At St Philip's Parish Church, Evington this morning for the latest seminar in the University of Leicester's Mapping Faith and Place project. Mapping Faith and Place is funded by the Art and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) within their funding stream, "Care for the Future: Thinking Forward Through the Past".
The core aim of the project is explore the significance of South Asian religions and cultural heritage in Leicester's urban landscape. The wider context for this work, of course, includes the other aspects of religious and cultural identity and life in the city. There's more to the diversity of Leicester in terms of faith and belief than just the South Asian representation - as the project acknowledges, both in these workshops and in its print and online publications.
This is the second of three seminars for this project. You can read earlier blog posts for the first seminar (which I didn't attend) and the launch event (which I did), both of which took place in October last year. The third seminar will be held at the University of Leicester on a date yet to be decided, followed by a final conference in the summer (although it's hoped that the project will continue beyond that period of initial funding).
Leicester Council of Faiths lent a hand at various stages of this project (although if we'd grasped how significant Mapping Faith and Place is, we'd surely have done more to help). We borrowed the two pop-up banners for our display at Highcross during Inter Faith Week a couple of months ago, when we also distributed many copies of the Leicester Faith Trail booklet. Members of staff (Dr Deirdre O'Sullivan and Dr Ruth Young - both of whom are here today) and students from the School of Archaeology and Ancient History took part in that exhibition. I'm returning the banners today.
Jen Dickson (Lecturer in Geography at the University of Leicester) kicks off the day's proceedings, outlining some key academic ideas relating to this second seminar. Today we're considering how people develop a relationship with a place, a sense of belonging to a place (and of a place belonging to you). This sense of identity is complex and contested. It's no longer tenable to believe in a discreet, fixed, lifelong identity (which leads only to stereotyping). It's not simply a case of having a single identity, made up of different elements, more a case of multiple identities, which change in relation to space and time; not so much about possessing particular characteristics, more about how we perceive ourselves, especially in relation to others.
Our senses and emotions help determine whether we feel included or excluded in a place or a community associated with it, attached to or detached from them (applies to places and/or objects near and/or far). This brings to mind the particular example of RNIB College Loughborough's Faith and Reflection Room (see blog entry, Friday 16 December2011).
We discuss how contemporary politicians are co-opting debates about belonging, inclusion and exclusion, manipulating power and/or processes that permit inclusion or exclusion, in relation to Big Society, volunteering or where it is or isn't acceptable to dress or behave in certain ways (e.g. wearing the burka). We consider how individuals and groups resist such manipulation in modern society (e.g. Occupy movement)
There are 18 attendees here today, of mixed ages, backgrounds, cultures, faiths and traditions (though I'm sorry to note that there's no one from the Jain Centre or the Nagarjuna Kadampa Buddhist Centre, since they're both such prominent faith sites in the city centre). We’ve each been asked to bring an object with us that connects us to somewhere sacred. Now, I’m sure I don’t need to explain here that "sacred" means "set apart". This seminar is about sacred places, but it also helps shows us in what ways all sorts of things could be considered sacred. That can include things more abstract, including ways of being or doing, feeling, speaking and thinking. It could even be a narrative (I like that - it means even my blog could be considered sacred!)
The Leicester Bahá'í community has no public centre or place of worship these days, although I do mention on occasions such as this that the Bahá'ís had their own official meeting place in New Walk for several years from 1957, before there was a single gurdwara, mandir or mosque in Leicester. Despite this present lack (and without mentioning the historical anomaly) the Bahá'í Faith has its own page in the Leicester Faith Trail booklet published as one of the outcomes of this project.
Similarly, Bahá'ís tend to be "artifact-light" (I just made that up, but I'm sure you get my meaning) at least of the kind that fit into the typical resource boxes you might find in schools or museums. There's little to put in display cases in settings such as the St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art in Glasgow for example. There's irony here, inasmuch as the Bahá'ís were one of the most enthusiastic and supportive organisations behind the creation of the museum, but once the decision was made to concentrate on artifacts and objects, then it was a foregone conclusion that they'd be virtually excluded from representation in it.
Bahá'ís have always had a very rich historical self-awareness, consciously collecting, deliberately preserving and systematically archiving material items of all sorts. This is done nationally, internationally and locally, as anyone who has visited the International Archives at the Bahá'í World Centre on Mt Carmel, or has seen items from the British Bahá'í community's archives collection, such as those put on display at the National Bahá'í Centre in London during the recent celebration of the centenary of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's first visit Britain (see blog entry, Saturday 17 September 2011) will know.
But these are sacred items, relics, one-offs; they may amaze, inspire or thrill Bahá'ís but may appear trivial or incomprehensible to others. They aren't things used every day, nor are they everyday things that are used by Bahá'ís in their practice, individually or collectively.
So, within the parameters of the Mapping Faith and Place project, in what sense are the Bahá'ís a community when, for the most part, there are no physical centres, no meeting places for collective worship, when they gather in each others' homes or in rented or borrowed venues? I long ago understood (in my own limited capacity) what it means to be a community of common commitment, of ideas, of love for the same Beloved. We can be the exception that proves the rule here.
When I arrive this morning, Revd. John Hall has thoughtfully collected a small number of Bahá'í books and leaflets from the library in the St Philip's Centre next door and laid them out on display, in case I wanted to draw on them today. That's as close to artifacts as Bahá'ís ever get!
The kind of objects people have brought with them today include books, items of clothing, physical artifacts ancient and modern, original or replica, photos etc.
When we're called on to do pairs work about our object, I'm teamed with Surinder Pal Singh, General Secretary of Guru Tegh Bahadur Gurdwara, East Park Road. While he doesn't have any one particular object with him, he describes how the five Ks are the objects of belonging and identity, not attached to any particular place, but which he takes with him everywhere - which make his whole body a sacred site.
We're asked to consider the following questions in relation to the personal object we've brought with us today:
- How does it represent you?
- What aspects of your identity in particular does it highlight?
- What does it say about you personally and as a member of a community?
- How does it represent your relation to Leicester?
- How might it represent identity in the past, present and to future generations?
- If it does not represent past, present or future identities, why not? What object would?
I had no trouble choosing my object for this exercise today. When I asked Clare to guess what it would be, she said, "I bet it's your bloomin' iPhone!" And it is. Here are a few of the reasons why this is the object I've brought to this event today. I'm not expecting anyone else to agree with me (or even to understand my explanations):
- Google Maps. I prefer to walk wherever I can in Leicester. Even if it takes an hour or more, I'd rather walk. I would describe myself as a flaneur. Baudelaire defines the flaneur as "someone who walks the city in order to experience it." This is definitely the case when going to (and often returning from) the 19 Day Feast. Beware any routes described by Google Maps as "beta versions". "Use with caution" indeed. First time I looked up the walking route to one venue for the 19 Day Feast and it sent me one way that took more than 45 minutes. Next time, it showed me a route that took 24!
- Podcasts. I usually listen to podcasts of Astronomy Cast on my iPhone while on my way to the Feast. 'Abdu'l-Bahá instructs us that, "before entering [the Feast] free yourselves from all that you have in your heart, free your thoughts and your minds from all else save God, and speak to your heart". Odd as it may sound to you, faithful reader, listening to my favourite podcast, about the origin, history, present condition and future of the universe helps give me a sense of my place in the scheme of things. I don't see how anyone could attend to such matters and still consider themselves the centre of creation. It's like the Total Perspective Vortex from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (but in a good way!)
- Twitter. I can connect with Bahá'ís in other places, who are similarly anticipating or preparing for their 19 Day Feast, or who may recently have held theirs. It's not just those Bahá'ís whom I follow on Twitter or who follow me; I find the unpredictability, the randomness, not knowing who will see or respond to the hashtags #Bahai or #19dayfeast while on my way to the Feast genuinely intriguing and connecting.
I'd like to think that this will connect with the topic of the next seminar, which will consider how new technologies can be used to represent place.
After lunch, we further explore the articulation of identities, specifically religious identities, through the mind, body and the senses. We ask:
- How are religious identities articulated in private home spaces through food and fasting; dress; music; dance; ritual practices?
- How can religious identities or belief systems be articulated though the body in public spaces?
- How can religious identities or belief systems be articulated through time and place in public and private spaces (e.g. birth; coming of age; marriage; death)?
It seems to be taken for granted by those participating in this part of the seminar that the challenge facing religious people today is that of maintaining practices or traditions exemplified and transmitted in the home and family, against the malign influence of a changing society, maintaining momentum gained over generations. There were fewer thinking of how many people, newly awakened to the religious life (or who switch religious affiliation) are challenged to establish new practices, for oneself and/or one's children, from a standing start. So I challenge that first assumption (in typically courteous fashion, of course).
In the photo above: Dr Chris King (who began the processes that have led to the Mapping Faith and Place project at the University of Leicester, but is now attached to the University of Nottingham); Dr Deirdre O'Sullivan; Jen Dickson; Dr Dr Viv Golden; Dr Ruth Young.
