Today Andrew was interviewed by The Community Channel for a feature on the event we are planning to mark the Olympic Torch Relay as it passes down the Stratford Road close to the Faithful Neighbourhoods Centre.
Called ‘Sunrise in Sparkhill’ The event will be on Sunday 1st July and features breakfast, mini-Olympics, face painting and mendhi along with a full program of events on the bandstand. This will be compered by Nikki Tapper and conclude with the reading of a Faith Pledge led by the Bishop of Birmingham and members of the Birmingham Faith Leaders Group.
Look out for pictures form the event and the wording of the Faith Pledge coming soon.
Big thanks to Matt Kendall for sending us this report of a Near Neighbours project in Aston. If you have a story of a Near Neighbours activity or project we would love to feature it here
Aston Sports and Community Club’s (ASC) Near Neighbours Project is all about reclaiming Aston Park as a resource for the whole community, and while the majority of their activity is around sport and young people, this project is focused on work with the over 50s, a group often neglected in cohesion work locally. ASC’s project includes a series of 6 events where local older people from different faiths are brought together around shared interests and activities in spaces in and around Aston Park in order to build lasting relationships and friendships. Matt Kendall, a Director of ASC, and the project lead explains, “Older people are often the hub of their families, and we believe by building relationships here, when often there hasn’t previously been any work on building cross community understanding, we can make a real difference to both those directly involved, but also their families.”
The first event in the series was a tour of recently revitalised and restored Aston Hall, a beautiful Jacobean stately home in the heart of Aston, which has struggled to attract local visitors, drawing instead from the suburbs of the city. With the cooperation and support of the Hall’s excellent staff, the group of 38 older people from Aston, enjoyed tea and cake together, followed by some directed work in groups around active listening and sharing of each other’s stories of their own memories of Aston, and how they arrived there. Once the hard work was done, the group left on 2 guided tours of the hall, one of which was bi-lingual in Urdu, for the next 30 minutes.
From the signing in records, it was estimated that 21 churchgoers attended, 15 from mosques and 2 further of no affiliation. Feedback from the participants was first class, the organisers being thanked profusely, and ASC’s belief that working with this group was sowing on fertile soil was upheld. ASC believes that this is just the start of positive relationships, and we are looking forward to our next event, which is a partnership with local churches and groups for a Jubilee Big Lunch in Aston Park on Sunday 3rd June – watch this space for more detail.
If you want to know more about ASC’s work with older people do contact Matt by e-mail at info@astonsportsclub.com or visit the website.
Across the country people are gathering to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the congregation at St. Christopher’s Church in Springfield are no exception. They worked with friends from the Woodlands Road Mosque to organise a big lunch for the whole community. Springfield is a predominantly Muslim area of Birmingham, but the church has built good links with people from all walks of life over the yeras. They benefitted from a small Near Neighbours grant to help them fund the games, decorations and activities that were all pert of the celebrations.
Several hundred people attended the event which was helped by the glorious sunshine throughout the day. Whilst the adults sat and eat and chatted children enjoyed playing on the bouncy castle, making crowns, face painting and tucking into an enormous amount of tasty food.
Jubilee Debt Campaigner, Audrey Miller, was given a Near Neighbours grant to run workshops for women in Sparkhill on the theme of global poverty. The workshops were run at the Faithful Neighbourhoods Centre in March and Audrey was kind enough to share photos and her evaluation with us.
She said that all four creative workshops received positive feedback from the participants who really enjoyed their interactive nature. Activities ranged from banner-making to debate, from crafts to role-play.
The numbers of women attending varied from eleven to eight for the four sessions and participants were drawn from the Sikh, Muslim and Christian faith traditions.
Amogst the Christians were people from the Seventh Day Baptist Church, Church of God of Prophecy and the Orthodox Polish Russian church – all were new to Jubilee Debt Camppaign Multi-Faith meetings.
Different perspectives were given by women of African- Caribbean, Moroccan, Philippine and Asian heritage, who shared their experiences of poverty and culture.
A Jubilee Debt Campaign information resource pack was given to those attending the session and a fairtrade rainbow scarf was given to each participant and used to “create” a new item. This resulted in turbans, a cotta, bags, a necklace and various styles of scarves.
You can seem more photos from the workshops on the Near Neighbours Birmingham facebook page
Last night was the official opening of the fantastic Art4Action exhibition at MAC in Birmingham.
Art4Action is the brainchild of Faiths Act Fellows, Immandeep Kaur and Steve Hirst who have been based at the Springfield Centre working both with the centre and with The Feast since last September.
Faiths Act Fellows are part of the Tony Blair Foundation and as part of their work they are asked to raise awareness of and raise funds for the fight against malaria. Steve and Immy’s response has been Art4Action – a competition to engage children and young people in the issues and to develop creative and imaginative responses.
Steve and Immy have worked tirelessly delivering workshops about malaria is schools, nurseries and colleges across Birmingham. Through the workshops they have interacted with around 2,500 children and young people and ended up with 400 entries into the competition.
Yesterday we were privileged to see a selection – they were really fantastic. I am afraid the photos from my phone really don’t do them justice. The exhibition runs at the MAC til April 28th and there is a special family fun day this Saturday. You can find out more at www.facebook.com/Art4Action.
The special photobook is a real gem and my congratulations goes to the inter-faith judging panel that managed to make some really hard decisions.
We are really pleased that Near Neighbours could fund this project – fantastic work, Immy and Steve.
Near Neighbours Development worker Jessica Foster writes: The small grants part of the Near Neighbours programme has been running for just over seven months now and we have funded well over 40 projects, distributing nearly £170,000 to projects and activities that will create and strengthen friendships between people of different faiths who live close to one another.
For some projects the planning is over and it has been an absolute privilege to have been invited to the launch of a job club in Handsworth and the evening celebration of Hodge Hill’s Unsung Heroes recently.
While both events were very different, responding to the different needs in different parts of the city what delighted me was that at both occasions I saw that very real friendships were being built and nourished between people of different faiths and ethnicities who discovered huge amounts in common – shared values, shared concerns and shared neighbourhoods.
On my table of heroes in Hodge Hill, people from different faiths and ethnicities chatted away, building and deepening friendships. Throughout the evening we saw people appreciating the contribution their neighbour was making and that appreciation was enthusiastic, heartfelt and warm as people saw in one another the shared willingness to work together for the good of Hodge Hill.
In Handsworth the commitment to give the most disadvantaged people a second-chance had brought a steering group together to support Alvin Henry and the Dorcas Club to set up a job club. Here people wanted to see young people skilled and equipped to achieve in a competitive employment market. There was a particular concern for people who had left prison and were struggling to quit the offending cycle without any hope of a job.
Amongst this steering group of people was Ajit from the local gurdwara. Alvin told us that the Near Neighbours grant meant he needed a steering group made up of people from different faiths and he had approached Ajit from the Nishkam centre expecting a formal half-an-hour meeting. Three hours later Alvin and Ajit had become firm friends and Ajit is now an integral part of the group overseeing the job club.
At a lecture I attended as part of the Muslim-Christian forum residential for women we heard that friendship is not only personal and intimate but also civil and political. Friendships have the power to bring about real and lasting change in communities. We sometimes think they are something that happen to us but in reality we choose and nurture our friends. We hope Near Neighbours helps to build hundreds of new friendships across this city – we do hope you can be part of it
Why is it that inter-faith events seem to attract more women than men, and that women’s events are often better attended than ones for men. These were some of the questions we considered at the consultation on the 21st March.
First of all we recognised that there is lots of good inter-faith work going on, and that there is an issue of needing to get more women involved in leadership. We also weren’t suggesting that events for women should be in anyway curtailed or undermined by this discussion.
We also acknowledges that there are good examples of men’s interfaith events especially some of the sporting competitions that take place.
We spent a good deal of time looking at what we thought might prevent men attending inter-faith events. Some the the suggestions we came up with included:
Enjoying competative activities that are often missing in inter-faith events
Not seeing the need for just building relationships, more interested in networking or making contacts
Wanting to engage through doing not just talking
Not wanting to be made to feel foolish, for example by sharing in small groups
Different communitities having different expectations of how and when an event is run
Not being convinced that it is worthwhile, so needing the aims and motives to be better articulated
We went on to discuss what we could do to overcome sdome of these obstacles. Some of our conclusions included:
Ensuring joint leadership from different communities in the planning of the events
Finding appropriate competative activities to form the basis for the discussions and engagment
Less talk of relationships and more emphasis on activity, contacts and networking
Focus on specific interest or work groups eg local business men, the elderly, sports
This was a consultation not a conclusion so please feel free to add your comments and thoughts, or discuss these questions amongst men that you know.
Following the successful ‘Faithful Conversations’ training day in February we are running it again on 21st April, this time starting at 7:30 so that those who work during the day can attend.
The programme will follow the same pattern as last time with an opportunity to think about our own faith story and how we can share that with others in a constructive and positive way.
The training also includes listening exercises and the opportunity to hear the experiences and beliefs of others.
On the 9th of February we ran the Faithful Conversations training morning at the Faithful Neighbourhoods Centre. The morning included a chance for people to think through their own faith stories and then to have the opportunity to share those stories with others, to learn how to speak positively about faith and how to listen to others. It was also an opportunity to hear the faith stories, beliefs, practices and experiences of others.
The morning was greatly appreciated by all the participants. Read what they said about it:
There were really interesting discussions held with interesting people
The course was excellent, easy to get to and with parking available
There was a good balance between activities and discussions
It was very useful, I will definitely be having ‘Faith Conversations’
Due to the popularity of this course we are planning to run it again in the evening of Thursday 26th April. You can find all the details on our events pages
Getting people of different faiths into the same space is the beginning of process that can be hugely enriching, transformative and exciting but it does not happen naturally. How do conversations move from the superficial to the spiritual without feeling artificial and stilted?
To help people think through how they can have conversations about faith that have integrity and honesty we are running a training day at The Faithful Neighbourhoods Centre on Thursday 9th February 2012.
The course will run from 10am to 1pm and will include lunch. The cost of the course is £15 (£10) concession. To register contact Parm Sidhu the Centre Administrator.
