Luton Th Feast Winter newsletter - Churches Together In Luton

Luton Newsletter – Winter 2024

“These events are really nicely planned and they are fun.”

“I feel more open about talking about my beliefs.”
“I feel more confident and comfortable about sharing my thoughts”.
“I felt comfortable in sharing opinions. The group was lovely and non-judgmental.”

“It was good to know about others’ beliefs and their religion. I could talk about my own with others. I felt comfortable sharing my opinion with them.”

These are what young people have said about the events we have been able to run this year.

When we get a glimpse of the impact our work has on young people, we realise again just how valuable the work of The Feast is in helping young people increase in confidence in their own identity and beliefs and it talking about those to someone who is not like them; their openness towards someone who believes different things to them; and their ability to live with difference.

Over 2024, we have run 14 different events, each attended by an average of 8 young people (we prefer to keep events small – there is better dialogue that way!). Over 30 young people have regularly engaged with us this year.

At each event we build in a time for intentional conversation and dialogue. Over the year we talked about various topics such as justice / injustice and how we positively impact our community; stereotyping and making assumptions about people; what it looks like to listen, even if you disagree with someone to name a few

We love watching the young people become more comfortable with each other, each time they meet.

For many of the young people who take part in our programmes, being involved with The Feast is deeply impactful, if not life-changing.

Catalizers
A group we are working with on a regular basis is a small group of 4 Sixth Form age guys (a Sikh, a Buddhist, a Muslim and a Christian). With this group, we do a bit less of the “fun” activity stuff but eat together and think a lot about social justice issues. We encourage them to get involved in local social justice projects, which they found quite eye-opening.

We look forward to continuing to work with these amazing young guys in 2025, to help them find their voice and become young people who proactively impact Luton.

Schools’ Conference
We held our third annual Schools conference in October – 23 students from different schools in Luton spent a day in a workshop, thinking about how we can have better dialogue with one another when we are talking about tricky, emotive issues.

Happy birthday to us!

The Feast is 15 this year! We are looking for 15 people who would like to support the work that we do in Luton on a regular, monthly basis by setting up a regular donation. Unrestricted funding gives us so much more movement and enables us to better plan ahead, to ensure that we can continue to help young people make friends, talk faith and change lives in Luton.

If you value our work, could this be you?

To donate, whether as a one-off or by regular standing order,
– head to our website www.thefeast.org.uk and click the yellow “Donate” button on the top right of the home page.
– or contact Ulrike Hunt ulrike@thefeast.org.uk to request a donation form and we can take it from there.

Or click here to make a donation

This edition’s Featured Guideline for Dialogue:

Do not judge people here by what some people of their faith or community do

The students at our schools’ conference reflected that at the workshop they had learnt to speak more politely, and to be confident about expressing their point of view more respectfully. One student also said: “It has made me proud about my heritage, ethnicity and religion”.

In a climate where we are very quick to blame individuals for the negative actions of the “group” they identify with, at The Feast be believe it is vital to learn to be fully confident in our own identity, heritage and faith, yet have an openness towards another person, especially someone from a “group” that we perceive to be “bad”, and to treat the individual we talking with with the dignity and respect they deserve as a human being, without other-ing them, rather than according to what we think their “group” deserves.

The aim of this newsletter is to give you a snapshot of what is happening with The Feast in Luton.
Please feel free to share this with your friends or family or people you think might be interested. And do get in touch if you want to know more about what we do or how you can get involved.