First day of our week-long exhibition in Highcross to celebrate Inter Faith Week,
showcasing the eight member communities represented on Leicester Council of
Faiths.
This is the third consecutive year we've been invited into
Highcross to put on this display. This time though, things are refreshingly
different. We're in a new location: bigger, more central - and (I'm glad to
say) warmer! This time last year, there was snow on the ground and we were
rather too close to the outer doors of the West Mall for comfort. The weather
is milder this year, but we're also deeper in the heart of Highcross (just over
the line that marks the start of the East Mall, for any retail facility anoraks
out there). We're at the bottom of the central set of escalators, which makes
this spot one of the most highly frequented in the whole building. The loos are
just behind us too, which helps make this a popular destination.
We're able to put more into the display this year. We have trestle
tables for the first time (three of them) we've borrowed the University of
Leicester's "Faiths Trail" and "Mapping Faith and Place"
banners (and a box of their guide books for the city centre walking tour of
places of worship). Our set of pop-up banners is arranged in a completely new
way, back-to-back in pairs. No doubt I'll be messing around with the
arrangement as the week goes on.
Rosemarie Fitton (who has helped bring down all the material from
Bishop Street), Gursharan Thandi and Shobha Trivedi are first on duty at the
stall today. Shobha's daughter, Natasha, helped out for a couple of hours at
this event last year. We're joined by Shobha's friend, Prafulla Raja. They all
help with the final stages of setting up so that we're fully operational by
1115.
I leave them to it just before midday, to take a smaller amount of
exhibition material by taxi to Beauchamp College for their "Together"
event. But no sooner have I arrived there than circumstances compel me to
return to Highcross - though not before putting up our old banner and laying
out some of our literature, leaving it all in the care of Council of Faiths
Secretary Inderjit Gugnani, who is manning a stall for Oadby & Wigston Sikh
community. Pity: I'd been looking forward to this one. I have to leave before
Bobby's vegetarian restaurant has even started cooking.
I'm back at Highcross just before 1400, in time to relieve
Gursharan and spend the next hour or so on the stall with Deirdre O'Sullivan.
Deirdre is a Lecturer in Archaeology in the School of Archaeology and Ancient
History at the University of Leicester. She's been instrumental in developing
their "Mapping Faith and Place" project. The next hour passes quickly
(for me, anyway!) with a very interesting chat about the project and related
topics.
Just before it's time for Deirdre to go, two Highcross staff
members arrive and start taking photos of our display. Jo and Laura (photo
above) put together a web page with highlights of each weekend at Highcross,
for staff. We'll be in the one they're compiling today, apparently!
In the outside world today, there's a procession between two Sikh
gurdwaras, as part of the local celebration of Guru Nanak's birthday. The
procession ends at Guru Nanak Gurdwara in Holy Bones, near Highcross.
Mid-afternoon, we see a lot of Sikhs coming through Highcross and many of them
stop and look at our display.
Since we first had our exhibition at Highcross in 2009, we've kept
a "reflective journal", in which we ask our Inter Faith Week
volunteers to record something of how they felt about the experience. We're
doing so again this year. Here are some comments by some of those who took part
on this first day of Inter Faith Week 2011:
"Always a learning experience - right at the start I spoke to a man who raised many questions about faiths - good starter!"
"Very few visitors to the exhibition, those that did were pleased with the information they could take away. Spoke at length to a teacher and passed on the light source / colander example explaining Hindu god(s), which she loved. One person went past muttering that the Christians didn't have a banner - but they had gone before I could catch them. Lovely talking to other volunteers."
"I have enjoyed being a volunteer for the Interfaith Council. I have learnt a lot by just observing people's reactions when reading quotes from various faiths."
"Although there were many shoppers, very few bothered to look at the displays. Talked to a Christian lady who wanted to find our more about the Faiths Trail and a teacher who took away a lot of leaflets. Many people just waled through the exhibition! It was lovely talking to Rosemary and Gursharan (George was fun too!)"
"Interesting being right in the middle of Leicester going by. People seem shy about coming in beyond the banners."
I'd say that's the sort of mix of comments I'd expect for the
first day, especially when we've had a few people with us who haven't taken
part in this event in previous years.
As well as our exhibition, the East Mall features a big promotion
for Nintendo this weekend. Visitors are invited to join in the celebration of a
host of imaginary characters who inhabit a fantasy realm, where they achieve astonishing feats of magical skill. These characters have
millions of followers, brought together by a common devotion that overcomes
differences of age, language, nationality and race. Their devotees expend
immeasurable amounts of time on the glorification of their idols and pour
unimaginable treasure into the coffers of those who are the guardians of their
legacy and the trustees of their future expansion toward global domination. I'm talking about Super Mario Brothers of course. Who did you
think I meant, faithful reader?
While on my way to Beauchamp College around lunchtime, I receive a
text message from my friend Javid Djalili, who says he's coming up from London
later this afternoon, to attend the first screening (Little Buddha) in our
Faiths Film Festival at Phoenix Square. I meet Javid off the train just before
1700, in time to dash down to Highcross so he can get a look at the exhibition (photo above).
Just as we arrive there, I receive a call from Maureen Sier, who helped out on
our very first Inter Faith Week back in 2009. While she and I talk about how
the week is shaping up, it strikes me that this is a serendipitous moment;
Maureen's daughter, Sonia, is a filmmaker who has worked on inter-faith themes
and topics (see my blog
entry about her film, Beyond Tolerance) - and
she's called me, out of the blue, just when I'm with Javid, who is in the
process of setting up Interfaith Focus, an international charitable foundation
for inter-faith filmmakers! So I pass the phone to Javid. He and Maureen have
never met, but they have what appears to be a convivial and useful
conversation, which I am sure is to their mutual benefit.
