Introduction

This podcast conversation started with an unexpected find by Freyja Perkins at the Welcome Desk of Coventry Cathedral, in a locked cupboard. A guidebook for blind guests to the cathedral, along with audio guides and mobile tactile models of the architecture, sat alongside a guidebook for staff to assist visitors. Once Freyja shared these materials with me, we were led to the box in the archives on ‘Cathedrals Through Touch and Hearing’, which was an initiative led by Professor John Hull from Birmingham University, who lost his sight during the course of his young life. In the archives we found the positive correspondence between Coventry Cathedral with Hull and his team, who pioneered the provision of tactile models and plans to assist blind visitors in places of worship. Freyja and I also found a model on wheels, sitting to the side of the nave.

As we sought to re-centre the visual aids, we made contact with Matthew Horspool, who was a regular tenor singer in the cathedral, blind from birth, super active and knowledgeable with braille and assistive technologies. For him the whole project ‘Cathedrals Through Touch and Hearing’, presented an opportunity to raise the profile of accessibility matters in the cathedral, as well as to acknowledge a vital aspect of blind history sitting in the cathedral. Several conversations took place between the three of us before the podcast, one of which included Canon Nitano Muller. After all, buy-in at the top of level of an organisation carries weight for any project aimed at making institutional changes.

The podcast begins at the Welcome desk, where Freyja first came across the materials, before we move to the model on wheels, tucked away on the sidelines of the nave. Thereafter the conversation takes place in the archives, where a selection of the correspondence is shared, alongside a discussion of how the project can be supported now and in the future.

Biographies

Matthew Horspool is a musician who sings tenor in the choir at Coventry Cathedral. Matthew runs the Braillists Foundation and is committed to making the world accessible to blind and partially sighted people through the many projects and podcasts he has been involved in. As a braille and assistive technology consultant, he trains visually impaired people and the colleagues who support them in the use of assistive technologies such as screen readers, braille displays, braille notetakers and braille embossers. His screen reader experience encompasses a wide variety of Windows and iOS-based applications using JAWS, NVDA or VoiceOver. Matthew writes on Sight Loss Friendly Churches for Torch magazines and creates fact sheets on various aspects of sight loss to complement face-to-face training.

You can also hear Matthew here: https://www.ukaaf.org/news-events/a-passion-for-braille/

Freyja Perkins works at the Welcome Desk at Coventry Cathedral, proactively introducing visitors to the venue and hosting an array of events. Freyja is a freelance multi-disciplined illustrator, with a specialism in political portraiture. Freyja works with a variety of image creation methods including ink, watercolours, photography, digital collage and animation. Freyja also convenes creative events and artistic group activities, such as zine making workshops, as well as accessibility communication graphics. They were an artist and curator for the Digifest exhibition at Vivid Projects in Birmingham, where they created a series of collages revolving around sexism in the digital age.

Podcast

Transcript

[music]

NIRMAL PUWAR: For our podcast Hear Here in Coventry Cathedral, our guests today are Freyja Perkins, who's an artist. She works at the welcome desk at Coventry Cathedral. Our other guest is Matthew Horspool, who is a musician and sings tenor in the choir at Coventry Cathedral. Matthew runs the Braillists Foundation and is committed to making the world accessible to blind and partially sighted people through the many projects and podcasts he has been involved in.

The story of our encounter begins when I came up from the archives one day to the welcome desk, and Freyja, you started sharing what you've been finding in a cupboard up here in the welcome desk.

FREYJA PERKINS: Probably one of the biggest finds in this treasure trove was this gorgeous mahogany red book, which, as soon as I plucked it out of the dusty cupboard, I noticed had black tape on the side with braille reliefs coming out of it. I knew it must be something quite special. Upon opening it, I realised the entire thing was a braille book. At the time, I had no idea what the actual contents of the book were.

Going through the pages, I did see some relief illustrations of the Cathedral nave and several other depictions around the Cathedral itself, including artworks like the Crown of Thorns, which is exposed right at the back in the Chapel of Gethsemane. It wasn't until I reached the back of the book that I found a full visual guide, all written in English— a transcript of a guide to Coventry Cathedral [flipping through the pages]. I realised that this was something quite special.

It was written around the late 80s, and it was way ahead of its time. It was fully functional and written particularly for any partially sighted or blind visitors, so they could fully access and realise the potential of the space around them.

[00:03:11]

NIRMAL PUWAR: So, through our searches in the archives downstairs, as well as online, we found that the models were part of a project titled Cathedrals through Touch and Hearing, which was initiated in 1988 by Professor John Hall, who was a radical theologian based at Birmingham University. John Hall had actually completely lost his sight by 1983, so he was completely blind when he was working on this project.

Now, Freyja, as we thought of how to relaunch the models and make them available for the public, we contacted Coventry Resource Centre for the blind, and they alerted us to Matthew. From then on, our conversation expanded in many ways as Matthew became a part of bringing these models out again for the Cathedral. Matthew, how have you found what Freyja has dug out of the cupboard for us?

MATTHEW HORSPOOL: I mean, I was absolutely gobsmacked [laughs] when I first came across it. I must admit that when I was first contacted, it was very out of the blue. It was a person I'd never heard of before telling me about these models that some kind soul had made for the blind people of Coventry in the late 80s and early 90s. I thought, oh yes, we hear about this all the time; it probably won't amount to very much. It might just be some sighted person's attempt at bringing the Cathedral to life, and it probably won't be very good.

So, I went in with that expectation and was just absolutely blown away by the guidebook and how professionally that was produced. I mean, when you think of a braille book, you think of pieces of paper bound with a metal or a plastic binder. But this is a proper hardback book that just happened to have braille pages in it, and it was transcribed by the National Library for the Blind up in Stockport, which was very well-known at that time. There is blindness history, as much as there is a history of cathedrals embedded in those pages. They don't make braille books like that anymore, so I was really impressed with that.

We also found these 2D relief maps of the Cathedral, which were done in absolutely fascinating ways. You don't see these anymore these days. It's a sheet of plastic acrylic that has been essentially thermoformed—the same way you would make plastic packaging—with a wooden backing. It has really nice braille labels on it, and very pronounced lines to show where things are. It's got a key and highly tactile elements. To be honest, even professionals making tactile diagrams nowadays would struggle to make something as good as this. To find something like this, tucked away in the welcome desk, was absolutely extraordinary.

NIRMAL PUWAR: So, these are mobile models. Freyja, we have two of these?

FREYJA PERKINS: We do. We have two of these. Both of them have seen slight amounts of wear and tear. However, we're lucky enough to have not just two of these acrylic, thermoformed models and this entirety of the braille guidebook, but also, through research and reading the papers that Professor John Hall left— in what looks to be an old-school Filofax-style folder— I found out that the wooden model, which has been quite lovingly sat in the corner of the nave for past several decades, has been part of the Cathedrals through Touch and Hearing project that Professor John Hall worked on. There used to be a piece of audio to accompany the wooden model, where a visitor would place their hands over the top of the model while listening to the audio.

NIRMAL PUWAR: We have these two cassette tapes with braille on them, don't we, Matthew?

MATTHEW HORSPOOL: We do. So, there's audio built into the model. This is really important. If all you can do is run your fingers over a wooden model, then yes, it’s a nice model, but the eye can see a lot more than the finger can feel. Although it's a scale model, it's scaled down quite considerably, so there are many things that the fingers would bypass unless there was something to guide them. That’s why having some audio to listen to as you're going through the model is really very valuable.

However, it's still a model, and so what the tapes do is take you around the Cathedral itself. So, you're not having to stand at the model and listen to the tapes. The idea was that you’d put the tapes into an old-fashioned Walkman, plug headphones in, and you would walk around. The tape would give you instructions on which direction to walk around the Cathedral, where to face and the history of the Cathedral, so you were actually experiencing the Cathedral in the space, rather than just through a model.

We've got a digital copy of both of those tapes, and it’s really extraordinary. It's a really extraordinary snapshot of the Cathedral itself: the people in the Cathedral at the time, the staff, the clergy. It's a snapshot of attitudes towards blind people. It's a snapshot of what the technology was at the time, and so many things in this extraordinary project.

NIRMAL PUWAR: Shall we walk over to the model?

[00:09:48]

MATTHEW HORSPOOL: Yeah, let's do that.

First of all, it’s important to clarify that when we say the Touch and Hearing Centre, this was the name of the model. So, the centre wasn't some abstract academic thing at Birmingham University; it is the name of this model.

Going back to what I said earlier, I don't really feel I relate to models particularly well. That feeds into the whole attitude that I had when I first came in, thinking, “Oh well, it's probably not up to much”. I was really sceptical, and to be honest, there's still a lot about this model that I still can't fully make sense of or appreciate.

It is in 3D. That makes a big difference. It’s on a plinth and there's very exciting technology underneath that plays the audio for the model. Essentially, it’s a 3D model of the Cathedral on a plinth. Because it's 3D, I can tell—okay, yes, this feels like a cathedral—and I can put my hand inside the model and feel various parts of it. It's all done in fine detail, and it’s a lovely thing to just put my hands on and feel. But it doesn't really tell me anything about the Cathedral. What it does tell me is that a carpenter lovingly carved all of this out, and that really is the extent of what I can tell. If somebody said to me, without any context, “What is this?” I wouldn't have a clue. I wouldn't even know that it was a model of a place, let alone a model of Coventry Cathedral.

It’s the audio that goes with it that would really bring that to life for me. You would be feeling the model, and the audio would give you a hint. It would say, “Put your hand here— can you feel a metal post sticking up? This metal post is called… whatever it is”. Then it might guide you, “go down and then go forward a bit. You will feel this long piece of wood going forward, which represents the nave, and you can feel the sloping roof on the top of the nave. Now, if you go to the left of the nave, you can feel a round shape at the back”.

I know I'm not describing this very well, but the audio would be much better than this. But the idea is that you would be in front of the model, actually feeling it, and the audio would guide you to those things that your fingers wouldn't pick up unless they were told.

NIRMAL PUWAR: That's why the accompanying material is so vital. We can now go downstairs into the archives and engage with some of the correspondence, as there is a rich correspondence on this project. At the moment, the correspondence is for sighted people, but we're planning on making that accessible to non-sighted people.

We walked downstairs under the nave, and we're in the archives. Here is a folder, which we found in the catalogue. Not everything's catalogued here. When we searched the name of Hall, we located a folder for this project, and we've been going through this correspondence. It has yet to be made available to Matthew, so it needs to be scanned. Freyja and I have been going through it. You’d like to share some of the correspondence, Freyja?

[00:13:47]

FREYJA PERKINS: The first piece is dated the 7th of February 1985. It's from the Very Reverend Colin Semper. It says, “Dear Colin, many thanks for yours of 7th January. A number of cathedrals have offered themselves as guinea pigs for our cathedral project, but Coventry Cathedral is the one which is most convenient to us. It's very kind of you to make this offer, and we accept. Coventry is not only handy to Birmingham but is interesting to blind people in various ways and has the advantage of supporting people like yourself and your colleagues and assistants.” That was one of the first correspondences that John had.

NIRMAL PUWAR: What was the date on that one?

FREYJA PERKINS: That was 1985. It really started quite early—in the mid-80s—and it continued. In fact, this is a slightly earlier extract from 1984, dated July 25th. I picked this one out, specifically, to highlight the differing views that some other cathedrals and, in particular, the Deans and Provosts had at the time towards a very advanced and human way of thinking about accessibility. This one was written to the Provost of Coventry Cathedral, dated 25th of July 1984.

NIRMAL PUWAR: It's from Professor Hall.

[00:15:27]

FREYJA PERKINS: Yes, this is from Professor Hall himself. It says, “Dear Provost, I've had an interesting letter from the Dean of Salisbury, Sydney Evans, which, although most cordial and sympathetic, does not approve of the idea. He's inclined to think that it would be sufficient if cathedral guides were appraised of the situation and were prepared to give special human warmth and information to blind visitors. He does not think the expense of the details of the project would be worthwhile.”

So, what we found now— and although it's been squirrelled away since the late 90s— it was such an advanced idea and so ahead of its time that only about 12 cathedrals, out of a list of many, took on this project to create accessibility for blind visitors. It did lead to the most incredible friendship between John Petty, the Very Reverend of Coventry Cathedral, and Professor Hall and his assistant Juliet.

The next letter is dated the 5th of March 1993, so several years into the project. It starts, “My dear Juliet, very many thanks for your letter. It is I that should be expressing gratitude for all that you have given us and other cathedrals. The work of you and John has been a great blessing to so many. I had a full morning with Eric yesterday, plus many others. We're staging a CTTM (Coventry Tandem Team Marathon) on the 11th of July for sighted and visually impaired pairs. It'll be a high-profile event, we hope. With many thanks, prayers, and love. The Very Reverend John F Petty, Provost of Coventry.”

NIRMAL PUWAR: Right, so we can feel the energy in the correspondence between the Cathedral, the team, and John Hall. Unfortunately, the models have, for whatever reason, been out of reach. Now that we're bringing them within reach for blind and partially sighted people, Matthew, you have particular plans that we're formulating together about how to relaunch them?

MATTHEW HORSPOOL: Yeah, and how to just draw people's attention to it. There are really two aspects to this. Like I said earlier, there's a huge intersection between cathedral history and blindness history. The correspondence shows us what attitudes towards blind people were like at the time. Phrases like “special human warmth”—I mean, what’s special about human warmth? That’s not an attitude we’d recognise today, but it is one we’d recognise in the history of blindness. It wasn’t just cathedrals that held that view.

There are broader conversations to be had in a blindness context. I remember talking to the current Canon for Worship and Welcome, and he said it almost feels like the Cathedral has gone backwards in terms of its accessibility. So, it's a case of saying: has it actually gone backwards, or has it just become different?

To what extent, setting aside the Provost and John Hall, was this project seen within the wider Cathedral community as the way, or the only way, of reaching out to blind people? There’s a lot to unpack here, both for the Cathedral and for the blind community. I'm very passionate that the Cathedral community needs to be involved, but also the blind community needs to be involved to learn about that history.

2025 marks 200 years of the braille code. We don't know exactly when the braille code was invented, but it was somewhere between 1825 and 1829 — we think closer to 1825. So, it's the 200th anniversary of the braille code. Also, the second Thursday in October is designated by the United Nations as World Sight Day. It has a big focus on curing preventable blindness, but in the UK and other Western contexts, it’s also used to talk about access for visually impaired people. Here in the UK, we mark that whole week as National Braille Week.

So, what I would really like to do—at a very minimum—is open up access to everything we've found so far to a blind audience and to anyone from the Cathedral who is interested in this part of the Cathedral's history.

I would really like to find funding. It probably won't go ahead unless we find funding, so if anyone listening to this wants to make a donation, then get in touch, and we can sort that out. With funding, we would like to do a whole day on this. We'd like to use World Sight Day as a partly academic day and partly exploratory day.

We were talking about making the correspondence accessible to the blind earlier. This correspondence was largely between sighted people, except for John Hall, who was blind. Back then, he probably had someone read the correspondence to him, but I’m sure he would have typed his replies on a typewriter and sent them back. So, it’s not really surprising that the original documents aren’t accessible today. But the question is, how do we make it accessible in an engaging way?

[00:21:30]

We’ve been thinking about doing some kind of dramatic performance—bringing the correspondence to life. For example, having one person read as Professor Hall, another as Provost Petty, and performing some of the letters aloud. We could also bring in people who actually remember when the project was first launched.

Freyja was reading that correspondence and mentioned somebody called Eric. We think that was probably Eric Sase. Eric Sase is still alive and still lives in Coventry. At that time, Eric Sase worked with somebody called Melanie Pritchard, who also lives locally in Southam in Warwickshire and is also still alive. If we could bring them in to talk about what it was like when the project was first launched, that would be really extraordinary.

Then obviously, once we've shown people the history, it's about what we do next. There are some really basic things like the front of the model is currently facing the wall, I mean, let's try and turn that around so that the model is facing into the Cathedral [chuckles].

We talked about audio tapes and digitising audio tapes. Can we make some of that material available in a non-audio tape form? Can we make it available through a website that people can listen to on their mobile phones, for example? Can we make it available through digital technology for people who don't have access to mobile phones? Are there any sections that need to be re-recorded because they're slightly outdated? Freyja mentioned that the maps are subject to some wear and tear. What's the likelihood that we might be able to get those recreated, and all of this really is up for grabs and up for discussion?

The guidebook has the old phone number for the Cathedral, and the commentary dialling code changed in the early 2000s. It was also written before the Cathedral had a website and back when it had a Provost rather than a Dean. So much has changed in the Cathedral. But a braille guidebook—how valuable—do we need to update that guidebook? Do we need to try to preserve this material so that if the original paper copies get damaged, we still have access to the history? There is so much that we want to do, but the first step is actually bringing more people in and letting them be a part of that history, exploring it with us.

The original project was led by a blind person, Professor Hall, and two Provosts, Colin Semper—who was the provost before John Petty, but in either case, these were very senior members of Cathedral leadership. The Cathedral has a Dean now, that’s John Witcombe, and it has a blind person, that's me. So, there's a parallel here. I'm not a professor—I don't work at a university—but I think it's important to be led by blind people, and also to be led by the Cathedral, so that the Cathedral feels a sense of ownership over it as well.

NIRMAL PUWAR: Yes, that's absolutely critical. Now, sound is so significant in your life in many ways. You sing in the choir, and you're a musician. You've led a lot of podcasts yourself. Would you like to talk about how there are these different scales of sound in your life, Matthew?

[00:25:14]

MATTHEW HORSPOOL: I mean, sound takes the place of vision. I suppose a lot of senses do—sound, touch, smell, taste—all sort of compensate. That's not to say that I've got supersonic hearing or anything like that, because I definitely haven't. But I'm certainly in tune more with those senses.

Sound is important to me. Singing in the choir here is an enormous privilege on a number of levels, actually. First of all, it’s a privilege to sing in a lovely building like Coventry Cathedral. Secondly, singing in a cathedral choir is quite a daunting process. You have to go through an audition, and you must meet certain minimum standards, which is actually an extremely high standard, higher than that of a concert choir in many cases. The fact that the Cathedral thinks I'm capable of meeting those standards in spite of the challenges that I have, in terms of getting access to music in the right format with enough notice, I mean that's a huge privilege.

When I was younger, I always wanted to be on the radio. I've not got so much interest in that nowadays because I've ended up doing consultancy and training. I quite enjoy helping people, but there's always that thing of wanting to use my voice for good. So, through the Braillists Foundation, we run a podcast called Braillecast, which you can find at Braillecast.com. As the name suggests, it's a podcast about braille, and I’m the presenter.

The podcast talks about all aspects of braille. Most commonly, we discuss braille technology, including how we access, read, and write braille, and how these methods are changing and evolving. It’s a great privilege, actually, to be able to talk to people at the real forefront of the industry, and it's led to my own involvement in the braille industry becoming what it is today. Through Braillecast, I've made friends and developed relationships which have helped me along my career journey, and those friendships and relationships have, in turn, helped the podcast.

NIRMAL PUWAR: In terms of future imagination—in a kind of realm of fantasy—if we're thinking about the Cathedral, what would you like to see, or rather feel, happening in the Cathedral in terms of blind and partially sighted people?

MATTHEW HORSPOOL: I think it's very easy to see a project like this as just a project, with a start, an end and a set of deliverables. We have to do that from a fundraising point of view—going back to what I was saying earlier that we need money—and the only way that we're going to get money is to present a project with a start, an end, a set of deliverables and demonstrating that we've delivered on those deliverables. So, I do understand the transactional nature of projects like this. However, all of that— start, end, deliverables —stays in the planning room; it stays in the fundraising room. It stays very much as a business management thing and doesn't bleed out into the wider Cathedral community.

What we want to show the wider Cathedral community is that we are interested and invested in this. What I want to see from the Cathedral community in response to that is not just an acknowledgement that we have this wonderful model so that blind people could come into the Cathedral, but we want the model to be the touch point—no pun intended—of a broader commitment to inclusion and a wider commitment to accessibility.

It is not just about inviting a blind person in to feel the model—that might be where it starts—but it is an opportunity to talk more about the Cathedral and its vocation and the ministry of reconciliation. It's a way of talking about the Christian faith and engaging blind people, which can also encourage them to come to a service on a Sunday morning or a Sunday evening or might want to come to a mid-week service, a Lent course or engage in other things that the Cathedral is doing. It doesn't stop with the model, but it starts with the model. What I really want to see from the Cathedral community is embracing the fact that blind people are being welcomed into the space and to maintain that welcome and accessibility in everything that the Cathedral does.

NIRMAL PUWAR: Thank you, Matthew. You mentioned embeddedness and the welcome that we provide, and we started our podcast at the welcome desk. So, Freyja wants to share something that Dr Hall's project left for the staff at the reception, and what's the title of this booklet?

[00:30:55]

FREYJA PERKINS: So, the title of this small yellow booklet is The Reception of Your Visually Impaired Visitor and the Use of the Touch and Hearing Centre.

So, like Matthew was saying in that it's not just about the physicality of these models necessarily, but Professor Hall and his whole team—with Juliet and everyone that was involved—wanted the entirety of the staff at each cathedral to have training and know exactly how to welcome in visitors of all walks of life.

And so, this booklet was specifically written to give that entrance for people who are partially sighted or blind. The booklet starts with an introduction: “This booklet is for all those people in cathedrals who may at some time receive and guide visitors with a visual impairment. Your cathedral has a touch and hearing centre, which has been specially designed and crafted to enable blind and partially sighted people to appreciate the size, shape, beauty and architecture of the building. We hope that this booklet will provide you with useful, interesting, and challenging information. Blind people not only need to receive help, they can often give sighted people fresh insights. A warm, sensitive, and informed welcome will ensure that both blind and sighted people share creatively in the wonder and joy which your cathedral has to offer. John M Hall and Juliet Riv.”

I think all three of us agreed that it's not just this physicality that we want to take over and improve upon; we want this to be a legacy in terms of accessibility for all people who enter the Cathedral. We want this kind of training to be in place, and we want this to be a space of welcome, where it doesn't matter about anyone's capabilities, but we're all sharing in that, like it says here, sharing in our insights to improve the creativity of the Cathedral itself. That’s absolutely key.

NIRMAL PUWAR: Interesting. I don’t know if this booklet is in braille because it assumes that the person working at the welcome desk is a sighted person. We know that unemployment is very high for blind people, so it would be interesting to also think about the workforce.

MATTHEW HORSPOOL: As I said, it's a snapshot of attitudes at the time. That’s still a snapshot of an attitude today, that somebody at the welcome desk would be sighted. I think there are reasons behind that. I don't think that's an entirely unfounded attitude, but yes, it’s important to make sure that all of the resources are available in some sort of accessible format.

[00:34:14]

NIRMAL PUWAR: You both had plans for the kind of text that people could receive at the welcome desk, possibly reproducing some handouts. I don't know if you wanted to talk about that, Matthew? And you had a really interesting idea of possibly, on the day we launch this model and the whole project, playing some of the sound in the cassette through the PA system?

MATTHEW HORSPOOL: Yeah, I mean, there are all sorts of things to think about, aren't there? As I say, it's all really dependent on how much funding we can get, how many people we can find to help us run the project, and how much we want to reproduce and how we want to do that.

In the guidebook, there are already some swell paper images. These are images that have been drawn in such a way that when they are put through a special machine on special paper, the black part of the image will raise up, so they're essentially relief drawings, which is kind of similar to the acrylic model but in less detail in a lot of ways. They depict very specific parts of the Cathedral, and we have those swell paper drawings. They would not be difficult to reproduce. So yes, maybe we should have some of that available at the welcome desk.

But then the question is: do we offer them as standalone resources or do we make them available as part of a rewritten, relaunched guidebook? And when do we do that, and whose time is going to be spent doing that? How are we going to compensate that person? We discussed unemployment, so how are we going to compensate that person for their time, as well as the cost of the consumables? There’s a whole host of things that we could do.

Freyja mentioned that there were large-print leaflets, and there may have been braille leaflets as well. We've got some large-print ones left, but I guess we haven't got any braille copies. That might be because they didn't exist or because they were all taken. Perhaps it's something that we need to think about: producing some braille leaflets again.

References

Reeve, J. (1991) ‘Keeping in touch with cathedrals’, British Journal of Visual Impairment, 9(3), 91-93. https://doi.org/10.1177/026461969100900307

Hull, J.M. (1991) ‘The Tactile Heart’, The Expository Times, 102, 10.