Westhill/NASACRE Project: Education into Diversity: ‘Distinctively Local’
A Template for finding suitable local resources in Haringey, showing how to incorporate their use in the agreed syllabus for religious education programme of study
CONTENTS / PAGEBackground to and Aims of the Project / 2
- Location, Location: What features of the landscape, both natural and man-made, are there in our area that relate to matters of religion and belief?
- The Mus Well
- All Hallows Church
- Tottenham Friends Meeting House
- Brook Street Chapel
- Who Do You Think You Are?: Who are the historical characters that have had a big impact on religion and belief in our area?
- Thomas Barnardo
- Billy Graham
- William Bedwell
- Religion and Belief Today: How are groups with religious (and non-religious) beliefs making a difference in our area?
- Pray Haringey and Haringey Peace Alliance
- Food Bank
- Hospital and Prison Chaplains
- Highway of Holiness Night Shelter
- Street Pastors
- Creative Expressions of Religion and Belief: What is the creative impact of religion and belief in our area?
- St Benet Fink Church, Tottenham
- Adoramus Choir, Cockfosters
- Local Heritage: Archives & Museums: What has been preserved of the impact of religion and belief in our area
- Bruce Castle
- Looking Out: What connections are local people making with the wider world?
- Greig City Academy
- Petra Clark
- Nims Ubunge
Background
‘Distinctively Local’ is a project to engage academies, community and free schools within the five local authorities sharing an agreed syllabus in producing resources for religious education (RE) that mark out distinctively local elements of religion and belief in each authority.
The six Standing Advisory Councils on Religious Education (SACREs) that share the agreed syllabus ‘Awareness, Mystery and Value’ (AMV) are Bath & North East Somerset, Bristol, North Somerset, Somerset, The Isles of Scilly and Haringey. All are committed to including the local dimension in schemes of learning to support pupils’ progress in RE. However, few ‘ready-made’ resources are available to support such an ambition.
This template provides a framework for including diverse people, places, religion and belief communities and other resources in, or with strong links to, Haringey that could provide a focus for RE learning. There is a strong Humanities link here, in that there will be opportunities to make connections with the curriculum in citizenship, the creative arts, geography, history and personal, social, health and economic education (PSHEe) as well as RE.
The template identifies several areas for investigation that should yield information upon which to build resources for study in the RE, Arts and Humanities context. These areas for investigation encompass the local landscape and peoples of the past and the present. They also look to the future; indicating where opportunities exist for pupils’ imaginations to work on the kind of local communities they want to be a part of.
For Haringey SACRE, it is hoped that the materials presented here will help:
- reinforce the validity of the local dimension for SACREs and agreed syllabuses;
- serve as a model for all other SACREs, particularly, urban ones such as Bristol
- demonstrate how a small group of SACREs can work together for common benefit;
- enable links to be established between some community, free schools and academies: providing a model for future cooperation with SACRE;
- provide examples of how to engage children and young people in compelling RE learning that will give them a new sense of the power of religion and belief in people’s lives and a sense of their own place in the story of religion and belief in their local area.
For pupils, it is hoped that the resulting schemes of learning will promote their:
- interest in powerful features of religion and belief in the local area;
- knowledge and understanding of the diversity of religion and belief;
- understanding of people from different groups;
- contact and confidence with members of local religion and belief communities;
- enthusiasm for playing their own part in the developing story of their own neighbourhoods.
For localcommunities it is hoped that the project will:
- bring recognition and renewed contact for some communities with the work of schools and SACRE;
- enable connections to be made between more rural areas using the AMV syllabus with more urban and multi-religious ones (particularly Bristol, Bath and Haringey);
- raise pupils’ awareness of the invaluable work done by members of religion and belief communities;
- inspire young people to reflect on what they might do to help build the communities they would wish to be a part of.
Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom
Where is wisdom to be found in local expressions of religion and belief?
There are many possible starting places but it can be productive to find out about the religious composition of the area. Here, census data can be used, as well as accounts from the religious communities about places of worship and attendance. Then there are the archives held by local museums, faith and interfaith groups and individuals.
Such data can yield useful information, but will need to be subject to some critical analysis, perhaps supported by reflections from those on the inside, to gain real knowledge and understanding of the significance of religion and belief in and for people’s lives. And in RE, we should not stop there, but encourage pupils to dig deeper; to discover meaning for themselves, even wisdom, in the experiences of the peoples of the past and the present. For example, what activities in the community are local people involved in? How does their faith/belief community support such activity? What difference does such activity make?
Gathering Data and Information
From Office for National Statistics Census database: Results of the 2011 census regarding religion and belief
Religion as at March 2011 / Haringey / London / EnglandChristian / % / 45.0 / 48.4 / 59.4
Buddhist / % / 1.1 / 1.0 / 0.5
Hindu / % / 1.8 / 5.0 / 1.5
Jewish / % / 3.0 / 1.8 / 0.5
Muslim / % / 14.2 / 12.4 / 5.0
Sikh / % / 0.3 / 1.5 / 0.8
Other Religion / % / 0.5 / 0.6 / 0.4
No Religion / % / 25.2 / 20.7 / 24.7
Not Stated / % / 8.9 / 8.5 / 7.2
You can obtain more specific data for the local authority wards around your school.
However, according to the 2005 English Church Census conducted by Christian Research, church attendance is higher in London than in the rest of the country, and highest within London boroughs such as Haringey!
It may well be that not only is church attendance higher, but so is involvement in the community.In North Somerset, for example, a report of ‘Faiths in North Somerset’ in January 2011 revealed that nearly 2,000 volunteers in faith-based settings, gave approximately 5,460 hours a week in services to the community. Using the calculation of every hour of voluntary work equating to £12.50, faith groups were therefore providing over £3.5 million’s worth of services for the community annually. If account is taken for groups who did not reply to the survey (37%) this figure can be adjusted to £4.8million.
In Haringey, most of the work with children and young people is undertaken by faith groups. Encourage the pupils to find out figures for hours a week and money equivalent in Haringey!
Finding knowledge, understanding and wisdom
Information about religion and belief in the local community does not necessarily produce useful material for learning in schools. A positive way of using the data to support learning in RE and other curriculum subjects/areas is relate it to big questions that pupils themselves see as worthy of investigation. With data about religion and belief in the local area to hand, plus indications of where it might be used to inform such investigations, pupils can more really make connections between their own lives and the variety of religion and belief that has helped to form the character of their communities. It is intended that, by making such connections, pupils will feel themselves to be part of an on going set of traditions to which they themselves will begin to make a contribution.
To that end, the table below provides examples, in the LAs where AMV is the agreed syllabus for RE, of what may be said to be ‘distinctively local’ features of the land and its people, and how they make profitably be linked to the big questions being asked in the syllabus. By offering ideas on the significance for religion and belief of those features and mapping out some potential connections with the AMV programmes of study, it is hoped that teachers and their pupils will find plenty of encouragement, both to learn more about their local area and to be inspired to play a positive role in its future.
Dave Francis, Associate Adviser for Religious Education
Bob Allaway, Haringey SACRE
1.Location, Location...
What features of the landscape, both natural and man-made, are there in our area that relate to matters of religion and belief?
Feature
a)The Mus Well
Significance for religion and belief
Muswell Hill is named after a mossy spring or well (the “Mossy Well”). Local legend says that, in medieval times, pilgrimages were made to it for healing. (There is no historical evidence for this, apart from Wikipedia!) There was a convent there and the Catholic Church of Our Lady of Muswell is still near the well. Encourage pupils to talk to local Catholics who have been to Lourdes. Did they experience physical healing? Did they feel some blessing, even if they did not?
Key RE Question(s)
KS1: Why are some places special? (AMV unit 7)
KS2: Why are some journeys and places special? (AMV unit5)
KS3: Where are the answers to life’s big questions? (AMV 3)
Links with other subjects
English, Geography, History.
Feature [Haringey versions]
b)All Hallows Church
Significance for religion and belief
All Hallows Church, Tottenham was given to the village by King David I of Scotland. David had inherited the land from his mother-in-law, Judith, the widow of Waltheof, its Danish/Anglo-Saxon lord. [It was later inherited by Robert the Bruce, after whom Bruce Castle is named.] Encourage pupils to learn about and discuss how Alfred the Great made peace with the Danes. Waltheof’s father Siward had given protection to the Scottish ‘asylum seeker’ Malcolm, David’s father, when he had fled from Macbeth, as in Shakespeare.
Invite pupils to share if they or their parents have been refugees.
David’s generosity may have given rise to the local legend that he was healed at the Mus Well (see above), but he also endowed many other churches, and would simply seem to have cared for the spiritual well being of peasants who worked on his land. Invite pupils to investigate and discuss Christian business people who have looked after their workers.
Waltheof and Siward were Earls of Northumberland. A later Earl’s son, featuring in Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 1, was Harry ‘Hotspur’, as in Tottenham Hotspurs Football Club. This started as a church youth work by All Hallows, in 1882.
Key RE Question(s)
KS1: Why are some places special? (AMV unit 7)
Perhaps along the lines of ‘Why something being a present makes it special.’
KS2: How do people express their beliefs and identity? (AMV unit 7)
KS3: What can we learn from religions, beliefs and communities today? (AMV unit 4)
Links with other subjects
Geography, History, English, PSHE
Feature
c)Tottenham Friends Meeting House
Significance for religion and belief
In the 19th century, Tottenham had a particularly strong link with the Quaker faith, also called The Society of Friends.
The Quaker ethic is to look after people as well as possible. In 1798, Priscilla Wakefield, a Tottenham Quaker, set up a savings bank for poor people. They paid in a small amount monthly, and then received a pension at age 60 and money when sick. This later led to the Post Office Savings Bank and the idea of a Welfare State. The prison reformer Elizabeth Fry was her niece.
How do Quakers worship? What do pupils think about this? How long can they sit in silence?!
Key RE Question(s)
KS1: Why are some places special? (AMV unit 7)
KS2: How do people express their beliefs and identity? (AMV unit 7)
KS3: Where are the answers to life’s big questions? (AMV unit 3)
Links with other subjects
History, PSHEe.
Feature
d)Brook Street Chapel
Significance for religion and belief
Another Tottenham Quaker was Luke Howard, a scientist, who invented the names for cloud formations that are still in use today. In 1839, his sons felt their Quaker meeting was moving away from the Bible, so they founded Brook Street Chapel (‘Open Bretheren’) on the High Road. Pupils could investigate different sorts of Quakers. For example, the third of all the world’s Friends who live in Kenya (!) are Evangelical Quakers, like Luke Howard’s sons.
Does it surprize pupils to know a scientist could be deeply religious? Encourage them to find other examples, and discuss how accurate is the ‘conflict’ view of science and faith put about by Richard Dawkins.
John Frost, who runs the Chapel, is a useful source of local knowledge:
Key RE Question(s)
KS1: Why are some places special? (AMV unit 7)
KS2: How do people express their beliefs and identity? (AMV unit 7)
KS3: Where are the answers to life’s big questions? (AMV unit 3)
Links with other subjects
Geography, History.
2.Who Do You Think You Are?
Who are the historical characters that have had a big impact on religion and belief in our area?
Person
a)Thomas Barnardo
Significance for religion and belief
At the age of 17, Thomas Barnardo was baptised in Brook Street Chapel, Tottenham in 1862. He trained as a doctor, intending to be a missionary, but found his true calling was in helping destitute children in East London. Brook Street Chapel belongs to the ‘Open Bretheren’ denomination. This began with George Muller of Bristol, who also helped destitute children. This is a link with the other AVM SACREs.
Key RE Question(s)
KS1: How should we live our lives? (AMV unit 6)
KS2: How should we live and who can inspire us? (AMV unit 9)
KS3: What’s to be done? What really matters in religion and beliefs? (AMV unit 9)
Links with other subjects
Citizenship, History.
Person
b)Billy Graham
Significance for religion and belief
In 1954, Billy Graham held his first British mission in Harringay Arena, adjacent to Green Lanes station. (Sainsbury’s now occupies the site.) As a result, many local churches experienced a big growth in membership at this time. Billy Graham is a Baptist. However, he was happy to work with ‘Evangelical’ Anglicans, and they with him, because those who stress personal faith are not too bothered about outward differences of worship. The evangelical motivation is to encourage people to experience God personally and to share the Christian faith by what they say and in Church and in the wider community. Such a personal decision to follow Jesus could upset family or friends. (But did some people respond to keep in with friends?) Encourage pupils to share if they have had to make such personal faith decisions. Encourage them to think about what their family or friends might say.
The other SACREs using AVM are using John Wesley as an example. He held similar meetings in the 18th century. Haringey has a link with him, in that he came to personal faith through the Moravian Church and their British Headquarters is at the bottom of Muswell Hill.
Key RE Question(s)
KS1: Where do we belong? (AMV unit4)
KS2: How do people express their beliefs and identity? (AMV unit 7)
KS3: How do people express their beliefs and identities? (AMV unit 7)
Links with other subjects
Citizenship, History.
Person
c)William Bedwell
Significance for religion and belief
William Bedwell was the vicar of All Hallows, Tottenham from 1607. He was an expert in oriental languages and translated some of the New Testament into Arabic. He also assisted those who translated the Old Testament from the Hebrew for the ‘Authorised’ or ‘King James version’ Bible.
Encourage pupils to compare different translations of the Qur’an and the Bible and discuss the differences. Invite them to discuss how translators need to know about other people’s beliefs, not just their words and grammar.
Key RE Question(s)
KS1: Is there something on Why are some books special? (AMV unit ?)
KS2: How do people express their beliefs and identity? (AMV unit 7)
KS3: How do people express their beliefs and identities? (AMV unit 7)
Links with other subjects
English, History.
3.Religion and Belief Today
How are groups with religious (and non-religious) beliefs making a difference in our area?
Group, denomination or community
a)Pray Haringey and Haringey Peace Alliance