‘We knew the only responsible thing we could do was move as much learning as we could online.’
Studies tested: Sandra Berry reflects on how Woodbrooke has coped with the pandemic
‘The situation got more serious very quickly.’
The last eighteen months have been shaped by moments of shared understanding, but it has also been a very personal journey. This is my short personal reflection as director of Woodbrooke through the pandemic.
When news started to emerge, I became more and more concerned about what was happening with Covid-19. I watched the video blogs of a man in Wuhan showing deserted streets, and of those of the couple trapped on the ill-fated cruise liner, The Diamond Princess. The government advice at that time was pretty much ‘Keep calm and carry on’ so I knew Woodbrooke had to assess our own risks and make decisions, rather than waiting for someone else to tell us what to do. At first it was simple things like packing away the familiar Woodbrooke jigsaw puzzle and stopping shaking hands at Meeting for Worship. Some thought we were being over cautious, but others appreciated that we took some unpopular steps much sooner than the formal government advice suggested.
Then the situation got more serious very quickly, and things are a bit of a blur on what happened when. That’s probably because we were moving so fast on decisions, and communications on what was happening with our courses, and operational changes needed at Woodbrooke’s centre. On 13 March we sat round the table in my office and we knew the only responsible thing we could do was move as much learning as we could online, and close the site until the government advice caught up. We were fortunate to have a Woodbrooke trustee meeting at Woodbrooke that weekend, so we could consult with them, and one of our trustees recalls how it felt like being driven forward on a conveyor belt over which we had no control. I remember sitting in the Woodbrooke dining room on Sunday lunchtime looking around me at all the people, with this niggling feeling in the back of my head about when we would be doing this again. I hoped it would only be a few weeks or months at most.
We busied ourselves by putting in place emergency measures to support our Quaker community, protecting staff, and securing the building. We locked down the building, sent Friends in Residence home, and tried to make sure people working from home had what they needed. When the formal government announcement came on 23 March 2020 to stay at home, it still felt like a body blow. I remember sitting on my living room floor late at night, sobbing through the shock of it. At that point the government had not mentioned any support for businesses affected by having to close their doors, and I knew we only had money to last a couple of months before we’d have to start cashing in our investments. I felt paralysed – how was Woodbrooke going to survive?
On a personal level it was a frightening time. On the first night it was just my partner Vic and I on the site. All the staff left, and the usually busy A38 outside fell silent. Personal survival instincts kicked in: we hid our spare toilet rolls in the loft!
Once the government announced the support schemes for businesses and charities, it became clear that the furlough scheme was about the only thing we qualified for. It was a lifeline that we couldn’t ignore, and so difficult decisions needed to be made on which staff to furlough. Working with Europe and Middle East Section of Friends World Committee for Consultation we realised that Quakers would need access to worship online. We worked with Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) to share our staff’s experience of online worship, and to teach Quakers looking to start their own online Meetings for Worship. We looked at some of our courses already planned to see what we could quickly and easily run online, to give people something to help them through what was a potentially-isolating and fearful time. It became obvious that we had to live adventurously, and hope and pray that we could be financially resilient enough to keep the majority of the Learning and Research team working. These were Woodbrooke’s ‘front line workers’, supporting the community in a time of crisis.
The months that followed were gruelling, with so many twists and turns in the course of the pandemic. We moved from merely surviving to becoming resilient to all the uncertainty and change. We experimented with new formats for learning, and we ventured into new places as our learning became more accessible to people all over the world. We re-opened the centre for local groups when regulations allowed, and when it made financial sense to do so. We tried everything we could to access the grants from central and local government, and when we realised we didn’t qualify for most of it, we did everything we could to make savings to keep outgoings as low as possible. Woodbrooke has shown tremendous resilience, and with your generous support we are only now needing to cash in some of our investments to cover immediate cash flow needs. This is astonishing given that we started this with just two months of outgoings in the bank.
Woodbrooke is now moving to the next phase – adaptation. We are actively working in partnership with colleagues from BYM to look for ways in which we can support and uphold individual Quakers and communities, whether that is in the formal Local and Area Meeting structures or more informal communities, including those that have evolved during the pandemic. We are ready, willing and able to start working with Meetings to deliver face-to-face learning where you are. We have seen a wide range of people access our online learning in the last year, which will be continuing, and we await the feedback from the learning survey to help us shape the direction of future learning.
There are constant challenges over how we can use our site safely, and generate sufficient income to cover ongoing repairs. It simply isn’t cost effective for us to go back to how we were operating before, and so we are focussing our energies on groups and events that can give us a guaranteed level of income. We have said goodbye to more than fifteen of our colleagues; and we know that Covid safety measures will be with us for a long time, whether or not the government says we need them, because we have seen how people want to feel safe in our building. We are actively seeking partnerships and we have been working with our neighbour, Fircroft College, to host some of their courses. Who knows what other partnerships might evolve?
Woodbrooke, like many organisations, has been appreciably changed by the effects and impacts of the last eighteen months. We have an opportunity to build on those changes and adapt the charity for the future. Woodbrooke began in 1903 as a one-year experiment and now more than ever we must continue to experiment and adapt. It is time to look back with love and gratitude on our past and step forward boldly into the future.
Sandra is director of Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre.
