Local Democracy Week (2)

Following our conversation with Peter Bradley from Speakers' Corner Trust regarding Local Democracy Week (see blog entry Wed 28 Jul) there's a follow-up meeting lunchtime today at the Welcome Centre, involving a bigger group. Manjula Sood (our Chair) and Tony Nelson (our Vice Chair) who both attended the earlier meeting are here, along with former Chair Minou Cortazzi and former Secretary Angela Jagger. Ajay Aggarwal (our Co-ordinator) and I bring the Council of Faiths representation up to six. We're meeting Parmjit Basra, Leicester City Council officer who has been appointed Project Manager for the observance of Local Democracy Week in the city.

City Council has fixed the dates for Local Democracy Week in Leicester as Mon 11 - Sun 17 October. This is the week before Half Term in the city schools, which should make it possible for them to take part. Although the City Council can't offer financial support for activities in this week, it can give free use of any of its premises that are used for events. It will also create an events diary, posted online as a single resource base for the week and all organisations involved in Local Democracy Week can have their activities listed there. Parmjit told us that they'#re hoping for something more than the traditional meeting on the Town Hall steps to launch the week

A considerable number and variety of organisations, agencies and bodies around the city have been contacted and are planning their own contribution to Local Democracy Week. The Council of Faiths needs to focus on our own distinctive contribution and try to find some way of taking part that couldn't be done by anyone else and doesn't try to replicate something anyone else would try to do. A simple choice for us would be to organise dialogue meetings; perhaps we could give this a bit of a twist by organising such meetings by members of faith community groups who don't normally do dialogue together and perhaps in smaller meetings, with no more than a dozen attendees. lasting one hour at most. If we do that sort of thing, we could think about holding something small every day of the week, rather than try for one big single occasion. Maybe something like this could take place on Monday morning, Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday evening, Thursday afternoon, Friday morning. I don't know; these are just early ideas.

Ajay and I have been asked to represent the Council of Faiths on the organising committee, which meets for the first time on Wednesday 1 September.