Interfaith Week - Follow up report

Inter Faith Week in England, Wales and Northern Ireland drew to a close on Saturday night.  A huge variety of excellent events took place.

Local and national faith communities held and took part in numerous activities from open door days to faith and social action events.  Inter faith organisations hosted exhibitions, festivals, discussions, faith and food events and much, much more.  Schools, FE colleges and universities stepped up their involvement and other agencies and institutions such as local authorities, hospitals and prisons joined in too.  There was also greater involvement this year from the private sector and two events focused particularly on faith in the work place. 

Media coverage was considerably up on last year. For example:

Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks highlighted the Week on his Pause for Thought on the Friday before the Week;
Radio 4’s Sunday programme carried an interview with Communities Minister Andrew Stunell;
Aled Jones talked about the Week on Radio 2;
the Radio 2 ‘Great British Faith’ site www.bbc.co.uk linked to the Inter Faith Week site;
numerous interviews took place with local radio stations and IFN’s Director gave a series of BBC local radio interviews on the morning of the opening day of the Week;
local press coverage, eg http://www.examiner.co.uk   and http://www.yorkpress.co.uk
interviews on stations such as Premier Radio; and www.direct.gov.uk
 

For some other examples see:  www.interfaithweek.org.uk  A number of individual IFN member bodies also garnered excellent coverage for their events.  If your event was covered, we would love to receive copies of your coverage (send to: ashley.beck@interfaith.org.uk ).

At national level, there was no multi faith event on the scale of last year’s launch as the change in Government led to late confirmation of support for the Week and limited planning time.  But IFN was delighted that the new Government expressed very strong backing for the Week and that Secretary of State for Communities, Eric Pickles, hosted a reception at Admiralty House for the Week (see www.communities.gov.uk ).

The IFN office assisted on a number of dimensions of this event, including creating display material, and its Co-Chairs were among those who spoke.  Because of restrictions on numbers at the historic venue DCLG was only able to issue a limited number of invitations to its event which had a particular focus on local inter faith engagement and social action.  However, it was an excellent opportunity for the Government to demonstrate its commitment to the importance of work by faith communities and others to promote inter faith understanding and cooperation. 

Planning for the 2011 Week in England,  Wales and Northern Ireland

We will be in touch shortly to ask for your views on how the Week went and how you think it might be developed to encourage even more participation in future.   We will also be liaising with Regional Faith Forums in England and the Inter-faith Council for Wales on this prior to discussion early next year with the Week Steering Group, on which DCLG, the Department for Education, the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Local Government Association are represented.

End.