After a week filled with dialogue, friendship building and very practical discussions around cooperation Interfaith Glasgow closed its programme for Scottish Interfaith Week with our Interfaith Family Fair at St Mungos Museum of Religious Life and Art in Glasgow. This event, which was many months in planning, was a day for talking, enjoyment and asking questions. In the beautiful surroundings of St Mungo’s we welcomed people from a variety of faiths, belief traditions and also from no faith or belief tradition. With the support of our volunteers Linda, Alan, Madhumita, Maqsood, George and Hala we arranged this event as an opportunity to learn a bit more about some of faith and belief traditions which exist in our city and also as a fun day out for the family with activities for children and young people to share the wonderful resources which St Mungos has on offer. We opened our event with a minutes silence remembering those who died and were injured in the terrible helicopter crash in Glasgow on Friday night. In the end around 150 people took the time to come along and ask questions to our stallholders from the Islamic, Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Pagan, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Brahma Kumari and Quaker traditions, enjoy activities with our face painters, henna artists, arts and crafts table, Arabic calligraphy with Khadija, Herbalist Monica Wilde, activities from the Forestry Commission Scotland, the wonderful St Mungos treasure trail (researched and put together by our volunteer Linda) and to experience the wonderful fashion show and dancing from Maryhill Integration Network. The Glasgow 2014 team were also n hand to share with everyone what will be going on on the run up to and during the Commonwealth Games. Feedback from the event has been positive and at Interfaith Glasgow we saw not only people relaxing on a sunny Sunday afternoon and taking the time to talk to each other but also asking questions and this to us is so important in breaking down barriers and removing misconceptions.
So where can we go from here? With only a limited space we could only have so many people in the room and next time (hopefully) we can look at increasing the range of stallholders to not only revisit who attended this event but to also encourage other faith and belief traditions and also those from non-faith backgrounds to take space to share what is important to them and to share their perspective in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere. Yesterday was great day and shows that people are interested in learning about each other and we look forward to working with communities across Glasgow to see what can be next in bringing people together through interfaith. From Interfaith Glasgow we thank everyone who helped us make yesterday so wonderful, thank you 🙂
Interfaith Glasgow 