After a Communion Service in the morning focusing on the Sermon on the Mount, the week’s work began in earnest in the afternoon. Our young guests from Palestine are all on the Giant Leaps course which is being led by Clyde Bain, Suzi Fowler and Leanne Sedin. Together the group will devise a performance using movement and voice techniques which will be performed on Friday morning. In the evening there was a storytelling performance by The Golden Horde called Silk Road Stories.

Riding Lights Summer School 2008 began yesterday afternoon. After an introductory session for all the courses there was a ‘welcome’ meeting for staff and participants and a performance by Riding Lights Roughshod of extracts from their show Hope Street.

Given the weather (!), we’ve put away the usual Summer School t-shirts this year and are instead offering you the opportunity to buy a ‘hoodie’ unique to STS ‘08. Glamorously modelled here by two of your very own Summer School staff (Andrew and Jenny) one of these special tops can be yours in time for the start of Summer School if you get your order in before Friday 18th July. Just phone the office (01904 655317) and let us know what size you want (S/M/L/XL). You can pay by card over the phone and the hoodies cost £25 each.

One way or another people seem to return to the Summer School…. Three members of our current Roughshod company have attended the Summer School as participants in the past and they are certainly not the first STS ‘graduates’ to work for Riding Lights – there have been many others. This year we are very pleased to have with us Sarah and Ned Lunn who met at the Summer School a few years ago, got engaged at the Summer School in 2006 and last year were married at St Michael le Belfrey Church in York where Sarah’s father (and Riding Lights’ Chaplain!!), Ian Birkinshaw, was until recently Associate Minister.