BLOGS

Near Neighbours Official Launch

The Centre for Theology & Community l and tagged , , l

Although Near Neighbours has been going for a little while, an official launch is taking place to mark the commencement of the project.

We’re delighted to say the National launch is happening here in the Eastern London patch. Communities Secretary Eric Pickles MP will speak alongside the Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Dr Richard Chartres.

If you’re a journalist or reporter, especially with local or community media, we’d love to see you there. The event is happening on Monday 14th November 2011. Full details of location etc. will be given on request. Simply email media@theology-centre.org to find out more.

Can we help you?

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Near Neighbours in Eastern London is now up and running. Every day we’re having productive meetings with local community groups in Greenwich, Hackney, Islington, Lewisham, Newham, Redbridge, Southwark, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest.

If you have a project we could help, we’d love to hear from you. If you’ve got an idea for a project, we’d love to hear from you. If you know someone who’s doing fantastic work in the local community, we’d love you to tell them about us!

So what kind of thing are we talking about? Well there are three areas…

1) Creating First Encounters between people of different faith and ethnic communities and encouraging the development of mutual understanding.

2) Creating Everyday Interactions by encouraging families and individuals to come together regularly to eat together, jointly participating in religious and other festivals, encouraging children to play together in a neighbourhood.

3) Creating Civil Engagement which brings together people from different faith or ethnic communities to work together to change their neighbourhoods for the better.

If you’ve got an idea or you’re already doing something that fits these criteria and you’re in one of the areas mentioned above, then get in touch.

Award amounts range from £250-£5000. It is possible to be awarded more than one grant, especially when a locality or grouping is progressing from First Encounters, to Everyday Interactions, to Civic Engagement.

For more information and to discuss whether you and your group may be eligible for a grant, contact Revd Tim Clapton via the following methods:

nearneighbours@theology-centre.org

Phone: 0207 780 1600

The Contextual Theology Centre, The Royal Foundation of St Katharine, 2, Butcher Row, LONDON, E14 8DS

The David Idowu Choir

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When Grace Idowu’s 14-year-old son David was stabbed outside her home in Southwark in 2008 he became the 19th victim of knife crime in London that year. Grace and her husband Tim said in a statement to the court which tried his killer, “The knife which pierced David’s heart will keep the wounds open in our hearts forever.”

But Grace has since met David’s murderer and forgiven him. In 2009 the David Idowu Foundation was set up. She’s now made it her life’s mission to bring young people in her community together to prevent future attacks.

The David Idowu Choir

 

Her latest initiative is the David Idowu Choir which is taking young people from schools across Southwark and getting them to sing together, regardless of their background, faith or race. Grace says, “Music is so powerful… it’s one way to bring unity. When you are singing you’re just speaking one language.”

The choir's first performance at Goldsmiths College, University of London

The choir is being partially funded by a grant from the Near Neighbours programme. It’s been set up to provide local communities with the resources they need to bring together those of different faiths and none, as well as those of different ethnic backgrounds. To find out more, or to apply for a grant, check the website: http://www.cuf.org.uk/near-neighbours

Here, you can listen to snippets of the choir and a conversation between Grace and Andy Walton from Near Neighbours:

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/26535673″]

Up and running…

The Centre for Theology & Community l

Welcome to the brand spanking new blog for eastern London Near Neighbours.

Near Neighbours has two key objectives:

  1. Social interaction – to develop positive relationships in multi-faith areas i.e. to help people from different faiths get to know and understand each other better.
  2. Social action – to encourage people of different faiths, or no faith, to come together for initiatives that improve their local neighbourhood.

The purpose of this blog is to share the stories of those who are taking part in this exciting journey.

 

The boroughs covered are Greenwich, Hackney, Islington, Lewisham, Newham, Redbridge, Southwark, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest. We’ll be hearing from those taking part in innovative and exciting projects across these areas.

Feel free to comment and interact…

Beyond Individualism

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The European Christian Political Movement is hosting a two day colloquium and conference on Friday 25th and Saturday 26th November 2011.  Entitled ‘Beyond Individualism: Why Civil Society Needs Christian Political Engagement’, the Friday will be a study day aimed at leaders in policy, politics, advocacy and academia, and the Saturday will be a broader conference considering issues facing Europe and how Christian thought might offer a response.

Speakers over the two days include Maurice Glasman (a Fellow of CTC), Philip Blond, Os Guinness, Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, and a number of politicians from the continent.

Four weeks in Somers Town

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Dr Dominic Keech, an ordinand at St Stephen’s House, spent four weeks this summer on placement in Fr Jellicoe’s old parish, as part of the Jellicoe Community.  Dominic worked alongside Fr John Caster, who is preaching the 2011 Jellicoe Sermon at Magdalen College, Oxford on 23rd October.

In July, I spent four weeks living and working in the Anglican parish of Old St Pancras, based at one of its four churches: St Mary the Virgin, Somers Town. This part of the borough of Camden forms a rectangle lengthways between Euston station and Mornington Crescent tube, bordered at the West by Eversholt Street and at the East by St Pancras International. It grew in the mid-nineteenth century with the train-lines running north. It is now an archetypal inner city hub of shops and offices, high density housing and travel interchange.
Somers Town is better known than the many urban estates which reflect it, perhaps through the documentaries which have told its important history, and the 2008 film Somers Town, by Shane Meadows. In common with much of London at the turn of the twentieth century, Somers Town was a place of condemnable conditions: dilapidated and infested housing, poor sewerage and intense overcrowding. In the 1920s, the remarkable ministry of Fr Basil Jellicoe initiated a scheme of slum clearance, and the foundation of a housing cooperative in which local residents – re-housed in new buildings but within their existing community – could vest their interests. Unlike much of Camden surrounding it, Somers Town remains a place of predominantly social housing, and many of the people who live there are related to the first residents of the St Pancras Housing Society homes.
Fr Jellicoe is symbolic of social action, deeply and stably engaged in a community, which flourishes in real change for people on the ground. It is a model of commitment to community which the parish of Old St Pancras (which also includes St Michael’s Camden Town, St Paul’s Camden Square and St Pancras Old Church) continues to take seriously. It is an inalienable part of the Anglo-Catholic tradition of those churches, which believes the Incarnation and the Sacraments of the Church are here to catalyse change in the world, and not only adorn it.
The parish has been involved in the foundation of North London Citizens from its outset, and established a listening campaign within its four churches early in 2011. The issue which surfaced most pressingly in those conversations was housing: as a basis for stable community for everyone, but particularly for the elderly and infirm; for vulnerable adults; for unrepresented and transient immigrants, and for low income families. This concern presented itself most consistently in Somers Town, where peoples’ homes are administered by housing associations, and the borough council.
I was invited to come to St Mary’s by its priest, Fr John Caster, and the Rector of the parish, Fr Philip North. They asked me to build in some way on their listening campaign, by hearing myself what was concerning people, and relating it to the bigger picture of social housing policy in a time of considerable political change. My time in the parish was split between investigating the history and current state of Somers Town’s housing stock, local government housing policy, and national plans laid out in the Welfare Reform and Localism bills; and listening to people talk about their housing situations.
Both national and local policy promise to change the way social housing is funded in a very radical way. This in turn will have an effect on the way housing associations and councils set rent levels – to perhaps as high as 80% of the market rate, an impossible increase for lower and even middle income households in urban areas. Inner London estates, in close proximity to high-cost private housing, are therefore in a highly compromised position. If welfare reform reduces the level of Housing Benefit without regard for local variations in real housing cost, this looks set to impact some of the most vulnerable people in our cities. I produced a detailed discussion paper for the parish, which attempted to draw together these different aspects of the housing scene as they are emerging. I hope it will be of use as the Old St Pancras team develops its role in the work of North London Citizens. It was a privilege to be so warmly welcomed by people at St Mary’s, who want to make sure that the inheritance of Jellicoe carries on animating their community to come together, and change things for the better.

October prayer diary

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The new academic year brings a number of new staff and interns to the Centre and the Jellicoe community – and we would be grateful for your support for them (and the communities in which they will work) in your prayers:

Tom Daggett continues to work with us as a Jellicoe intern at Stepney Salvation Army, and will combine this with a three day a week role as Centre Manager – working with the Director on our growing range of projects.

Emmanuel Forlemu is a new Jellicoe intern at St Peter’s Bethnal Green, building on some excellent work by our summer interns.  Pray for the growing CITIZENS team at St Peter’s, and the links it is making with tenants and residents associations and other faith groups in the area – as they seek to make local streets safer, and address the growing drugs problem in the area.

Caitlin Burbridge will be our first Global Action intern – linking community organising in London’s diaspora communities with movements to renew civil society in other parts of the world.

Liliana Worth moves to co-ordinate our growing Oxford Jellicoe Community, as she starts some further research work

Former Jellicoe intern Arabella Milbank and community organiser Ruhana Ali will be working with our Director, Angus Ritchie and Senior Fellow Vincent Rougeau on an exciting new research project funded by the University of Notre Dame – looking at how different faiths and worldviews work together in east London for the common good.

In addition, the Centre is sponsoring a vital piece of work by Alvin Carpio (community organiser in Haringey) looking at the state of civil society, and the causes of the riots, in Tottenham.  Pray for this, and for all the work going into understanding and addressing these causes – and healing the communities affected by the violence.  Pray for the Centre’s staff and partner churches across east London as we seek to do a wider piece of reflection and action in the months ahead.

Please also pray for

…the priestly ministry of our Director, Angus Ritchie – assisting at St Peter’s Bethnal Green, and now also as Chaplain for Social Justice at Keble College, Oxford

…Karen Stromberg, a Hackney resident now beginning a two-year MA in Community Organising at Queen Mary University of London with our first ever Jellicoe Bursary

…the process of appointing a new CitySafe worker in Bethnal Green and a Jellicoe intern from one of our partner Pentecostal churches in Newham – both made possible by some successful fundraising (for which we give thanks!)

…the Near Neighbours programme which is gaining momentum, and will be selecting some new interns in the next few months

…Archbishop Rowan’s inter-faith adviser Toby Howarth as he gives the 2011 Presence and Engagement Lecture – and all whom the Presence and Engagement Network seeks to equip for ministry and mission in multi religious contexts

The Ideas Redefining Britain

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John Milbank, a Fellow of CTC, has contributed an article to a recent ResPublica publication entitled Changing the Debate: The Ideas Redefining Britain.  Indeed, Philip Blond who is the Director of ResPublica is taking part in a Jellicoe seminar hosted by CTC in a few month’s time, and Nat Wei, who also contributes an article, is Patron of the Shoreditch Group.

The collection of essays offers a fascinating sweep across some of the ideas bouyant in current political and social debate.  While not comprehensive, it is certainly a valuable collection with other contributors including Rowan Williams, Roger Scruton and Will Hutton.

The publication is available to purchase here.

The King James Bible at Westminster Abbey

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There are a number of open lectures taking place in Westminster Abbey this October which promise a fascinating look at the public role and influence of the King James Bible.

Lord Judge, the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, is speaking, followed by Melvyn Bragg, and then Nick Spencer of Theos.  You can find details of the lectures, and how to book free tickets, on the Westminster Abbey website.

London Looting: Some of the best contributions so far

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A great deal has already been written on the recent outbreak of looting across London and in a few other cities.  Here is a pick of some of the most thought-provoking and agenda-setting contributions so far:

‘The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom’ by Peter Oborne in The Telegraph

‘Tough love: The riots and limits of Liberalism’ by David Goodhart on the Respublica Blog

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