Building on History: Religion in London

This will be an innovative public engagement project on religious history and heritages with communities in London. This programme would follow on from the AHRC-funded knowledge transfer project Modern Religious History and the Contemporary Church (working title Building on History: the Church in London) which concludes October 2011. It will also add significant value to the final year (2011-12) of the AHRC/ESRC funded 'Global Uncertainties' project, Protestant-Catholic Conflict: Historical Legacies and Contemporary Realities. The proposed project will substantially extend the original work on the Church of England to include a range of the other Christian groups, together with Jews and Muslims. It will facilitate participation in religious history and heritages in London's diverse religious communities. It will inform discussion of citizenship and social cohesion, as well as actively promoting both in local community contexts.

The starting point for the project is the substantial recent advance in academic understanding of the history of religion in London, to which both the PI and the Co-I have themselves made important contributions. In particular we are interested in prompting critical public reflection regarding fluctuations in the prominence of religion in society and culture, its role in community formation and the complex range of interactions and relationships between different religious and ethnic groups.

We have established a core group of well placed representatives from different faith constituencies and through dialogue with them have established that a public engagement project of the type described would be of substantial interest to religious communities in London. This group will act as an official advisory committee for the project and to build links and promote engagement with the groups they represent.

Activities will include a series of seminars and workshops for various religious groups and the development of a website offering extensive resources to facilitate non-academic exploration of religious history. The project will lay the groundwork for seeking funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund to enable further development of the work.

The project will be directed by Prof John Wolffe, who has also led the successful original project. The Co-I, Prof Humayun Ansari, will contribute essential complementary expertise regarding Muslims in London. The named candidate, Dr John Maiden, has been Research Associate on the original project. Regular meetings with the investigators and three meetings with the advisory committee during the life of the project will ensure effective coordination and management.

The primary beneficiaries of the project will be our collaborators in the various religious communities, networks and congregations with which we shall be working.They will gain from more informed critical awareness of their own history, their identity, and their place in a multi-religious society.

Additionally there will be
1. A wider impact on local communities, feeding into public debate on the changing role of religion, and contributing to good citizenship through promoting mutual understanding of history and heritage.
2. Increased appreciation and use of London's religious heritage sites, archives and museums. Our audiences will be informed about them in our events and resources. In some cases we will invite such places to host events.
3. Innovations in school teaching, providing resources and guidance which will facilitate relevant learning exercises. This will be achieved in collaboration with primary and secondary teachers and working with individual schools to devise and pilot resources and activities which can then be used more widely.

We will document and measure immediate impact and success in meeting aims and objectives through
1. Feedback forms after events.
2. A comments facility to invite feedback on the website resources.
3. An end of project survey emailed to our database of participants at events, intended to capture the impact on them after a period of months.
4. Inviting key collaborators to reflect publicly on their experience of the project in a panel session at the final conference.
5. Archiving all media responses to the project.

The project will provide the rationale and platform for longer-term and sustainable impact. During the course of the year we will build partnerships (including with our current collaborators) and pilot initiatives for a major HLF 'Heritage Grant' bid for a 2-3 year project 'Engaging Local Communities with London's Religious Heritage'. Central aims of this successor project will be to embed good practice in historical engagement in religious groups themselves and to develop an interactive web-based religious map of London which would showcase the results of community based projects. We have already approached the HLF with preliminary ideas, and received constructive feedback. In any event we will build significant self-sustaining networks and connections, supported by the project website which the Open University would keep live for at least five years.