Last year, Art Beyond Belief ran a successful Festival of Dialogue in Slough. This year we are organizing further events across the Thames Valley in conjunction with SEEFF. There will be a number of round table discussions organized across the area, followed by a conference in Slough on 22nd May.

During the events, we will be looking further at some of the preconceptions that various groups have of others, and attempting to identify ways in which these destructive patterns can be dismantled and replaced with positive communication and understanding.

Could you, or your interfaith group, run a local discussion event?

- a toolkit including background information will be provided

Sign up now for the conference or to attend a local discussion event

There will be a limited amount of exhibition space available at the conference too

To book, or for more information, please contact us at Art Beyond Belief,
email andrea@art-beyond-belief.com. Telephone 07958 320686

Rucksack is a three-year project funded by The LankellyChase Foundation,  working with children and young people with Asperger’s Syndrome and their siblings to explore family life and relationships. Rucksack is an innovative programme that helps provide a vocabulary for self expression and understanding through innovative use of computer-based art and graphics.

If you work with an individual or a group with Asperger’s syndrome or their families, or know someone who might benefit from taking part, or would like to find out more, please contact David Sparrow on 07958 320684 or email david@art-beyond-belief.com

The idea of ‘giving away’ a piece of Christian devotion was something that took a lot of discussion and soul searching. Here was something very specifically Christian; normally, there are small plaques around a church to commemorate each station, with prayers said at each one.

We asked ourselves some questions. What if we replace these plaques with video monitors, and at each one show a multimedia presentation representing that station? What if we invite artists of other faiths to work on the content of each? In short, what if we give it away?

The Via Dolorosa project is the answer to theses questions. Planning began in Summer 2003, with a pilot project of two stations completed in January 2004. In October 2004 we were awarded Arts Council England funding to complete the project, which was shown for the first time in March 2005 at its home church of St Mary’s in Slough.

What is the Via Dolorosa?

Early Christians would sometimes visit Jerusalem as pilgrims, to walk in the footsteps of Jesus and reflect upon his life and death. One of the journeys they would make followed the walk that Jesus took to the place where he was killed by crucifixion.

The path that Jesus had walked became known as the Via Dolorosa – the way of pain, or of sorrow. Pilgrims would stop at various places along the route to pray and to contemplate what happened there, and would mark the stages of the journey for others to follow.

By the fourteenth century, series of ‘stations’ were to be found at monasteries and churches to enable these devotions without the need to travel to Jerusalem. The traditional fourteen stations first appeared in the sixteenth century, and were standardised by the eighteenth century. The last, fifteenth station is a more recent addition that is included in some traditions.

Using the Via Dolorosa

See more information about the fifteen stations

Find out more about the artists

On 21st February the Festival of Dialogue culminated in a successful interfaith conference held at St Mary’s Church in Slough. More than 150 people of different faiths and none shared their experiences, and put questions to a multi-faith panel. The evening ended with food and entertainment.  The Festival of Dialogue leads on from our Faith Junction project, during which ordinary people from the Christian, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh faiths in Slough interviewed each other about belief, teachings and understanding.

Previously in the Festival, a series of six Round Table discussions were held on subjects that emerged during Faith Junction as particularly important to members of our faith communities. The subjects we focused on were gender, spirituality, age, responsibility, compassion and religion in a secular world. The discussions took place Slough Grammar School in Slough.

We also held Borrow-a-Person events at Slough Library during February. The idea of ‘Living Libraries’ was introduced in 2000 by the Danish Youth organisation ‘Stop the Violence’. It has been developed in a number of countries and has been gaining popularity in English libraries. This is the first time that sessions have been offered in Slough. The ‘living books’ to be borrowed were ordinary members of local faith communities, who were happy to discuss their religion and traditions, faith and spirituality, beliefs and experiences and many other subject besides.

The Festival of Dialogue is supported with funding from the Quality and Human Rights Commission.

Read a report of the conference and view pictures

Download the Round Table discussion notes and view pictures

Read more about Borrow a Person

]]> http://www.art-beyond-belief.com/festival-of-dialogue/feed/ 0 http://www.art-beyond-belief.com/faith-junction/ http://www.art-beyond-belief.com/faith-junction/#comments Sat, 07 Feb 2009 20:38:07 +0000 admin http://www.art-beyond-belief.com/?p=166 Faith Junction involved teams of two ordinary people of faith interviewing members of another faith.  The interviews were based on ten questions put together by Slough Faith Partnership.  The interviews have been edited to produce a series of educational DVDs. They are ideal for use as a talking point for discussion, or a  focus for meetings where religious harmony or religious difference is a key issue.

People working with interfaith and inter-community matters report a difficult balancing act; in areas where multi-cultural community is long-established and relatively harmonious, there is felt to be a need to move forward from simple hospitality at places of worship and common statements, however worthwhile these may be. There is a need to identify arenas where more challenging and pressing matters of faith, doctrine, theology and tradition can be addressed.

Faith Junction involves teams of two people from major faiths interviewing members of another faith; those taking part are ordinary members of their faith. Participants are trained in interview techniques, and the interview question and answer sessions are recorded on video. The resulting recorded interviews are then edited, to produce a series of educational DVDs. How members of one religion perceive members of other religions, their doctrine and their theology is a largely undocumented area.

Organizations that work in the interfaith arena are aware of how largely unrepresentative their work can be if compared to a larger framework. This project will provide information that will give an insight into the positive and negative areas of the interfaith dialogue – highlighting areas of openness and opportunity and flagging up difficulties and potential problem issues for more detailed study.

Faith Junction involves a high degree of personal contact between different faith partners, and it is very much hoped that the resulting interviews will used by those taking part in their own places of meeting and worship, as well as in the wider community. The interviews themselves will become a talking point, and can provide a focus for meetings where religious difference or religious harmony is a key issue.

Download the Faith Junction quarterly reports

See video clips of some of the interviews

View the starting point questions for the interviews

Art Monitor comprises a series of programmes designed to help members of vulnerable communities increase self-confidence, communication skills and self-determination. Programmes use techniques such as colour manipulation and perspective, comic-book styles and graffiti to assists with self confidence and understanding of self and others, to foster an interest in art – both traditional and contemporary – and to encourage learning and using of computer based skills such as Photoshop.  Art Monitor projects are designed to be delivered in small groups, using top-quality AppleMac computers, by a creative facilitator and a psychologist, who monitors participants’ progress in the project.  The programmes are designed for people with learning difficulties, those with mental health issues, victims of domestic violence, carers, young offenders, children and young people excluded from mainstream education, and others.

Art Monitor programmes include Kaleidoscope, which works with colour, Looking Glass, which works with perspective, Not-So Comic and ColourKube, as well as programmes that use art, cartoons and graffiti.

During 2008 and 2009, we have been working with a number of partner organisations on the pilot Art Monitor programme funded by Arts Council England. During 2009 we will be widening the scope of the programme to include new client groups, new partners and new approaches.

If you would like more information about Art Monitor, or would like to see some of the programme in action, please contact us:
David 07958 320684 david@art-beyond-belief.com
Emel 07956 022197 emel@art-beyond-belief.com

]]> http://www.art-beyond-belief.com/art-monitor/feed/ 0 http://www.art-beyond-belief.com/insight/ http://www.art-beyond-belief.com/insight/#comments Thu, 04 Dec 2008 13:22:37 +0000 admin http://www.art-beyond-belief.com/?p=135 Insight is a completely new style of interfaith training developed by Art Beyond Belief with funding from the Sir Halley Stewart Trust. The aim of Insight is to challenge preconceptions – of other faiths and cultures, of other people – and also of yourself – your faith and your culture.

Who has responsibility for attitudes to a faith? Should we care what other people think of our faith? Should we be prepared to make compromises, and if so, in what areas? Can we have dialogue without compromise? What happens when the going gets tough? Are we prepared to settle for comfortable, box-ticking interfaith, or do we aim for something more meaningful and potent?

Insight is delivered in an engaging and challenging way, using innovative computer-based techniques to provoke thought, stimulate discussion in small groups. and encourage self-exploration. The programme is based on techniques developed during Art Monitor,  a programme we created and delivered to a large number of groups over the past two years with life-changing results.  It also calls on our experiences during Faith Junction -  a programme during which ordinary people of faith interviewed each other on matters important to them and their faith. The Insight programme comprises eight modules lasting 75 minutes each. Sessions are flexible; they can be delivered individually, as a half day with two modules, a day with four modules, or two days for the whole programme. No previous computer knowledge is required in order to take part in Insight!

Interfaith Training from a new perspective

he head of this groundbreaking school was Dr. Puah Menczel. She recognized a desire among the young people in her school to live peacefully with each other, to show tolerance and to develop a mutual appreciation of each othersʼ cultures. Dr. Menczel actively fostered this attitude in the school; the linocuts project has become a symbol of her extraordinary vision.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, Dr. Menczel took the prints on tour to a number of towns and cities in Germany. They became quite famous throughout Germany and Israel. One of the people who encouraged this process was Prof. Gotthilf Ehninger from Pforzheim, who was at the time Head of Art at the Academy of Calw, in the Black Forest. After the death of Dr Menczel, the prints were left in the care of Prof. Ehninger. Aware of just how important they were, he kept them safely, taking personal responsibility for them after his retirement.

Prof. Ehninger has recently handed over the prints to the Ecumenical Centre of the Cross of Nails in Würzburg. (The centre gets its name from its work in reconciliation alongside the Cross of Nails project in Coventry) The centre has provided the exhibition with a permanent home in the Lutheran Deanery Church of Saint Stephan. (pictured below)

The exhibitionʼs message is as vital and important as when Dr Menczel first conceived it. Johanna Falk, curator of the exhibition at Saint Stephenʼs, was delighted when it was suggested that it might go on tour again, to be introduced to a new generation. She was happy to work with us to enable this to happen, and in 2004 we brought the exhibition to the UK. It was shown at St Mary’s Church in Slough, at the Drawing Schools at Eton College and at the Riverhouse Studio in Walton-on-Thames. We hope to bring the exhibition back to the UK in the not too distant future.

view more linocut prints from the exhibition

see the exhibition at Eton and Riverhouse

During the course of our Music into Upton project, Senior Physiotherapist Catherine Bray noticed that some of her patients with Parkinson’s Disease showed a marked improvement in their gait when they were interacting with the live music being played. Thanks to funding from the Trusthouse Charitable Trust, we were able to develop and run the Allegretto project specifically for this group. See the Allegretto reports for more details.

Download the first quarter report (August 07)

Download the final report (June 08)

Music into Upton was designed for two purposes – to bring live music as a benefit both in health improvement and quality of life to patients and staff at the hospital, and to develop, alongside the Sidney De Haan Research Centre at Canterbury Christ Church University, andevaluation of this type of musical activity in healthcare settings.This was a highly successful programme that led directly to the development of Allegretto for Parkinson’s patients. More information is available in the downloadable programme reports.

Download the MiU interim report

Download the MiU final report