ST PAUL'S SAYS THANKS

In the post at Pilgrim House this morning, I receive a number of cards from Seamus Seamus O'Looskan, Chaplain at St Paul's Roman Catholic School, one for each of the participants in the Philosophy Panel held there on 5 October (see blog entry for that date).

"Thank you for all your hard work on the Philosophy Panel; it was a remarkable success and an incredible learning experience for the students. They found it very interesting to hear people's beliefs. We hope to repeat this event next year and we would greatly appreciate your involvement in the future."

CITIZENS' EYE COMMUNITY NEWS CAFÉ,11 NOVEMBER 2010

Popped in this morning at the Community News Café held in Coffee Republic, Granby Street. It's Community Media Week (8-13 November) and Citizens' Eye Community New Agency has been holding Community News Cafés in different locations around the city, several of them each day during this special week.

In the process of riffing on some ideas to do with young people in the city, we come up with "speedfaithing" (not my title for it!) - which would involve a minibus full of young people dashing round the city fitting in visits to as many places of worship in a fixed period of time. We also make tentative plans for the young people involved in production of The Wave to come and see our exhibition in Highcross during Inter Faith Week and write it up for their paper.

Creative Introductions at CreativeCoffee

This text has been lifted wholesale from the CreativeCoffee Club blog, written by Jayne Childs. Read how she accuses me, in the most casual manner, of "shameless self promotion"! Oh, as if such a thing could ever be true, faithful reader ...

Anyway, here's Jane's account of this very positive and interesting meeting. I have not made any changesd to her blog entry, resisiting the temptation to alter her spelling, punctuation and grammar, even if it is patently incorrect occassionally:

This week's widely trailed Intros Round saw 20 CreativeCoffee members given two minutes to introduce themselves. This was more daunting for some than others, especially those who are doing lots of different things! You'll see that there was a lot of passion in the air this time!

I gave myself the unenviable task of both timing the intros and starting things off. I didn't get much time to note down what was said, so I'm sorry because I know I missed some things. If you'd like to add or amend anything, please leave a comment! 

For once, I introduced a creative project I am working on- making Nottingham Lace from original lace drawings. I followed a tip learned from George Ballentyne, and gave out a snippet of lace to everyone! Shameless self promotion http://www.jcmiddlebrook.co.uk/

Emily Keal is a young designer from rural Leicestershire who also works for SME Marketing (Who were well represented, having recently moved into new offices in Phoenix Square!) She has a new project selling countrycrafts and items for shooting (not the guns I assume!) which satisfies her creative urge and her entrepreneurial spirit! Westrell Country Products Limited

Vicky Dean and Sian Savage work for  new Phoenix Square residents, SME Marketing www.smemarketing.com. Not only do they deliver excellent Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media and Pay Per Click campaigns, they also teach companies how to do it for themselves. SME are currently working on Facebook Fan Pages which are delivering excellent payback.
Vicky is also Alpha Design, and organising a Craft Fair on 27th Nov at Rockafellas Bar on High St Leicester.

New member Holly Yanez is a woman with a vision. She is passionate about recycling and style, and is combining these in new project Venus Cow . The day job which pays for this is Wilson Purviss recruitment, a company who helps people find their perfect job, so they never 'work' again!

Sukhjit Singh is a individual who loves film, not being in front of the camera, but behind it and in production. He is looking to make contact with other film makers.

Lee Tomes  is another film maker and producer, working with Twist and Shout publications. Also working with Ross McMinn from Twist and Shout on a new project. http://twitter.com/findenlake

Samantha Birnie is also a new member of CreativeCoffee, she is working with Citizen's Eye and getting back into her true love, which is writing. She is particularly interested in writing about Women's issues and stories.

Helen Varley also has a passion. She loves... finance...yes you heard right! She travels all over the world training businesses how to think about their finances in order to communicate them better to staff, keep ahead of the competition and not get lost in a sea of numbers. We love people who are creative with numbers, in a good way of course! http://www.financetalking.com/

Rebekah Harriman is a creative woman, helping creative businesses get on with the job of beig creative by providing back office solutions and doing all the mundane tasks for you! As well as runnin her company R&R VA  http://www.rrva.co.uk/, she runs local Mums the Boss networking groups.

Rob Weale is an academic at De Montfort University running the CPulse programme to help creative people from across the East Midlands get themselves heard by hosting a showcase of creative content!

Ian Davies is a 'Network Weaver' working with De Montfort University and a number of charities. His passion is photography and poetry. http://twitter.com/@iandai

Trevor Locke is the Editor of Arts in Leicestershire webazine. He and a team of volunteers reveiw arts and music across the county. They also put on shows. Check out the website http://www.artsinleicestershire.co.uk/

Farhana Shaik filled her two minutes telling us about her recent publication, her new company Dahlia Publishing Ltd, the Asian Writer website and filming for a documentary. http://theasianwriter.co.uk/

Shovan Sarganum is SME Marketing web designer, although he also told us about the 'Getting British Business Online' project he is working on with BT, whereby businesses can registerand host a domain for free! http://www.gbbo.co.uk/

George Ballentyne is Equality and Diversity Officer for Leicester Council of Faiths. He is putting on a showcase in the HighCross centre for LCF and is looking for volunteers!  He is the longest serving member of CreativeCoffee Club, was the first to be interviewed by Farhana for her documentary, and also blogs and tweets about his activities http://equalitydiversityofficer.blogspot.com/

Lorraine Turnpenny speaks with enthusualsm about health and personal wellbeing. Luckily for her, she has turned her passion into a job with Forever Living health products. http://www.lorraine.myforever.biz/store

Nick Rawle is a photographer. His business focusses (!) on corporate photography but Nick works with Citizens Eye to offer photojournalism and events photography. He is currently planning an exciting project with designer makers in traditional East Midlands crafts. http://www.nickrphotography.com/

Tara Gatherer joined us for a very short time, but enough time to tell us about her work writing for Citizen's Eye and working in video production.

So there you have it folks, sign up for next time on Eventbrite and comment any amendments!

Comprehensive Spending Review: equality impact (2)

Second meeting in as many working days of members of the Equality and Diversity Partnership (EDP) at Leicestershire Centre for Integrated Living (LCIL), discussing the effects on Leicester of the Comprehensive Spending Review. EDP's role in this is to provide quality assurance, to affirm that Leicester City Council's Equality Officers' approach is sufficiently robust - that it's accurate enough to be used in an Equality Impact Assessment of the effects of the cuts on those covered by the various protected characteristics (i.e. age, disability, gender, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation, transgender). Leicester City Council wants our assistance to ensure that the second level of cuts that they'll be compelled to implement won't come as a double-whammy to those already hit by welfare and benefit cuts announced in the Emergency Budget in June.

15,000 SIKHS IN CELEBRATION

This article appears in today's Leicester Mercury:

15,000 Sikhs in celebration

A rainbow of colours brightened the streets of Leicester yesterday as thousands of Sikhs celebrated the birthday of the religion's founder.

Floats led a parade of up to 15,000 worshippers from the Guru Tegh Bahadur Gurdwara, in East Park Road, to the Guru Nanak Gurdwara, at Holy Bones, near St Nicholas Circle.

The Nagar Kirtan event, which has been held in Leicester for more than 20 years, marks the birthday of Guru Nanak Dev Ji.

After prayers and hymns at the Guru Tegh Bahadur Gurdwara, the procession took three hours to snake its way through the city.

Worshippers continued the celebration with more prayers and food at the Guru Nanak Gurdwara.

Sukhwinder Kaur, 44, of the East Park Road area, followed the procession with friends.

"I've been in Leicester for 26 years and every year we celebrate," he said. "We all feel proud to take part."

Friend Raman Kaur, of Evington, was there with her ten-year-old son, Onkar Singh.

Onkar said: "I like to walk with everyone and I like the nice food too."

Nagar Kirtan is the second of two religious processions by members of the Sikh community in Leicester every year.

The first is Vaisakhi, the religion's new year, which takes place in April.

Sisters Sonia and Kiran Punia, of Rushey Mead, were among those enjoying the celebrations. Sonia, 23, said: "It's just about celebrating the day and everyone coming together as a community.

"You get a real sense of pride walking through the city with so many people."

Kiran, 24, added: "We do this after the service at the temple in the morning. It's a big celebration all day."

Mohinder Sangha, the former president of the Guru Tegh Bahadur Gurdwara, also took part in the parade.

He said: "We get people not just from all over Leicester but from outside as well participating in this procession. It is a big celebration."

Ajmer Singh, education secretary at the Guru Tegh Bahadur Gurdwara, took part in the parade alongside dozens of children from the Khalsa Education Centre Punjabi School, which is based there.

Mr Singh said: "This is about involving all the community in Leicester regardless of religion, it's about celebrating."

Student Jagjit Kaur, 13, from Oadby, said: "It's about celebrating and the food is really nice. You get nice chocolate bars."

Comprehensive Spending Review: equality impact (1)

Meeting this morning of members of the Equality and Diversity Partnership (EDP) at Leicestershire Centre for Integrated Living (LCIL). We're focusing on the Comprehensive Spending Review and its likely impacts on those people who would be classed as belonging to the various protected characteristics (i.e. age, disability, gender, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation, transgender).

We're told that Leicester City Council is preparing to carry out a thorough Equality Impact Assessment of the effects of the CSR and Emergency Budget, drawing on reports and commentary by the Trades Union Congress, the Fawcett Society, Institute of Fiscal Studies amongst others to inform its approach.

The City Council will be taking as its baseline the economic impact on families in terms of poverty, then considering the proportionality of the people affected within the different protected characteristics. This has been made the priority of the council's Equality Officers, to be completed for presentation to Cabinet on 26 November.

Members of EDP from the Voluntary and Community Sector need to provide up-to-date information about which (and how many) groups, projects and so on within their respective protected characteristics are likely to be negatively affected. Of course, there are disabled people (for example) in the various faith communities, of different ages, sexual orientation etc, so there are cross-cutting issues to consider too. More proof that we're all in this together!

Q2 monitoring

Meeting this afternoon in the Welcome Centre with Andrew Tovell, who is responsible for monitoring our performance against the requirements of our contract with Leicester City Council.

There are two aspects to this contract: one, the delivery of what's called our "Core Service"; the other, responsibilities as what's called a "Host Organisation". Without going into detail, the former could be described as our inward-facing work (the day-to-day co-ordination of the functioning of the Council of Faiths), while the latter could be described as our outward-facing work (the relationship between the Council of Faiths and the wider community).

I'm still surprised at how much refining, how much fine tuning these reports require. You'd think it would be a simple matter to say what we did and when we did it. But to be effective, our reports have to be more nuanced than that.

Second quarter is often harder to survey effectively. It coincideswith school holidays, there's often a drop in activities because people are away. In our case, several of the activities to which we devoted our energy - such as the demonstration by the English Defence League, the celebration of Leicester Speaks (AKA Local Democracy Week) - happened in October, which is in the third quarter. So our report shows a lot of preparation that paid off in the next monitoring period.

We need to focus on outcomes, rather than just show that we've been busy. For the uninitiated (and I still count myself as being in that category for the most part), the difference between "inputs", "outputs" and "outcomes" has been explained to me thus:

input: you arrange a meeting, say, to discuss a dispute over responsibility for keeping clean a communal alleyway that runs between two different faith community centres;

output: people from the interested parties attended the meeting;

outcome: an agreement was made between the two community groups, resolving the dispute.

It's better for us to concentrate on a few central matters, than to provide a list of what we've done and when. We need to show the benefit of our involvement in these activities for the people of Leicester - not their benefit for the Council of Faiths.

CITIZENS' EYE COMMUNITY NEWS CAFÉ, 2 NOVEMBER 2010

At Kona Blue Coffee, Highcross, this morning for the regular Tuesday morning Community News Café run by Citizens' Eye Community News Agency. There's a heightened level of activity just now in the run-up to Community Media Week (8-13 November). I'm here today specially to meet Jo Inskip, who looks after Community Newswire at Media Trust.

Jon Coster is showing Jo around Leicester today, introducing her to those supporting the many and varied aspects of Citizens' Eye. I get to show her the Leicester Speaks website and talk about that project (and its legacy) as well as getting the chance to show off my blog - and we all know how much I love doing that!

EMAS "COMMUNITY IN UNITY" EVENT

To Nottingham this morning for "Community in Unity", an event led by East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS), at the city's Council House. I'm here representing both Leicester Council of Faiths and the Regional Equality and Diversity Partnership (REDP) along with Project Officer Kelly Jussab and Researcher Carolyn Pasco.

There's a range of displays, covering different aspects of EMAS's work as well as other patient support services in the region, such as:

• Amaani Tallawah African Caribbean Mental Health Service
• Awaaz-Asian Mental Health Resource Unit
• Bassetlaw Primary Care Trust
• Community Building Services
• Cooperative Community Action
• Digital Switchover Help Scheme
• Nottingham University Hospitals Patient and Public Involvement
• Sherwood Forest Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

The morning session begins with a brief dramatised presentation by Amaani Tallawah (whose name means "Peace and Impressive Strength"). This group has been supporting and empowering the African Caribbean community in Nottingham on mental health issues for over 20 years. Right after that we launch into a "World Cafe" consultation (as popularised throughout the region by REDP), involving a mix of practitioners, managers, strategists, service users, patients and their carers. What would appear to be small issues for the NHS can appear insurmountable obstacles to individuals and their families. In these times of straitened circumstances, service providers have to put their heads together and see how to tackle such issues and make the most of their resources, in terms of budgets and personnel.

Leicester Council of Faiths has had a positive and productive association with East Midlands Ambulance Service since I've been in my post: we helped them organise a "Faiths Summit" in Leicester, summer 2008; they paid for part of our exhibition that was created for Inter Faith Week 2009; and as part of REDP, we've been helping EMAS develop their Community Engagement Strategy this year.

Thanks to Nicci Crawford for the photo.

LONG LINKS WITH ISLAM

Very interesting letter in today's Leicester Mercury, quoted in full below, with no need for comment from me:

Long links with Islam

In the 8th century much of what is now Leicestershire came under the control of one the Anglo-Saxon's era most powerful Kings, Offa of Mercia, who ruled from 757 to 796.

A significant find from this period can be seen in the British Museum, a gold coin with King Offa's head on one side and the Arabic inscription which roughly translates as: "There is no god but Allah and there is no other like him".

A lot of early English silver coinage also bore Arabic inscriptions. King Offa and the English were not Muslims, but it is strong evidence that England and the Islamic and Jewish world had strong cultural bonds and trading links from the very earliest days of English migration to these islands.

The English immigrants of the 4th century were denounced by Roman propaganda as Barbarians, but in reality they did in due course settle, intermarry with the indigenous Celts, and after the later French conquest moulded this country's language and culture into the foundations of what we now know as England.

Islam was present at its beginning, and has remained with us to today, adding to our language (alcohol being just one Arabic word), culture and, most important, science and trade.

The very pages of this newspaper are identified by Arabic not Latin numerals. None of this of course has ever undermined English identity or culture – it has merely enriched it.

Recently, however, the true Barbarians returned to the street of Leicester, in the form of the English Defence League. Their message of hate and intolerance has no place in English society, which has a world-wide reputation for tolerance.

The violence that always comes with the self-styled EDL speaks for itself. Meanwhile, the majority of the population of this great city, which is a shining example of cohesion, have with dignity and respect, reclaimed the flag of St George for us all, from those who have only brought it shame and dishonour.

St George is the patron saint of England and Istanbul, a modern link between our country and the Islamic world that brings us back to the beginning.

As the Arabic coinage of the earliest English kingdoms demonstrate, we have had links with the Islamic world for hundreds of years.

Eric Goodyer, Colsterworth, Lincs