National Inter Faith Week: day 2

Early in the day, Jan MacDonald (Secretary of the Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of Leicester) takes a turn on the stall between 1200 and 1400. She has a long conversation (over half an hour) with a young Sikh fellow, who talks candidly about how becoming a father has changed his attitude to his culture, heritage and religion. We also enjoy a visit from Parmjit Basra, Project Officer at Leicester City Council's Adult Skills and Learning Services, who was in charge of the recent Leicester Speaks event. (That's Parmjit talking to Jan in the photo above). Also on the stall at this time is Clive Sutton, from Leicester Quakers (the fellow in the dark jacket on the left of the photo below).
 

Early in the afternoon, John Florance pops in at the display to tell me that he'd given the exhibition a mention on his Sunday morning show yesterday on BBC Radio Leicester. This time last year, Noel Singh, Shaykh Ibrahim Moghrah and I appeared live on John's show to talk about the first National Inter Faith Week.

The undoubted highlight of this second day of our exhibition is the visit from The Wave (a supplement for young people, by young people distributed free with the Leicester Mercury). Katie Stewart (Editor), and reporter Will Sturgess arrive at the exhibition just after four, accompanied by John Coster and Tina Barton of Citizens’ Eye community news agency. On the display at that time with me are Ramila Chauhan and Smita Shah. Will interviews Smita and me and photos are taken of us in front of the Jain banner (Smita is President of Jain Samaj Europe as well as being Treasurer of Leicester Council of Faiths).

There’s a plan brewing between The Wave, Citizens’ Eye and Leicestershire Constabulary for an activity they’re calling “Speed Faithing”, in which young reporters will dash around the city to see how many places of worship – and how many meaningful encounters they can fit in with the people there – in one day. The Council of Faiths has latterly become involved in this.

In the last shift of the day, from 1800-200, I share duties on the exhibition with Sarfraz Khan, who works as Administrator for the Federation of Muslim Organisations (FMO). I've long been keen to get greater involvement of Muslim friends in Amplified Leicester, CreativeCoffee Club and other networking activities, so I take advantage of the moment to try and sell their usefulness to Sarfraz. I hope I sounded convincing, rather than just some mad old bloke riding his own hobby horse!

Here are a few of the comments that some of the volunteers who helped out on the exhibition today committed to our reflective journal:

"In the lunch hour there were a lot of people keen to hurry by and only a few who would allow me to catch their eye. One, from Thailand, wanted to see what the Council of Faiths had to say about Buddhism (he works in a casino here). Another, in a wheel chair, was glad of someone to take notice and chat. Others went by. A man at the next stand, trying to capture subscribers for Sky TV, said that he found this arcade a very difficult place and he found it hard to engage people, most of whom were heading for the clothes shops. A young clean-shaven Sikh showed interest, as did a visitor to Leicester whose girlfriend is a Buddhist chaplain in the NHS. Good interest from two Turkish Muslim engineering students"

"Some people had specifically come to have a look at the stand because they had heard it was here. Others were curious and asked, some took leaflets when they didn't have time to talk. Generally, the people who spoke were very positive and encouraging."

"Interesting experience. A lot of people passing by. Young ones are also stopping and taking interest. Quite interesting that a few we spoke to hadn't heard of Jains or Jainism. Not sure that it being going home time meant overall less people stopped by. Strange interaction but very enjoyable and some interesting questions get asked."