Canon Angela Tilby writes:
ANDREW BARR was a broadcasting professional with an extraordinary and faith-driven insight into the relationship between television and society. For more than 30 years, he made an immense contribution to religious television as a producer, editor, and senior manager.
Andrew started his broadcasting life at the BBC as a film-sound recordist. His days on the road, travelling between film locations marked him in many ways; they brought out a stoic patience, an ability to stand his ground in almost any situation, and an ability to observe troubled scenes without judgement. In this time, he also developed his enduring empathy with individuals, his ability to “read” the concerns of whole communities, and his practical problem-solving approach to unexpected difficulties (he once rebuilt a sound recorder from scratch).
Recruited into religious television in the 1970s, he contributed to production in Scotland under James Dey, before moving to London to work with Ray Short in developing Songs of Praise. This was where I got to know him. I remember, as a rookie assistant producer, struggling under his guidance to learn the craft of directing cameras in parish churches and cathedrals. Andrew was a brilliant mentor, unfailingly kind, supportive, and ever watchful, and more concerned for my and others’ egos than for his own. His Christian faith was very real to him, but it was never partisan or complacent.
He was naturally ecumenical. He contributed much to religious broadcasting’s development under Peter Armstrong in the late 1970s and ’80s, contributing to This is the Day, Heart of the Matter, and taking on, for a time, the editorship of Everyman. He became deputy to the mercurial Colin Morris, providing a calm foil to Morris’s restlessness. In London, he was much involved with St James’s, Piccadilly, and chaired Donald Reeves’s Soul of Europe project.
When Colin Morris left to be Controller for Northern Ireland, Andrew was recruited to ITV, working for Television South, and relishing the freedom from BBC protocols.
Always alert to cultural change, Andrew was one of the first media professionals to identify the importance of rap music when it came to Britain in the 1980s. He ensured that gospel music was well represented on television, pioneering the Gospel show People Get Ready. He is remembered with affection by leading musicians and television professionals with roots in the Black Pentecostal community. All this came from his genuine belief in popular religion, and its rightful place in broadcasting. He was convinced that through community hymn-singing, Harry Secombe and gospel choirs could kindle and nurture faith in ways often ignored, not only by secular society, but sometimes by the Church. He had an “ear” for what people needed to hear and say in worship, and a recognition that this was not always well represented by clerical voices, however well qualified and well intentioned.
Major responsibility in Scotland came next when he was appointed Head of Education and Religious Broadcasting. This was where he endured what he described as his most painful test of faith, the coverage of the Dunblane shooting in 1997. Later, in a public lecture he suggested that a profound reticence was the appropriate theological response to such tragedies. But he recognised that something had to be said and done, and that the tone really mattered, and should be as inclusive as possible. Working with the Joint Liturgical Group of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, he produced resources for remembrance, Beyond our Tears, which was adopted by the Royal British Legion in 2005 and set the national standard pattern. In 2014, also for the Joint Liturgical Group, he published Out of the Depths, communal responses to public grief.
Andrew often appeared boyish, a touch delicate, and even eccentric, but, in reality, he was tough and resilient. His thin face and ready smile, his anarchic wit, old-fashioned courtesy, and gentle spirit made him a figure who was loved as well as respected. His wife, Liz, brought him stability and contentment; they were true partners. Andrew was one of those often hidden figures whose ability to see and listen and understand what was truly going on made them spiritual catalysts, often more so than those wearing the mitres and wielding the microphones.
Andrew Barr died on 15 March.
