Counting Down to Festival 50 – just 74 Days to Go!

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Yes, in 74 days time, on 5 July 2015, it will be Festival 50, the biggest party of the last 50 years for Catholics in Sussex and Surrey. The American Express Community Stadium at Falmer, just outside Brighton, home to Brighton & Hove Albion football team (the Seagulls), is hosting this unique event.

The Fifth of July is a happy conjunction of several anniversaries and opportunities:

·         50 years since the formation of Arundel & Brighton Diocese (it was formerly part of Southwark Diocese).

·         50 years since the watershed Second Vatican Council ended.

·         The first major public event for our new Bishop, Richard Moth, since his installation.

·         A concluding Mass for the whole diocese celebrated with Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor and Archbishop Peter Smith, priests, deacons, religious and laity of A&B.

...and an opportunity for Seagull supporters to visit the home ground – and pray for the future success of Brighton & Hove Albion, who are currently facing potential relegation from The Championship league.

It will be a huge event and sunshine is guaranteed on the day, even if we have to make it ourselves. For the ten or twenty thousand – or more – people who attend, there will be entertaining speakers, competing choirs, workshops, fairground rides, arts and crafts, children’s activities, bands, theatre events and cinema screenings, displays, exhibitions, family events and much more.
 
A word about the Amex Community Stadium at Falmer, which is situated at the edge of the beautiful Sussex Downs - yet it is less than nine minutes by train from central Brighton to Falmer Station, which is very close to the arena. Completed just four years ago at a cost of £93 million, the 30,000 capacity stadium is a state-of-the-art multi-purpose facility designed to host a variety of activities, including other sports such as rugby and hockey, and music concerts, conferences and exhibitions (- and diocesan Masses!).

A small group of interested parties from DABCEC (the diocese’s education centre) visited the Stadium today for a preview of the facilities available – and we were impressed!

 Last night they celebrated the Player of the Year ceremony in this 500-seat lounge, the venue for keynote talks at Festival 50.

We even visited the home team’s changing room, with its couch, display boards of tactics, vast LCD screen and adjoining baths and showers.

At the lower levels were the refreshments kiosks, bars and toilet facilities. Apparently, when an away team travels to the Amex Stadium, they are carefully catered for; their team crest is placed in a prominent place, part of the area is decorated in the visiting team’s colours, serving staff wear the visiting team’s shirts – and they even order beer from the visiting team's local brewery to make them feel at home!   

 

Of course the ground is the most important part of the venue and, throughout our visit, groundsmen were at work rolling and tending it.

The field is surrounded by an artificial strip of plastic grass but the rest is real and manicured to within a millimetre of its life.  

 

The stand seats are padded and very comfortable so that resting there for an hour or several should be no hardship. From a distance the club’s logo, the white outline of flying seagulls set against a deep blue background is very striking.

Just how this was achieved using seats of different colours is part of the spectacle of the Amex. Come and see it for yourselves on 5^th July.