Sark to star in Island Parish

SARK is to feature in the next series of the acclaimed BBC2 Island Parish programmes.

The series is to be screened on Sunday evenings early next year and it follows more than six months of filming in the island – centring on the work in Sark of Anglican minister the Rev. Gill Nicholls and Methodist Pastor Karen Le Mouton.

The series is being made by Tiger Aspect Productions, which also produced the previous programmes on ministers in the Scilly Isles and the Scottish island of Barra.

The Tiger Aspect crews started filming early this year – one of the first events I saw them at was the delightful Sark School Oscars presentation evening – and they also covered Chief Pleas sittings and the principal charity event, the sheep racing weekend.

While not exactly one of television's 'warts and all' productions, my recollections of the first series are that they did provide a revealing insight into the work of ministers and priests in relatively small island parishes.

Given some of the sadly regular negative publicity this small community receives, this series – although somewhat limited in scope in that it naturally centres on those who generally minister to the religious needs of parishioners – will hopefully show Sark in a more realistic and positive light.

Additionally, it will hopefully provide a welcome boost to the tourism industry – as have previous programmes such as those featuring Martin Clunes and dating way back to the Mr Pye series – from which all Sark residents benefit in one way or another.

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The word on the street is that by the time this column is published all Sark households will have received a questionnaire from the new temporary chief secretary, Colin Kniveton. At the time of writing I have no idea of the content but, along with many people to whom I have spoken, I welcome the initiative.

I understand that residents will have a couple of weeks in which to complete the questionnaire and so the responses should be ready at around the time Mr Kniveton gets his feet under his new desk at the beginning of next month.

Meanwhile, there is an interesting document on Chief Pleas' official website which can be found under the 'reports' heading. It is the detailed result of the recent workshop to which I referred last week and in my view accurately reflects the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in Sark at present and, as a result, the dilemma facing our elected representatives.

Residents could do worse than spend time examining this report before filling out Mr Kniveton's questionnaire.

Apropos that workshop meeting, a couple of residents have pointed out that the questions I raised about the presence at that meeting of head teacher Sarah Cottle and medical officer Dr John Stevenson were unfair in that they were there simply because they are both co-opted members of Chief Pleas committees by virtue of the positions they hold.

All I can say in my defence is that it's a pity that wasn't made clear in the statement made to Chief Pleas a fortnight ago. Similarly, an online comment on last week's column suggested that it was me who focused on the lack of leadership and less than satisfactory consultation processes from Chief Pleas.

Shoot the messenger if you must, but if whoever wrote that bothered to accurately read what I wrote they'd see that, rather than predictably sniping, I was merely repeating what that workshop itself established – nothing more.

The email address for comment is fallesark@sark.net.