will go on to our new website as well for Holy Trinity Church.
03:19And so that's basically it at the moment.
03:22We have a leaflet that we've produced as well.
03:25We're hoping to get lots of oral histories, like I say, and creative writings into this project.
03:30So we're going to be busy for the next two years at least.
