Durham Cathedral

Overview

When your organisation revolves around a 1,000 year old grade 1 listed building, what do you do when a pandemic closes the doors for the first time in history?

Durham Cathedral is a Christian Church of the Anglican Communion and the seat of the Bishop of Durham. Its foundations were laid in 1093 and nearly one thousand years later it continues as a living place of worship, welcome and hospitality. In 1986 Durham Cathedral was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Site list, recognising the architectural and historic importance of the site.

Durham Cathedral is a charitable organisation. Like all English Cathedrals it does not receive regular statutory support and must rely on its own resources for its daily life, maintenance and development. There are daily Church of England services at the cathedral, which run alongside a programme of non-liturgical events and activities. In 2019, the Cathedral welcomed a total of 727,367 visitors.

And then Covid struck. Visitor numbers dropped to zero as the Cathedral was forced to temporarily close its doors. Durham was now a Cathedral without a building.

What Durham Cathedral wanted to achieve

Durham Cathedral knew that the time was right to invest in technology to help them overcome many of the limitations that the Covid Lockdown had exposed within the organisation. And with successful bids to the Heritage Emergency Fund and Culture Recovery Fund they looked forward to a future where they were not limited by their current technology estate, but able to evolve and adapt to change.

The Cathedral developed a Digital Evolution programme and Syncity were contracted to help them understand the journey they were about to undertake.

Our solution

When we first started working with the Cathedral it was to undertake a complete review of their current estate, from hardware, software, processes and mindsets. We worked alongside the Executive Leadership Team (ELT) to understand the true scope of the challenge ahead.

Using the Be The Five (BT5) methodology Syncity took the ELT through both Discuss and Discover, before writing a new Digital Strategy for the Cathedral (Decide).

Alongside this Syncity worked with departmental leads, again using BT5, to procure a new CRM, Diary Management system, Ticketing system, Volunteer system as well as systems in HR, Retail and PR. The focus being on outcomes that the Cathedral wanted to achieve and empowering the staff to be confident enough in making these choices themselves.

“Syncity has been invaluable in helping us to understand the relationship between digital and the delivery of the Cathedral’s strategic outcomes. Their ‘Be The Five’ approach has proved to be a very effective way of reviewing our software systems and has empowered our teams to make decisions that bring value across the cathedral. In a period of significant change, Richard at Syncity has been the best sounding board for all of our questions and always willing to offer suggestions and solutions to problems as they arise.”

Gaye Kirby - Head of Development & Strategy - Durham Cathedral

Syncity continues to work with the Cathedral on multiple work streams including a complete hardware refresh, a review of all existing cabling, a move to MS365, recruitment of a new digital post and most importantly supporting its staff in the delivery of the work.

The benefits Durham Cathedral is seeing

Since working with Syncity, the Cathedral has seen a number of benefits. Perhaps the most significant is that they are a more digitally confident organisation, excited by the future and how they can deliver their services differently to their visitors, worshippers and customers.

What was clear at the outset of the programme, was not just how far removed they were from being a modern day organisation, from a technology perspective, but just how little confidence they had when looking at technology. The main return on their investment working with Syncity is that it has increased levels of confidence of staff.

Working with Syncity has left the Cathedral feeling hugely empowered knowing that they now have the skills and knowledge to not be scared of technology, but to approach it in a methodical way, using their new guiding principles as barriers to stop them falling off the path.

“Richard has consistently offered support and guidance throughout our reviews of software, hardware and infrastructure. Our team has needed to engage with a radically different way of thinking about systems; Richard has always been available to answer questions and boost confidence, cutting through complications to help us focus on benefits to the Cathedral. This partnership working has empowered us to get more out of our IT in the future ”

Alison Cullingford - Head of Library and Collections - Durham Cathedral

The programme of work is ongoing, but the BT5 methodology is opening them up to more conversations, more joined up working, more understanding of how technology can be used across the organisation, now and in the future.

Becoming digitally confident has transformed how the Cathedral sees itself and in the future will transform how they are seen, in the UK and globally.

Durham Cathedral were Highly commended in the BCS / UK IT Awards 2021 for their Digital Evolution programme.