Thousands due to join in parade

Nice piece in today's Leicester Mercury about the Vaisakhi parade that will take place in the city tomorrow. Over the past few years this has become a landmark in Leicester's calendar and it continues to go from strength to strength. This is a very positive article, with some helpful context and historical background: 

Thousands due to join in parade 

By Peter Squires & David Owen 

Up to 20,000 people are expected to take part in a parade through Leicester tomorrow to mark the Indian festival of Vaisakhi.

The colourful procession will wind its way through the centre of the city. 

It will be accompanied by devotional music, with spectators invited to join in with the festivities and share in traditional Indian delicacies. 

The Vaisakhi is an ancient harvest festival in the Punjab region and commemorates the founding of the Sikh nation in 1699. It also marks the Hindu solar new year and is observed by people of different faiths across the sub-continent. 

Visitors from across the country will swell the crowds, with up to 20,000 people expected on the day. 

Resham Singh Sandu, Leicestershire's first Sikh high sheriff and chairman of the county's Interfaith Forum, said: "Vaisakhi is a very special festival in the Sikh calendar – a time of fulfilment and giving thanks, and looking forward to the year ahead. 

"The procession will be a very lively and happy occasion, full of colour, music and dancing. 

"It's a chance for all the different cultures and faiths in Leicester and Leicestershire to come together. It's also a great showcase for the city." 

The three-hour parade will begin at about 11am at the Guru Nanak Gurdwara Sikh temple, in Holy Bones, off Vaughan Way. It will go through the city finishing at the Guru Bahadur Gurdwara temple, in East Park Road. 

Vaisakhi fell on Thursday, April 14, this year, but the procession has been held over until Sunday so as many people as possible can take part. 

Several hundred people gathered at the Holy Bones temple on Thursday – marking the end of six days of non-stop recitals from the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh holy book. 

Temple vice-chairman Sulakhal Singh Dard said: "From early in the morning, the hall was full of people celebrating and bringing respect to the temple. At one point in the day, we must have had more than 500 people." 

The parade will travel along Great Central Street, Vaughan Way, St Nicholas Circle, Peacock Lane, St Martins, Greyfriars, Berridge Street, Pocklingtons Walk and Welford Place, along King Street, Regent Road, Granville Road, Evington Road, into East Park Road.

Read the article on the Mercury website, along with reader comments: http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/news/Thousands-join-parade/article-3454982-detail/article.html

Happiness, happiness: the greatest gift that I posess

Further to my blog entry yesterday about the Office for National Statistics consultation on developing indicators to measure national well-being, there's a good piece in today's edition of The Guardian that I enjoyed reading. Visit the paper's website and read Suzanne Moore's article entitled "More stuff does not make us happier. Doing stuff, especially for others, does" along with reader comments: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/16/suzanne-moore-action-for-happiness?INTCMP=SRCH

In her article, Suzanne Moore refers to Action for Happiness. The Guardian covered its launch with an article on 12 April by Alexandra Topping. You can read "Action for Happiness movement launches with free hugs and love" (along with reader comments) here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/apr/12/action-for-happiness-london-launch?INTCMP=SRCH

This week's visitors

Here's the update on the number of pageviews the blog has received from different parts of the world in the week just ending.

1. United Kingdom 454 
2. United States 185 
3. Russia 61
4. Slovenia 36
5. Germany 35
6. Norway 29
7. Iran 23
8. Ukraine 22
9. Sweden 14
10. Denmark 10

This week's total: 869 (last week's: 701) These are aggregates of figures from the top ten countries only. Blogger's stats software doesn't show me numbers of pageviews below the tenth-ranking country.

So, if you're a visitor to the blog from one of these countries, why not leave a comment? Tell me something about yourself - and what you think of what you've been reading here. Don't be shy now ...

Oh and I can't really let it pass unremarked upon, that we hit 20,000 pageviews today. It took 14 months for the blog to receive its first 10,000 pageviews and less than 14 weeks to receive another 10,000.

How are you feeling, Britain?

One of the regular tasks that falls upon the Core Partners of the Regional Equality and Diversity Partnership (REDP) - of which Leicester Council of Faiths is one - is to read and respond to consultation documents, papers and proposals from various agencies and organisations that impact upon areas of equality and diversity.More often than not, these are produced by this department or that within national - local (within the East Midlands) or national .

I've just made such a response on behalf of REDP to the consultation run by the Office for National Statistics on developing indicators for Measuring National Well-Being. The consultation period has been running since November and closed today. But the website remains live, so you can check it out for yourself if you wish, faithful reader.

ME AND MY SHADOW

Rosemarie Fitton

Meeting Rosemarie Fitton this afternoon in The Crumblin Cookie on the High Street, to discuss a placement with Leicester Council of Faiths as part of her MA In Interreligious Relations. Rosemarie is pursuing this degree part-time through the St Philip's Centre for Study and Engagement in a Multi-Faith Society. She needs to do 30 hours of placement work (and write it up) before the end of May.

Heterarchy, the design company that Rosemarie and her husband Tony run, is closely involved in the design and fitting of the interior to the new BAPS Swaminarayan Temple in Leicester. When it opens later this will be the biggest Hindu temple in the country outside that same organisation's mandir in Neasden. She's working on a spiritual centre for the same group there. She's lent her support to some of the activities which I've promoted for Leicester Council of Faiths over the past few months (e.g. the Inter Faith Week exhibition in Highcross last year and the panel presentation at Amplified Leicester last month), so I'm glad to be able to return the favour.

Rosemarie will be shadowing me on three specific projects between now and the end of May. She's liable to feature regularly in this blog - and contribute to it occasionally - over this period.

CELEBRATING RE WITH NORTHFIELD HOUSE PRIMARY

This morning I'm at Northfield House Primary, to present certificates and book tokens to the school, which came first in a competition during National RE Week last month. Leicester SACRE (Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education) ran the competition for all schools in the city, under the title "Celebrating RE". I'm appearing here today on behalf of SACRE that I'm appearing here today. As well as the school itself coming first, one of the Year 2 classes won in their category and one pupil gained special mention as a runner-up for a poem she submitted.

I have to say that it's an honour and a privilege to be able to do something like this. I don't think the smile left my face the whole time I was in there.

Arguably the biggest claim to fame enjoyed by Northfield House Primary School is that Parminder Nagra, star of the movie, "Bend It Like Beckham" and long-running US hospital drama, "ER" attended the school. That's her in the photo above.

Council of Faiths Board of Directors meeting

The Board of Directors of Leicester Council of Faiths meets this evening in the Welcome Centre. Of our eight member faith communities, five are represented. After months of uncertainty, we're in more buoyant mood as our meeting with Contract Officers at Leicester City Council earlier this week has left us relatively optimistic about our future.

Beyond Grayling, Hawkins [sic] and Hitchens, a new kind of British atheism

The Census just refuses to go away. It's only been a couple of weeks since we were all filling out the forms and the statistics themselves won't be published till who knows when. Debate continues over our specialist subject here: the religion question.
Here's an interesting article from the Guardian website, Comment is Free: Belief. I don't know who "Hawkins" is, though I hope Dawkins isn't too miffed at being nudged out of this trinity.

Beyond Grayling, Hawkins [sic] and Hitchens, a new kind of British atheism

On 27 March, when British households were completing census forms, people may have chosen to answer the optional question, "What is your religion?". It is thought that the proportion of those who did, and ticked the "no religion" box, will have risen from the 15% it was at the time of the last census, in 2001.

Indeed, the British Humanist has campaigned for this. It cites statistics estimating that more like between 30% and 40% of the population is "non-religious", increasing to as much as 65% for young people.

But what does it mean to be a "none"? Does it mean just being indifferent to religion, or being an atheist? Social research has begun to try to understand this growing constituency defined by what they are not, and we are contributing to this with a one-year project speaking to young people who identify themselves as atheists, free thinkers, humanists, secularists, sceptics – or all of the above.

Public debate so far has tended to focus on the high-profile, rather old "new atheists" such as AC Grayling (with his bible for atheists just out), Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, but from the numbers it appears that atheists are relatively young.

From our research so far it seems they may be more flexible and open to different perspectives than older non-religionists (some report attending events with actively Christian friends), and prefer to engage with online communitiesthan belong to official organisations. They are strongly influenced by family and education. Some have reacted against Christian upbringings; have been influenced by writers like Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris; one man is looking to challenge the influence of the Christian Union on his university campus; and another would like to break the association between Britishness and Christianity. For one woman, the important thing is being pro-human rather than anti-religious.

Whatever the variety in terms of identities, journeys to and reasons for stances, the group we have engaged with so far is demographically similar – mainly British-born, white and middle-class, planning to go to, attending or having been to university. This fits with other people's findings, though of course there are exceptions.

We cannot generalise from our small sample, but research elsewhere indicates that an actively non-religious position is more socially acceptable in Britain than in the US, and is easier for a young person to proclaim in contemporary Britain than a Christian identity.

This suggests real and distinctive social change in Britain, which some scholars now refer to as "post-Christian". Nonetheless, Christianity is clearly of enduring social significance for some "young atheists". They can struggle to affirm the positive rather than negative content of their "irreligious" identity, but we're finding faith in people rather than nothing, and that the secular can be just as moral, emotional and sacred as the religious.

Read this article on the Guardian's Comment is Free: Belief website, along with reader comments:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/apr/14/atheism-socialnetworking?CMP=twt_fd

CreativeCoffee Club

Several new faces at CreativeCoffee Club this morning, at Phoenix Square Film and Digital Media Centre. A few familiar though unexpected ones too! There's also the debut of a slide show made up of artwork, designs and photos from the regulars, an example of which can be seen above. this played on the matrix screen in the cafe bar throughout our two hour meeting. It was switched off promptly when we were finished; I think it should have been left on longer, as it's a lot more interesting and varied than what's usually showing!

Visit CreativeCoffee Club's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ccleic#!/ccleic?closeTheater=1

Council of Faiths question for Mayoral candidates

This evening, the Bishop of Leicester (Patron of Leicester Council of Faiths) hosted an event in St Peter's Church, Highfields, at which three of those hopeful to be Leicester's first elected Mayor faced questions from members of the public. Forty people attended the debate with Ross Grant (Conservative), Gary Hunt (Liberal Democrat) and Sir Peter Soulsby (Labour).

Our Chair, Councillor Manjula Sood, attended and was able to ask a question: "This year is the 25th anniversary of Leicester Council of Faiths. The peaceful coexistence of our diverse communities has helped give our city a positive reputation all over the world. What would each of the candidates do as Mayor to help safeguard, promote and celebrate the contributions of these communities to the life and image of Leicester?"