Faith and Place network

Over the last half century, many minority faith groups have established new places of worship, particularly in urban centres. Such places of worship are significant for bringing communities together, especially for first generation migrants, and assisting with many aspects of integrating into British life. These places of worship can also be powerful symbols of a minority faith group's place within Britain, with their distinctive religious expressions proclaiming both a right to belong and to be different.

Minority faith group places of worship are not without controversy. Faith group representatives tell of difficulties in finding premises and/or obtaining planning permission. Local communities near to such places of worship sometimes are concerned about impact on their locality. Planners and policy professionals are required to balance a complex set of claims and interests, sometimes with limited understanding of the religious issues involved.

Humanities researchers have an important contribution to make towards this neglected area of public policy (e.g. Theology, Religious Studies, Cultural Geography, History). Research over the last 15 years in Britain has identified points of tension between minority faith groups and planning policy regarding places of worship. Researchers in different disciplines have concluded that in centres such as London, Birmingham, Leicester, and Northampton, planning policy is not keeping up with the changing religious landscape. This is seen in increasingly diverse uses of faith group premises, which stretch existing planning categories and assumptions, as well as in the rapid growth of some minority faith groups for whom there are often not enough suitable premises available. Parallel stories have also been heard from urban centres in Europe. Conclusions so far point to the need for reviewing this area of planning policy and its implementation, which in part would require questioning the majority cultural assumptions woven into established planning policy. However, until now, the evidence and perspectives of researchers and stakeholders has been largely disconnected.

The Faith and Place network therefore aims to address this disconnection, through engaging academics from multiple disciplines with 4 key stakeholder groups, namely faith group representatives, local community representatives, planners and policy professionals. This engagement will be established through 3 events between Sep '14 and Aug '15, complemented by a network website. These events will look at the ways in which planning policy shapes faith group practices, through its influence upon matters such as architecture, styles of prayer / worship and local community engagement. As this is also a European issue, the network will incorporate participants working in urban contexts within the Netherlands, Germany, France and Sweden, as well as support mutual knowledge exchange through investigator visits. New researchers and research students will have reserved places in the network, so as to build up the Humanities contribution to this area of knowledge and public policy.

As a result of bringing this network together, we expect to influence and inform public policy on faith, place and planning through dissemination of the network's conclusions, which will be published as a policy brief at the final network symposium. This will be of benefit to all the stakeholder groups through an updated planning policy with a better fit to the religious changes that have taken place in our cities, alongside more appropriate guidance for those who need to abide by and implement policy. We intend to collaborate with Tate Modern to communicate the issues through artistic forms, and collaborate with those seeking to produce faith premises guides. Case study material and papers on the website will benefit stakeholder groups struggling with these issues, and also alert Humanities researchers to the public policy impact of their work.

The impact of the Faith and Place network can be summarised in terms of enriching our cultural understandings of minority faith groups, improving the public service offered by planning departments, and influencing public policy on faith, place and planning. The beneficiaries of this research network are academics from multiple disciplines; policy makers and planners at national, regional and local authority levels; faith groups at national, regional, denominational and local levels; local communities where minority faith groups have a significant built presence; as well as intermediary organisations that engage with both faith groups and local communities.

Breaking this down further, the following groups will benefit in these ways:

Policy professionals and planners at the local level (e.g. planning departments, MPs), regional level (e.g. Greater London Authority), and national level (e.g. Department for Communities and Local Government, Royal Town Planning Institute, MPs, Planning consultants) will benefit from a connected and coherent evidence base that can inform a review of policy and its implementation, as well as improved guidance for planners. The policy brief emerging from the network process will be the focus for this engagement. Through identifying examples of UK and European best practice in relation to faith, place and planning, the network may also be able to inform a review of planning guidance. A valuable additional benefit will be that Humanities researchers recognise the public policy impact of their work, but equally, policy makers and planners might see the value of such research as well.

Faith groups at the national (e.g. National Church Leaders' Forum, Evangelical Alliance, Samen Kirk in Nederland), regional (e.g. Anglican Diocese of Southwark, Churches Together in South London) and local level will benefit directly from our collaboration on faith premises guides, which are designed to aid faith groups in navigating the planning system. More significantly, a review of planning policy, implementation and guidance should be of benefit to faith groups in terms of improving public services - key case study material on the network website will fulfil a similar function. The dissemination of the network conclusions (e.g. workshop video, participant articles) through a range of faith group networks will enable increased understanding of the varied spatial needs and practices between different faith groups, and promote social cohesion.

UK and European academics from Humanities and other disciplines will benefit from the development of a new cross-disciplinary dialogue achieved through fusing academic horizons around a common policy focus (see Academic Beneficiaries). Academic capacity in the field will be developed through reserving places for research students and new researchers, making key case studies of places of worship available, producing the edited volume, knowledge exchange with European counterparts, and enhancing the potential for follow-on research projects. Intermediary organisations, such as the Community Action Group, who have also conducted research on faith, place and planning, will also benefit in similar ways to academics.

Local communities where there is a significant minority faith group presence (in terms of places of worship) need to be represented in the network (e.g. councillors, community activists). Although the hardest to reach due to the scale, making selected network findings available to the wider public would aid enriched understanding of faith group practices, especially in relation to places of worship. The most suitable media here would be video of the grassroots histories / experiences of finding a place of worship. This would sit alongside the collaboration with Tate Modern, which is already looking at ways of communicating the reinvention of space by faith groups through photography, and will be developed further for this network.