INTER FAITH WEEK 2011, DAY 1: HIGHCROSS EXHIBITION

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.

INTER FAITH WEEK 2009: DAY 1

It's also day one for for our exhibition at Highcross, for Leicester Council of Faiths' new website – and for this blog of course!

To BBC Radio Leicester early this chilly, misty Sunday morning, to appear live on John Florance's show, just after 0800. I'm one of three being interviewed, the others being Noel Singh (Policy Officer, Leicestershire County Council) and Shayk Ibrahim Moghra (Chair of the Muslim Council of Britain's Interfaith Committee, amongst other positions). Ibrahim will be speaking mostly about Islam Awareness Week (when I arrive at the studio, Ibrahim is already in another soundproof booth, doing an interview on that subject with BBC Radio Cambridgeshire). Noel has been coordinating NIFW events throughout the city and county, publicising them through leaflets and posters and the County Council's website.

John introduces me live as someone rejoicing "in the title of 'Quality and Diversity Officer' for Leicester Council of Faiths". I don't know what a "Quality" officer would do in the context of that organisation (or any organisation, for that matter), but I like the sound of it too much to correct him on air. Each of us is given the opportunity to respond to three questions. I speak mostly about the exhibition in Highcross, Noel about what's going on in the wider scene around the city and county, while Ibrahim gets the harder questions about differences and divisions among and between religions - which he handles adroitly and diplomatically of course. I get a chance to plug our conference at Leicester College this coming Wednesday and then it's over. We leave the studio at 0830, shake hands, wish each other good luck with our respective activities for the rest of the week and go our separate ways for now. John Florance has posted about National Inter Faith Week and its celebration in Leicester. My content on that web page is not from the radio interview, but from a written statement I'd sent in to the station (at their request) a few days earlier.

Soon after, on to Highcross, to unload our exhibition material, put up our banners and display our wares in the Lower West Mall. First of all, we go to the Welcome Centre, to get all the stuff into Clare's little car. Amazingly, it all fits, but we've left behind the map of how to find "Service Area C". Once that's located and we get the material inside Highcross through the back door. Harry and Gracie are there to help, and do their best to pitch in, despite the greater attractions of the "Nintendo House" nearby.

We're a bit behind schedule, but have the whole thing up around 1130. I think itt's rather beautiful in its simplicity and adaptability. While I'm not officially on the rota today, it's hard to pull myself away. Julie-Ann Heath, Gursharan Thandi and Amanda Fitton are there virtually all day, till Highcross shuts at 1700. They do a great job together, of course, but I hover around the display – when I can drag the kids out of that Nintendo House, that is. They play Wii Sports and Super Mario Bros while I get my "brain age" checked. It's 71, apparently. The woman there tells me not to be upset about it, as most people "my age" come out around the mid-80s. Somehow, I feel neither relieved nor reassured by that.

We've provided a "reflective journal" for volunteers, in which they can record their thoughts and feelings about working with the exhibition, interacting with visitors, the reactions of those visiting etc. Excerpts from this journal will appear throughout the blog for this week, which will open it out with more than just my impressions.