KLC Arts: Imaginative Encounters: Imagination, Presence and Place
Thursday, 18 June 2026, St Edward King and Martyr Church, Cambridge
“A renewal of the Christian tradition will never take place through ideas alone but needs to be accompanied by a riot of song, dance, literature and the arts.”
– CRAIG BARTHOLOMEW
ArtWay is a UNESCO-Digital Heritage designated website founded by Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker, the daughter of the celebrated Dutch art historian, Hans Rookmaaker. KLC took over the English face of ArtWay in 2023, re-designing and expanding the website’s already expansive library of resources.
On ArtWay you will find articles exploring the theological dimensions of art, along with resources for use in churches and small groups, book reviews, reading lists and much more.
With ArtWay we want to help people access the rich religious and spiritual dimensions of art. We also seek to equip churches and people of faith to incorporate art into their teaching, reading of Scripture, prayer, and worship.
“… ‘Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has the human heart imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him. However, God has revealed these things to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit explores everything, even the depths of God’.” (1 Corinthians 2: 9b-10, NCB)
As Christians committed to the arts, our goal is to make work that opens all manner of new Christ-centred paths and possibilities in our world. This quest, grounded in our personal investments in Christian spiritual and scriptural formation, necessarily also draws on the realms of the pre-cognitive, imaginative, and emotive, as well as the logical, rational, and conceptual, with attention to materiality and embodiment playing a crucial part. Emerging from and addressing the whole person, the strength of our work is its considerable communicative range and openness. Indeed, it is by these means that we seek to engage in public theology and thus with the broad KLC theme of “how then shall we live?”.
The Arts Fellowship is a small group designed to help us (1) enter promised terrain such as that described in 1 Corinthians 2: 9b-10 with greater submission, determination, and expectancy, (2) make ever more skilful use of the repertoire of practical and spiritual gifts God has for us in our areas of art-making, writing, art history, art appreciation, and philosophy, and (3) increase in wisdom with respect to the obstacles that are in our way, learning to turn these into opportunities.
Since 2024, we have met online regularly in an atmosphere of ever-deepening friendship as we learn how best to support each other. At our sessions, we present our projects, discuss and critique them, collaborate, pray, and give practical assistance when needed. An important idea (contributed by Fellowship member and sculptor Gert Swart) is that of “scenius,” a term coined by the musician and producer Brian Eno. It refers to “the intelligence of a whole operation or group of people [as] a more useful way to think about culture [because it cultivates a] whole ecology of ideas that give rise to good new thoughts and good new work.”
For enquiries about the Arts Fellowship please contact our Chair, Laurel Weeks, on laurel@kirbylaingcentre.co.uk with details of your arts-related areas of interest.
More details coming soon.
Craig Bartholomew et al.: Christians and the Arts in South Africa: A Manifesto
Walter Hayn (2025), Solo Exhibition: “The Song of the Coelacanth,” Jeannie Avent Gallery, London, 13-27 August. https://walterhayn.com/
Gert Swart (2025) Solo Exhibition: “Towards Easter Sunday 2025: Who am I?” The Tatham Art Gallery, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, 2 March to 27 April 2025. Gert Swart Art | Gert Swart Art Sculpture.
Through in-person and online events (in Cambridge in particular) we aim to facilitate illuminating conversations around the arts that (1) help artists find meaning and support in their work, and (2) help non-artists engage actively with the arts in order to gain greater enrichment from the arts. The natural outflow of being enriched by the arts is a greater support for and participation in the arts within our communities. We also seek to provide an opportunity for artists to share their work on a public platform, in settings where the arts are in conversation with one another.
Thursday, 18 June 2026, St Edward King and Martyr Church, Cambridge
Wednesday June 10 @ 2pm (MST)/ 4pm (EST)/ 9pm (BST)/ 6am (Sydney, June 11).
