| Workshop
3. Inner City Regeneration
and New Deal for Communities as a focus for inter faith cooperation
Facilitator: Hon Barnabas Leith
Reporter back and minuter: Revd Richard Tetlow
Opening contributions: David Rayner,
Secretary of the Inner Cities Religious Council, sketched out the role of
the Council and the developing range of initiatives where consultation and
involvement of faith communities is being sought by central Government.
Ishwer Tailor of the Gujurat Hindu Centre in Preston, gave an account of
the use which the local community had been able to make of Millennium
funding in developing their new centre and the role which it was playing
in the life of the wider community in Preston. In the course of the
presentations and in the following discussion, the following key points
emerged:
Many doors are still closed to awareness and action about faith
matters in local and central government. It is encouraging, though, that
there are now increased opportunities and awareness in this area.
We are now at a watershed. Faith communities vary enormously in their
capacity potential as well as their size and leadership but all must
seize the current opportunities as best they can as political doors do
not necessarily remain open for long.
How inter faith relations are carried out locally now will set the
pattern for many years to come and shape the understanding of people of
the different faith communities.
It is a big challenge to create structures of any kind which actually
work effectively across such big areas such as Birmingham.
In this context, councils of faiths have to find out how they are
going to respond, how they are going to step up into a new gear so as to
respond to this increasing openness and willingness to put in resources
of different kinds.
The city council in each place can feel stimulated by voluntary groups
to take the issue of faith more seriously. Then that stimulates the
voluntary groups to respond, then it goes back and back and then back
again. We should keep this pattern in our minds and we keep the goal in
sight of greater collaboration together across the faiths and with the
local and central government.
There is learning that can be done about how to encourage one another’s
initiatives within the faith communities, between them and outside of
them with local and central government so that there is shared
responsibility for a ‘partnership of motivation’.
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