Graphic Essence of Buck's Faith Cafe

Communities have creative souls. Some blossom in the spring of harmoniously shared lives, others whither in the cold winds of isolation and fear.

The communities that blossom, that “work” in more simple language  — are creative communities — because the collective “team” has chosen to appreciate and even encourage diversity. The bad news/good news about diversity is that there is usually more conflict on diverse teams, but if normalized, those teams are almost always more innovative than homogenous teams. You only have to examine the work of Richard Florida to understand that creative and diverse communities evolve into economically prosperous communities.

Case in point: Buckinghamshire, UK.

I volunteered as a graphic illustrator yesterday at an extraordinary event. I promised to report it — and I’m delighted to do so. As one of the speakers said, the media doesn’t normally report good news — it’s not considered newsworthy.  But how can a diverse gathering of men and women of goodwill, working together to improve inter-faith communication through constructive dialog, be anything but very good news?

Now, realize that it’s me making the connection of an inter-faith dialog meeting to economic prosperity. After all, I blog about creativity and innovation, these are the connections I’m looking for! The altruistic intention of the meeting by the organizers was to bridge the gaps between diverse religious groups. Harmony and tolerance are great things in any community, and, I’m saying — in the long run it will have a positive impact in many ways, one of them economic.

What I’m reporting about is the Chiltern Community Cohesion Conference in association with Bucks Faith Cafe — and that took place last Saturday in Chesham, Buckinghamshire. To put it simply, a great deal was shared, in speeches and divergent “World Café” style dialog. People of many different faith’s broke bread together and made an effort to bridge the communication gap and seek the common ground of shared values, shared beliefs, and shared dreams for their families and their community. They all had one thing in common — they were all British.

Councillor Mohammad Bhatti

Much credit is due to the organizers for their highly creative and flexible approach (kudo’s due to Dr. Dave Furze and Bill Moore, and their counterparts with the Chiltern Cohesion Conference; particularly Chesham Town Councillor Mohammad Bhatti.)

Imagine if you will — a town hall meeting room filled up with… people of many religious faith’s (and a wide variety of hats!). Muslim Imam’s, Church of England ministers, NGO organizers, and…just plain folks, decent, law abiding citizens of all sorts.  These were working people, business people, some of modest means, others clearly doing very well. They didn’t come to debate — they came to share. The World Cafe technique encourages a “Yes+AND” dialog, which discourages debate and encourages sharing without rebuttal. As conversations emerge people are free to express feelings without fear. The technique also shuffles the deck and mixes and remixes the table combinations frequently, maximizing interaction. After the ‘cafe’ was over it was clear to many observers that the young Muslim men present had taken a leadership role in moderating the table discussions. A memorable quote was captured on one of the many Post-It’s used to document the discussions — “We are all human, we all bleed red blood.” This was not chit chat, these were deep-dives into values and culture.

The conference is the third event funded by the government’s Faith in Action grant scheme.

Nirj Deva MEP

I was inspired by the speakers who began the afternoon. I’ll not do their brief talks justice with my notes here, but let me give you a sense of the “soul” of the afternoon. Nirj Deva, MEP was the first speaker and he set a warm and humanistic tone. He memorably touched on the themes of family, and shared beliefs, between Muslims and Christians. With so much in common he said, “what is the debate?” Lord Quarban Hussain spoke, with humility and grace, of his arrival in the UK at 15 without knowing a word of English. His parents worked very hard in textile mills in the north to establish a family in the UK, and in his talk he chronicled his own remarkable journey in life and his rise to the House of Lords. The Mayor of Maidenhead, Councillor Asghar Majeed lamented the lack of media attention to the good news related to the success story of community harmony that exists in the UK. All the Muslim speakers seemed to agree on the simple point that the extremists were not representative of their religion, that acts of extremism had nothing to do with the goodness taught in their faith. They stood together at an inter-faith meeting and made strong appeals to not allow the extremists, the media, or political extremists like the BNP to divide the citizens of the UK.

In attendance as a participant was Councillor Mrs. Mimi Harker, OBE. Her comment about the event “The speakers were all very inciteful but the comments from Nirj Deva MEP were especially pertinent, when he pointed out the number of similarities between all the faiths in the room and asked the question ‘What are we all fighting about?’.  He is so right – we should be looking at what we have in common and building stronger communities together based on our similarities, rather than dividing ourselves up based on our differences. The workshop (World Cafe) put together by Dave and Bill was really thought provoking on many levels and listening to other peoples views helped me to redefine some of my own ideas – so a well spent afternoon with great networking!  And I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity for legal graffiti writing as official scribe for our table, using the tablecloth in its entirety!  Congratulations to all the organisers for a very successful event.

As if to emphasize the power of the ideas of the speakers and the participants, the pre-meeting slide show on display highlighted the impressive inter-faith fund raising effort made to relieve the flooding victims in Pakistan. Present at the conference was the Assistant High Commissioner from the Pakistani Embassy. (Will update this post with his name later, apologies).

One often hears that the voice of the moderate Muslim is not heard. In the media one hears that there are not leaders, religious or political, taking a stand openly against extremism. At this conference in Bucks it couldn’t have been more clear that moderate Muslim leaders are not getting the publicity they deserve. They are speaking — but they are not being heard. There was no press at the event that I am aware of, although Bucks Free Press did publish a publicity announcement. Let’s see if they report this week!

Again, apologies for not being a bit more comprehensive in my report here. My closing comment: We not only all bleed red; being human, we are all creative, and with cooperation and dialog, diversity in faiths and ethnicity is an advantage, and opportunity — not a problem.