INTERFAITH FORUM FOR LEICESTERSHIRE: RELIGION & THE MEDIA

At County Hall, Glenfield (seat of Leicestershire County Council), for a meeting of the Interfaith Forum for Leicestershire. The topic this evening is "Religion and Media". I'm doing part of the presentation: one third of it, to be precise. First John Florance (BBC Radio Leicester) speaks on the topic in relation to broadcast media, then Nick Carter (Chair of Prospect Leicestershire and the Leicester Multicultural Advisory Group - LMAG) on print media. John (centre) and Nick (right) are in the photo above, with Resham Singh Sandhu, who chairs the meeting. I'm on last, speaking in relation to social media.

We have a good turnout (filling the Sparkenhoe Committee Room, with around 50 attendees) despite considerable competition this evening. Just a few doors away, top TV celebrity historian Michael Wood is giving a talk about his BBC series, The Story of England, which narrates the country's history through the story of Kibworth, a Leicestershire village that predates the Domesday Book. If I weren't in here speaking, I'd be in there listening to him!

Athea, from Faiths Forum for the East Midlands, brings the latest edition of their quarterly newsletter, Know Faith! issue 05, hot off the presses. It has good coverage of Inter Faith Week 2010, including our exhibition at Highcross and our feature in The Wave.

John Florance is Producer and Presenter of the Breakfast Show, on BBC Radio Leicester, Sunday mornings, 0600-0900. He gives a potted guide to the history of BBC Radio Leicester, including the birth of the BBC's Asian Network, which began in Leicester in the 1970s and still shares its premises. It's a statutory duty for local radio stations to have a programme on the topic of faith and ethics. John's show has a largely Christian audience, composed of older people up early to get to church. This doesn't stop the programme from carrying news and features about the diverse faith communities of Leicester. He lauds the good communication and positive relationship between the faith output and the newsroom. He is aware of the station's responsibility to promote good relations and better understanding among local faith communities. John also produces the "Thought for the Day" slot (he's asked me this evening if I would do a few of these - only 90 seconds long, thankfully!) He makes a few practical suggestions about getting heard on BBC Radio Leicester. Most importantly, tell him what's going on, rather than moan about it after it's over - and been missed. He also gives a few tips on how to write, submit and follow up on a good press release. He ends by acknowledging that those who genuinely know Leicester don't see it as a multicultural paradise - but one in which lively, courteous debate (some of which can - indeed should - be conducted on local radio) helps iron out the wrinkles among and between communities of differing background, practices and traditions in our city.

Nick Carter was editor of the Leicester Mercury for 16 years, having left the post two years ago in January 2009. During his tenure (says our Chair this evening), the paper covered faith community issues more sensitively and sympathetically than it does today. This evening he briefly considers how the place of faith in mainstream British society has changed radically, since he started as a junior reporter with an evening newspaper in Slough in 1975 (when religious news was made up of little more than church social events and traditional Christian festivals) and how the mainstream media has not kept pace with this change. He proposes that the media (especially local media) has a responsibility to dispel misinformation and lack of understanding. In this day and age, it's easier than ever for such opinion to find a platform, which makes the responsibility of "traditional" media all the more serious. The media as a whole has failed to understand the changing nature of religion, of communities and of their potential audience and customer base. They are now struggling to catch up - and for the most part, they have missed the boat as their audience has fragmented. Nick makes a plea for inclusion in the media of "soft news" - without setting the threshold too high, before faith issues are admitted into the mainstream as "hard news" when crises emerge. Without the background of "soft news" that would promote understanding and sympathetic coverage of faith and cultural issues. this is not as negative or pessimistic as it might first appear as he has a number of observations and suggestions for practical improvements.

My contribution is on social media, speaking about Leicester Council of Faiths' foray into Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, iPadio and - of course - blogging. I also give a puff to Amplified Leicester. I talk the audience through each of these (including my amusing anecdote about King Abdullah of Jordan reading my blog - unprovable either way, of course) and give a little live demo of a few in action. I come across like an enthusiastic twelve-year old at Show and Tell: "I've got a blog!" "We're on YouTube!" "Have you got as many facebooks fans as we have?" At the end of their presentations, John and Nick get a quarter of an hour of reflective, interesting questions; I get none. I think I've pummelled the audience into submission (but later this evening and early next morning, I get a lot of visitors to the blog).

I finish the evening here by recording half a dozen short video interviews with some of the attendees for our YouTube channel.

CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE IN COMMUNITY COHESION (7)

At Prospect Leicestershire, Colton Square, this afternoon, for a meeting of our sub-group working on the proposed Centre of Excellence in Community Cohesion. Round the table today:

• Nick Carter (Chair, Leicester Multicultural Advisory Group; Chair, Prospect LeicesterShire)
• Dilwar Hussain (Head of the Policy Research Centre, based at the Islamic Foundation)
• Jasbir Mann (Head of Service, Learning Transformation and Development, Leicester City Council)
• Riaz Ravat (Training Development Manager, St Philip's Centre for Study and Engagement in a Multi-Faith Society)
• Resham Singh Sandhu (Chair, Sikh Cultural and Welfare Society)

As we settle down to our business, I spy one of the Barry Naylors through a glass door, being greeted by someone in the next room. We exchange a wave. Our attention is drawn to a document in which Leicester City Council has outlined five outcomes it has set itself for the period 2010-11. Rather than set about reinventing the wheel, we consider how these outcomes fit with our project. They are laid out in the document as follows:

1. Different communities get on well together.
2. New communities bond together.
3. Everyone in Leicester feels they belong.
4. Young people understand and respect different communities, and adults and young people get on well together.
5. There is freedom from tension.

These are not a million miles away from the old National Indicators (indeed, they'd have been set when they were still live). City Council is likely to have an abundance of information that we can draw on in relation mapping these themes, from the Total Place Survey and other such sources. of course, mapping gives us a picture of what's been going on up till now - but we can't rely on those models to carry us into the future.

With withdrawal of funding for our role as Host Organisation from 31 March, this is one of the activities we may not be able to continue after that date. Without presuming to speak on behalf of the other VCS bodies in the city who have functioned up till now as Host Organisations, I don't know what sort of support this project will get from any of them after 31 March - even in terms of doing the mapping exercise. I think I've made that loud and clear.

I have a brief chat with Resham about his appearance on The Big Questions which was broadcast live from Leicester recently. The producer had contacted the Council of Faiths and asked us to put forward someone who could contribute to the discussion on Islam as being a guide for daily living. This was Resham, but he wasn't called on to speak on the show itself. He tells me that he introduced himself to the production team on the day and said that he wasn't prepared to take issue or disagree with the Muslim women who would be speaking, just for the same of making "good television". So they didn't ask him.

More general chat around the table follows about this topic. We all seem in agreement: no one here likes The Big Questions or anything like it. We discuss other recent instances of Leicester having been covered in the media (such as  Hardeep Singh Kohli's Radio 2 documentary series, "The Great British Faith"). We're of one accord in saying that often we don't recognise Leicester as it's presented in these settings and are often baffled by the people who end up interviewed or speaking on them. Riaz mentions having been approached by someone in the media to provide a soundbite response to the comments by former Justice Secretary Jack Straw about Asian gangs grooming white girls. When he refused to say something inflammatory, he was dropped instantly. Nick is making a presentation to the Interfaith Forum for Leicestershire on Monday about faith and the media (jointly with John Florance and myself). What he says today is that the threshold is set too high in the media for stories about religion or belief. They're unwilling to publish anything about the everyday life of faith communities because it's deemed to be unnewsworthy, so for anything to get coverage it has to be something extraordinary - and that often means something negative.

Centre of Excellence in Community Cohesion (3)

At St Philip's Centre this afternoon, for the latest in a series of meetings intending to present Leicester as a "centre of excellence" in community cohesion. The full meeting begins at 1530, but first we have a meeting of the smaller working group which is charged with carrying the ideas and proposals further - and closer to being a practical reality. That smaller group is made up of Jasbir Mann, head of Leicester City Council Learning Services (who is coordinating this group), Dilwar Hussain, from the Policy Research Centre, John Hall, Director of the St Philip's Centre (deputising for Riaz Ravat) and me. We have a short position paper that Jasbir has put together, based on discussion at the first meeting of this smaller group (see blog entry for Thursday 2 Sep). We divvy up this paper among us, for presentation to the wider group. I'll be speaking on the topic of having a "virtual" centre, as opposed to somewhere based on bricks and mortar.

Advantages of doing this virtually: it can be run without the need for meetings of everyone round the same table, it should be easier to involve other relevant groups and/or individuals on ad hoc projects; it should be less expensive (though not cost-free); easier to tap into the experience and knowledge of relevant groups, individuals or projects with their own virtual presence.  When interested parties come to Leicester, they'll want to meet people of course, but a virtual Centre of Excellence should be the thing that wins their positive interst and encourages them to come here.

When the larger group gathers, we're joined by Mike Burden (Chair of City of Leicester Governors Association), Nick Carter (Chair of Prospect Leicestershire and of the Multicultural Advisory Group, which was responsible for the Community Cohesion Charter that's been going the rounds in the city and county), Councillor Mohammed Dawood (Leicester City Council's lead on community cohesion), Iris Lightfoote (from the Race Equality Centre and Chair of the Regional Equality and Diversity Partnership). We're chaired by Sheila Lock (Chief Executive, Leicester City Council) who brought the original group together several weeks ago to discuss this project. Inevitably, some of our time is given over to debriefing about the recent demonstration in Leicester by the English Defence League (EDL) - a process that seems to be ongoing continuously in one form or another across the city at the moment.

By the end of this afternoon's meeting, our position paper has been presented, discussed and amended. Our working group is charged with turning it into a set of propositions that can be used to bring on board more likely partner organisations and that can be used also to attract funding.