SO. FAREWELL THEN, DOWNSTAIRS OFFICE

The Council of Faiths has given up the monthly lease on the downstairs office at Pilgrim House. This is a purely financial decision as we look to trim our expenditure. It's something of a bitter-sweet decision as far as I'm concerned. I've been glad of this space just for my use, but the rent and all other expenses related to it have come out of my income.

It's been a useful and handy space for storage of our exhibition material and the like, but most of all, it's served as a good shop window for the Council of Faiths for several months. That A2 poster seen in the photo above afforded us an attractive public presence in a busy part of the city centre. More than once, while I was in the downstairs office, I heard people talking about the poster outside. On one occasion that sticks in the mind, a day or two after the summer riots last year (that barely touched Leicester) I heard a mother talking to her daughter, reeling off the names of our member communities identified on the poster. At the end she said, "Not every city has got all these different people living there, but Leicester does. That's what makes Leicester so special." Another time, a visitor to the city from Cologne in Germany saw the poster and came upstairs to chat for a while with Ajay. She'd been nursing a vague idea about starting an inter-faith group in her city but hadn't known where to go for advice.

Today I spend several hours moving the contents of the downstairs office upstairs to the Welcome Centre. I have the assistance of Clare, Harry and Grace in this task. Our work is broken up with a pleasant picnic lunch in the sunny Town Hall Square.

After a couple of hours, when the move is complete, the three of them head off and leave me to restore order to the Welcome Centre.