Saturday May 18 2024
Picture by Andrew O'Brien
Fifty years of anything is quite the achievement – but 50 years working at the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland is pretty exceptional by anyone’s standards.
That’s the milestone reached by John Williams, head of the Audio Visual team at the General Assembly.
“I first got involved in 1974,” he said. “It would be hard to recognise it now from where it was then.”
Speaking a couple of weeks before the opening of this year’s Assembly, he recalls: “We started in a tiny control room off to the side of the Commissioners Gallery in 1974.
“I say control room, but it was really just a small cupboard, around three feet by three feet. We got by with that until the Queen’s Silver Jubilee year in 1977. I was working for the Home Board at the time and was asked to take over the AV for the Assembly, and as the Queen was due to be Lord High Commissioner that year, the Church wanted more coverage as the TV companies were interested in covering portions, so we took out a wall, put in a door and expanded the AV space to a whole 10 feet square! The mixer was so large that you couldn’t actually fit between it and the wall!
“It was a trend though of the recognition that AV was beginning to get in public occasions like the General Assembly, and the following year more upgrades were made again. For around 20 years I did most of it myself with the help of a small team.”
It was the opening of the Scottish Parliament – which used the Assembly Hall as a temporary home – which started a transformation.
“They installed a very comprehensive AV system and I was able to ensure that everything we needed was installed properly. Due to being ‘moved out’ by the Parliament, we had two ‘excursions’, one to the Usher Hall and the other to the Edinburgh International Conference Centre. For the EICC we were able to experiment by installing a large screen and, to our delight, it was a very successful addition.
“At that time there was a small team of us covering the General Assembly but after that it began to really take off.”
The following year video screens were put in.
“We wanted to go a bit further, so working with some of the Parliament people we tried some of the things they had done with regard to speaking and voting,” he says.
“Originally, if you wanted to speak, you’d have to line up down the side of the Commissioner’s Gallery and take your turn at the mic at the front. It was a little daunting, being in the full glare of the Hall.
“So with the help of the Parliament people, we installed 25 mics around the Hall, and gave everyone a swipe card. That swipe card meant when they put their card into the mic unit, the Moderator knew who wanted to speak.
“We discovered two things from that. We had far more elders speaking and contributing - and many more women used the new system to contribute. It changed the balance of the Assembly – I think for the better.
“The other change was to the voting. Previously it was a head-count and paper. With the electronic system, using 50 handsets passed around by the tellers, we could do a vote in four minutes. No one knew how you voted, and in some of the more fraught debates, that was a bonus.
“We’ve now got little handsets and can do a vote in around 10 seconds.
“These two things have made the biggest difference to the Assembly being inclusive, I think.”
John had planned to join the BBC as a technical operator but developed a spinal tumour aged 16.
“I was lucky though,” he says. “I happened to be in the right place at the right time and I started with the Church instead. I always loved tech stuff so I have learned on the job and now, my son, Nick is working in the field too. We work with a super team of people who have a total of 289 General Assemblies between them and it’s their dedication that drives the whole week.”
The Covid-19 pandemic created some unique challenges for John and the AV team and creative systems were developed to keep everyone taking part safe.
But the pandemic held particular challenges for John who has regular kidney dialysis and was advised to limit contact with others.
“I’ve been on dialysis for seven years now, and am able to do my own treatment – hook myself into the machine and so on. I have to go for four hours’ dialysis three times a week to the hospital.
“So irrespective of what is happening in the Hall this evening, I’m out of here at 6.30pm, and away to the Western General Hospital to be on the dialysis machine until around midnight,” he laughs. “And then back next morning to take my seat in the control room I use below the Moderator’s rooms.
“I’m looking forward to the week again – and though this is my 50th year working here, I’m looking at going another three years at least, so that I can have 50 years in charge of the General Assembly!
“It’s always good to have a goal in life!”
General Assembly 2024: Full coverage
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