COVID-19

On the 23rd March 2020 Selby Abbey along with all other churches shut their doors to their congregations, visitors, clergy and support staff. Several questions were raised about what this meant for our services, youth groups, art classes, drama groups, choir, bell ringers, along with all our groups that use the Church, parish centre and support the local community. As well as our worship activities and recreational offers, questions were raised about what it meant for the heritage of the building, in particular the resilient heritage project.

The project was in full swing, with other smaller projects including a community art project on sculpture, development of our tours, archival audits, several work placements and projects with Selby College taking shape. Several of these projects were put on hold while myself and the teams behind them began thinking of ways these could work in the new world. Some of these projects were moved digitally. Every Wednesday heritage activities were released on our website and Facebook page and were promoted by Welcome to Yorkshire and Visit York. These were based on key historical events including the Civil War and the 1906 fire, along with celebrations including St. George’s Day and VE Day. For VE day we also created a giant virtual bunting line, along with publishing artefacts and oral histories to celebrate the day.

Alongside these sheets to make our collections and histories accessible during lock down, I had to think of ways to carry on audits while there was no access to the Abbey for visitors or staff or ways to engage in audits with the general public face to face. Like many businesses and attractions, the decision was taken to move these digitally. A survey was created and posted on our social media platforms. 10% of our following answered the survey, providing us with information on their previous visits, events, our operations, social media, and things they would like to see from us in the future. Results from the survey highlighted a desire for tours, summer evening openings alongside heritage talks, living history days and greater opportunities to volunteer with us. Acting on these survey results we have recruited new tour guides and commissioned a tour developer to help create a standardised tour that can be individually adapted and train the new guides to deliver them. COVID restrictions depending, we are also considering a change in opening hours, as well as opportunities to increase our heritage activities when it is safe to do so.

Acting on feedback we had received from all the surveys across the year, lock down was used to implement some of these. Creation of an accessibility guide in line with Visit England standards was made and reviewed by the Selby District Disability Forum. This guide is now available on our website and from our welcome desk and shop area for visitors who wish to read it. We also redesigned our tourist information leaflet for when tourism is ready to recommence and will be available from the York Tourist Information office and other appropriate outlets.

While lock down has been hard to manage, in terms of the project, after discussions with the NLHF a three month extension was granted, taking the project end date to March 2022. This is great news for the future of the project and the Abbey to ensure we can deliver the best possible results. Stay tuned to hear about our reopening, activities, and how we develop our projects in the new world….