Work in Progress

Steering Group - final meeting

2008-07-22T21:01:00.000-07:00

With the the project's objectives accomplished, tonight's meeting was to review the conference and consider where and how the findings may now be made use of.

Database
Publicly accessible on the Spiritual Capital website, its existence needs to be made known as widely as possible to the City's information networks. Keith Kimber to follow this up and liaise with Pollenshop over updating.

Report distribution
Two hundred hard copies were printed. Half of these are available for distribution to interested parties. Despite the preliminary work done on promoting the project report, the sole media report was negative and hostile, aiming to marginalise the initiative. Much more personal lobbying is needed from Steering Group members and Churches Together partners, to ensure it is widely read and distributed.

Follow-up
Monica Mills has agreed to approach Cardiff Inter-faith forum with a view to holding a follow up meeting in September on the report and its recommendations, as a first stage towards the possible creation of an arm's length organisation that could bid for funds to employ someone to liaise with the Council on behalf of faith communities. Generating cross-party and inter-faith good will towards the outcome of this project is agreed to be the next best step.

The Research Steering Group dissolves at this point in time.

This blog will remain open, to record eventual progress with outcomes.

Special thanks to are due to Roy Thomas, Paul Ballard, Monica Mills, Chris Daley, Mohammed Jabbar, Keshav Singhal and Gwilym Morris of Pollenshop for all they gave to bring this project to an end - which is only a new beginning.

Finally, the Spiritual Capital Conference

2008-07-16T12:31:00.000-07:00

This afternoon at Future Inn, Cardiff Bay, the Spiritual Capital Research Report was launched at a conference attended by seventy people double the number expected - Christians of all persuasions, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists were among the participants. The Deputy Leader of the Council, Cllr Judith Woodman, and Policy Advisor Paul Orders were among the speakers. The conference was chaired by Project Manager Roy Thomas.

With the exception of Professor Ballard, who was launching a book on church and the city centre at a theologians' conference in Bristol, all members of the Steering Group were present. Dr Keshav Singhal took part in the concluding panel discussion, and the Project Director introduced the report.

Details of the afternoon's proceedings will be posted on the revamped website www.spiritualcapital-cardiff.org.uk

The full research report is downloadable from this site, whcih also publishes a complete database of Cardiff Borough's religious communities, a key outcome of the research.

The Report recommendation that a religious communities officer be appointed as part of its Diversity team with the specific remit to keep city government better informed about faith communities and enable greater participation from them in shaping the vision of the City's future, is something which the conference agreed is worth further investigation by all sides.

Yet another change of venue

2008-07-04T12:23:00.000-07:00

Conference organisers were today informed that a strike on 16th July would make it impossible to use County Hall as a meeting place.

Thankfully, the Future Inn hotel in the vicinity of Atlantic Wharf is able to provide us with conference facilities, so this alternative venue has been booked.

Conference venue changed

2008-05-30T18:49:00.000-07:00

The date, 16th July, 1.30 - 5.00pm remains unchanged, but the offer of using Committee Room 3 in County Hall has been accepted instead.

This should make it easier for LGOs and members invited to attend in the midst of their busy schedules.

Conference date re-set

2008-05-19T13:23:00.000-07:00

The date for the launch conference has now had to be re-set in order to accommodate key Council speakers, and secure a venue. A range of desirable places were found to be taken up with public examinations or enquiries.

Finally City United Reformed Church has agreed to welcome the conference between 1.30 and 5.00 pm on Wednesday 16th July.

Now the business of publicising the event and be pursued with vigour.

Database compilation completed

2008-04-29T16:14:00.000-07:00

Work on compiling and checking the faith-groups database for the Borough of Cardiff is now complete. This represents 195 religious community groups and 17 administrative organisations, which have been identified due to information about them published on the Web.

The number of websites relating to religious communities in Cardiff Borough seems to have increased in the year during which the research has taken place. This may be partly due to the availability of new on-line publishing tools, but also due to improved placement of existing sites, making some sites more readily findable. It is noticeable that some commercially sponsored specialised information providing websites do not provide up to date information. This can lead to misleading searches and requires additional error checking.

Independent error checking of the information gathered into the Spiritual Capital database will be essential before its web publication next month.

Report ready to go

2008-04-25T16:05:00.000-07:00

Following corrections, the full report is now ready for printing and private circulation, before public launch. It's proving difficult to acquire a suitable venue for the conference and document launch on our preferred dates - 4th or 5th June.

Project funding all accounted for

2008-04-21T20:30:00.000-07:00

Acknowledgement was received today from the Community Development Foundation of receipt of the final project reports and financial statements required by their management process, submitted at the end of last month.

Tenth Steering Group meeting

2008-04-16T20:47:00.000-07:00

The draft of the report, commentary and selection case studies to accompany the University and 'Ask Cardiff' research reports is now complete, following further work to re-organise some of the content, proposed by Professor Ballard. It was received by the Steering Group for a period of detailed corrections and amendments.

Work on the accompanying database is half complete, and its final format for web publication is under discussion with Gwilym Morris of Pollenshop.

Copies of the draft report will now be circulated to a list of a dozen people for evaluation, and hopefully for endorsing comments for use in the publication process. Archbishop Barry Morgan has agreed to be its first reader person outside the project, also Paul Orders of the City Council's Policy Unit.

The Steering Group has agreed to the publication of up to fifty copies of the full report, and a print run of at least two hundred and fifty copies of an eight page digest of the report and its recommendations. If it is possible to find funding for a Welsh translation of the digest, this will be produced bi-lingually. However, the project costings at the outset failed to factor in the need for translation, which could be of the order of £1,000.

Ninth Steering Group meeting

2008-03-31T20:18:00.000-07:00

This evening's meeting received both the University research report and the fruit of the drafting work on the overall project report, undertaken by Paul Ballard, Roy Thomas, and the Director.

Members will now review these documents and report back corrections and amendments during the course of the coming week.

The next stage in the process will be to issue pre-publication copies to a list of selected people in positions of authority, among religious community leaders and Council members and officers, to obtain some feedback about the product, prior to publication.

Gwilym Morris of 'The Pollen Shop' has been engaged to take charge of the final conference arrangements, and web publication of findings.

Work continues on the production of the database and printed directory of religious communities.

The Director reported that all the project's financial commitments had been met, within the deadline set by FCCBF.

Survey report received

2008-03-28T20:13:00.000-07:00

The survey report from Cardiff University's Regeneration Institute was delivered today. This enables the rest of the project report writing to be completed well within the revised time scale. This document includes the results of the Spiritual Capital survey, and the public opinion poll conducted by 'Ask Cardiff' on our behalf.

Drafting in progress

2008-03-15T21:00:00.000-07:00

A second revised draft of the survey findings has been received from the University. Prof Ballard, Roy Thomas and Keith Kimber are working at writing and shaping various sections of SC research material, gathered over the past nine months, into a full text for publication.

Steering Group eighth meeting

2008-03-11T20:32:00.000-07:00

The meeting planned for the 4th March was postponed until today, because of the unavailability of the survey data report from the University, promised for 29th February in good time for the planned steering group meeting.

Today's meeting received appraisals of the data received late 4th March, and the first draft of supporting material from the project manager within which the research data will be embedded.
An action plan for the production of the final report by mid-April was agreed.

The project manager reported that two public relations companies had been approached about publishing the final research report - and in addition to undertake the preparation and running of the conference at which the report will be delivered - now proposed for the end of May 2008. These are Peter Gill & Associates of Cardiff, and The Pollen Shop, of Swansea.

This is now being planned to run two months behind the initial schedule for this event, due to the delay in receiving the research data to work on. However, this appears to work in our favour, since local elections are called for early May. In the run-up to elections, it would not be reasonable to expect adequate attention to discussing our findings from candidates or local government officers.

Gweini survey report launched

2008-03-11T14:33:00.000-07:00

At a lunchtime meeting in the Millennium Centre today, before an audience of church leaders AMs and government officials, with full media attendance, Gweini made public the findings of its two year research project.

The report estimates that the value of social capital contributed in voluntary public service by religious communities in Wales is £102 million, and in the Capital city, approx £10 million.

Gweini's findings can be found here

The Western Mail's digest of the report can be found here

THese findings provide an important context for the reporting of the Spiritual Capital survey.

Steering group seventh meeting

2008-01-28T23:00:00.000-08:00

The Steering Group met tonight, and received an update on questionnaire harvesting. The deadline has had to be extended until 14th February, as little has been achieved since early December apart from chasing up some of the non respondents. Receipts remain around the 35% mark, and around 10% were returned, 'address unknown'. The report from the 'Ask Cardiff' survey is expected mid February as well.

Publication of findings and an interpretative report is re-scheduled for 31st March, with review of a first draft around 28th February. Prof Ballard has been asked to contribute an introduction to the report, to place the whole thing in the broader perspective of churhc, local government relations in Cardiff over decades.

This means that the date of the conference for presenting findings cannot now take place in early April, as it will take time to publicise. The Local Council Election take place in early May, and campaigning for this event will inhibit our ability to raise a conference audience, so a date in early June is being sought instead, with County Hall as a possible meeting venue.

It was announced that the Gweini social audi report 'Counting for our Communities' is to be launched publicly on 11th March. The Steering Group will be represented at this occasion.

Reporting to donors

2008-01-03T09:00:00.000-08:00

The required third quarter project report to FCCBF grants administrator was completed and sent off today, ahead of schedule, due to the Director going on leave.

Funding

2007-12-14T16:19:00.000-08:00

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The balance of the project's FCCBF funding was received today.

So far the project has spent within its planned limits, and no shortfall in funding is anticipated with the monies now in hand.

Steering group meeting cancelled

2007-11-27T10:00:00.000-08:00

Today's meeting is cancelled, since there is no new information to be reported upon, apart from the continued slow rate of return on completed questionnaires.

Evidently the timing of the issue of the questionnaires over a half term week was far from propitious, and the news story published was not followed up by broadcast media because KK was not available to respond to calls, and no fall back contact was utilised. This will have to be considered carefully ahead of a next attempt to publicise the project.

It will be necessary for Steering Group members to chase up non-respondents in order to improve the return rate. RJT will organise this, and the deadline for accepting returns extended into the New Year, with the aim of raising the return rate from 30 to 40%.

The next Steering Group meeting will be towards the end of January.

Steering Group sixth meeting

2007-11-05T20:55:00.000-08:00

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Tonight's meeting heard that questionnaire forms returned completed so far amounted to over 30% of those sent out. The next couple of weeks will be devoted to following pu non-respondents. Minutes can be found here

First noticed in the press

2007-10-27T14:45:00.000-07:00

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Martin Shipton's article on the project published in today's Western Mail. You can read it here

Publicising the research

2007-10-25T18:10:00.000-07:00

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Following the preparation and issue of a press information pack, the Research Team (Rebecca Edwards and Bob Smith), and members of the Project Steering Group (Mohammed Jabbar, Paul Ballard, Roy Thomas and Keith Kimber) had an hour long meeting with Martin Shipton, a senior journalist with the Western Mail, for an interview about the research project - why it's needed and what it seeks to contribute to current social debate.

Survey questionnaire mailing

2007-10-19T07:59:00.000-07:00

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Today saw the mailing out of the agreed questionnaire to nearly 270 recipients identified by the research team's preliminary enquiries. A deadline of 5th November has been set for their return. A reply paid envelope has been provided with the survey documents for this purpose. Anyone who hears about this enquiry whose religious community fails to receive a questionnaire may download and print a copy for completion and return from here.

Conference on Consultation

2007-10-10T22:00:00.000-07:00

The Consultation Institute aims to raise the standards public service organisations apply to their work of consultation on the entire range of issues and concerns on which they have policies. A seminar held in Bristol today was entitled 'Best Practice Consultation with Faith Groups'. Its aim was to get local government officials and other public servants to think about what they do to ensure that the full range of faith-communities are properly consulted on matters concerning them, as is now required by statute.

A report on the content of the meeting can be found here

Steering group fifth meeting

2007-10-02T22:59:00.000-07:00

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The main survey questionnaire was reviewed at tonight's meeting, prior to production and distribution later this month. Raising the publicity profile of the survey is now a priority task.

The questionnaire can be found here .

Reports were received about collaboration with Gweini and CYTUN projects funded by FCCBF, their involvement in the conference planning and participation, also in publication of each other's research findings.

The Steering Group will be represented at a 'Best Practice consultation with Faith Groups' seminar organised for public service workers and local government officers in Bristol on 10th October.

Meeting minutes here

'Ask Cardiff' survey submissions

2007-09-28T14:00:00.000-07:00

Questions to be submitted for inclusion in the 'Ask Cardiff' survey, to be circulated with the 'Capital Times' newspaper to Cardiff homes.

1. Do you think that religious organisations in Cardiff can help to reduce anti-social behaviour?

Yes/No/Don’t Know

2.  How does religion influence people’s behaviour?

Strongly for worse / For worse / Not at all / For better / Strongly for better

3. To what extent do you think people in Cardiff respect their fellow citizens?

A lot of respect/a little respect/don’t know/a little disrespect/a lot of disrespect

4. To what extent do you think the diverse range of faith groups in Cardiff is an asset to the city?

A strong asset/a slight asset/neither adds nor takes away from the city/
a slight hindrance/a strong hindrance

5.  To what extent do religious communities in Cardiff play an important part
of city life?

A very important part /An important part / Neither important nor unimportant/An unimportant part / Very unimportant

Survey preparations

2007-09-07T16:55:00.000-07:00

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At a meeting of the research team with Roy and Keith today, important steps were made toward finalising the content of the survey questionnaire, and formulating questions to be included in the November edition of the 'Ask Cardiff' circulated via 'The Capital Times' to 6,000 households in the County Borough. The latter will give the project enquiry an added dimension in gathering views of a wide range of citizens about the place of religion and religious communities in the life of the City. The project survey questions will be addressed to organised religious groups, rather than the general public.

Fourth Steering group meeting

2007-08-29T22:44:00.000-07:00

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The Steering Group met tonight and received progress reports from Roy Thomas and Rebecca Edwards on survey preparation. First thoughts about the conference next March were aired, also publicising the enquiry through the media. Mohammed Jabbar gave a useful overview in a brief paper for the group on Muslim Community life in Cardiff, to be found here.

Meeting minutes here

Meeting local Gweini

2007-08-20T21:43:00.000-07:00

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Roy and Keith met with Jim Stewart, who works for Gweini nationally liaising with the Welsh Assembly Government, and Pastor Paul Hocking a colleague representing the Cardiff area branch of Gweini. It was mostly an occasion for briefing each other about the projects we are engaged in, and discovering how they complement each other. It seems possible that there are areas of mutual interest in which collaboration is not only necessary but possible, and we look forward to involving local Gweini members especially in the end-of-research conference.

Shaping the enquiry

2007-08-16T18:35:00.000-07:00

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Meeting today with our project researcher Rebecca Edwards, to look at questionnaire design, and promotion and publicity. 'Becca produced some interesting background research reading material on the diversity of views and attitudes to be found within different religious communities. Stories which might be the basis of particular case studies are beginning to emerge.

We need to encourage steering group members to contribute stories which illustrate both the social contributions made by religious communities, and which illustrate the positive and negative sides of relations between religious groups and agencies of national and local government.

Extending our public profile

2007-08-07T18:35:00.000-07:00

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Today the project acquired a second website address, and another blog address which will we hope help to position the work in the public realm, and help draw attention and debate towards the issues of interest with which we are occupied : http://www.spiritualcapital-cardiff.org.uk and the accompanying blog
http://spiritualcapital-cardiff.blogspot.com will be places where stories and reports relevant to the subject will be publicly available, and where eventually the project research findings will be made known.

In the course of setting this up, we came across a big Philadelphia based research project backed by the Templeton Foundation, called 'Spiritual Capital' This is examining, on the macro scale the social and economic contribution made by religious communities to society as a whole, as is the Gweini 'Counting our Communities' project in Wales. There is also a database site called SpiritualCapital.org which offers all sorts of resources and information from a New Age perspective, a kind of spirituality supermarket - and a valuable contribution to any examination of the religious dimension of life in modern society, which is by no means confined to historic institutions or communities, whether emergent, established or dying.

At the outset our efforts are related to those of the Philadelphia research. Our concern is 'social inclusion' and 'community relations' - but not primarily relationships between religious communities, but rather the relationship of many different institutions of civil society, largely dominated by a secular a materialist management culture, and religious communities across the board, seeking operate, for better or for worse on a different set of values altogether - hopefully 'spiritual' ones

Blogging the project

2007-08-01T13:56:00.000-07:00

Today this brief diary of the project's unfolding existence goes live to the public, through a link on the website.

The next stage will be for others involved to post their work reports, comments, ideas, responses, hot information, and perhaps add case studies, although we may need a separate location for those, for clarity.

Researchers meet Steering Group

2007-07-09T20:51:00.000-07:00

Members of the Steering Group, with the addition of two people newly invited members, Dr Keshav Singhal and Mr Muhammad Jabbar met Bob Smith and 'Becca Edwards at the University to receive a presentation on the project methodology, and discuss the action plan proposed.

Prof. Ballard spoke about his paper 'Social Capital' which he'd handed out at the last meeting, and introduced the idea that there is a wide range of contributions made to the common good of society by volunteers of church communities which aren't monetarised, make a significant difference to the overall economy, and yet are taken for granted or under-valued. Promoting this concept may become an important part of the argument arising from our research, as well as the research being done by Gweini.

The need to plan our engagement with the media in publicising the project while it goes along, in order to invite attention from parties with something to say, was flagged up.

Several interesting case studies emerged in the course of the conversation. All present were invited to the next meeting of the Cardiff Inter-Faith Forum on 25th July.

Meeting minutes here

Project milestone

2007-07-01T09:00:00.000-07:00

Ever so quietly, without any big announcements or fanfares, our research workers officially start on this project tomorrow. No sign of a contract yet, but that's par for the course, since they don't write their own, it's written for them by that lumbering machine called university administation.

For much of the past three months I was far from certain we would get this far, to the start date for research work planned in the project application. Once Roy stepped in and applied his expertise and creativity to the vision, things started to fall easily into place.

It's fortunate he shares the passion for the issues involved, and has the ability and resources to drive things forward.

Second Steering Group meeting

2007-06-26T21:00:00.000-07:00

At this meeting we were able to consider overall planning of the research, how it should be approached. We approved an overall timetable that begins with the formal appointment of team from 1st July, to spend two months preparing, then three months intensive fieldwork, including mailed surveys and select in-depth interviews. The use of case studies on religious communities in their relationships with local government was considered to be worthwhile, and members were invited to submit possible themes or stories for working on.

We also looked again at possibilities of appointing additional members, since our first attempt at bringing in people with direct personal experience of other faith community life in Cardiff was unfruitful. Roy proposed inviting two people he knew. Dr Keshav Singhal is a surgeon and a leading member of Cardiff's Hindu Temple. Mr Muhammad Jabbar is a Customs Officer, of Bengali descent, raised in the UK, who belongs to the Crwys Bridge Mosque.

Our next meeting is with the research workers.

Meeting minutes here

FCCB fund holders get-together

2007-06-01T10:35:00.000-07:00

Meeting at Cardiff Bay's Norwegian Church of current FCCBF funding recipients, convened by Anna Allan a member of the headquarters funding team. John Martin Evans was there, plus three others.

This proved to be a useful exchange, reassuring about the level of detail required by their administration in our reporting.

Enter the research team

2007-05-31T19:00:00.000-07:00

Met today with Dr. Bob Smith director of the University Social Science department's Regeneration Institute, and Rebecca Siân Edwards, a post-doctoral fellow, proposed to take on our research, to interview them and give them my version of the project. It seems the project is attracting interest from faculty members, and that's an encouragement. I think we're in good hands.

My only concerns are that the University bureaucrats will take endless amounts of time drawing up a contract, and that by the time the project is fully mapped out, it will require more time to do well than we can really afford from the grant. However, seeing the prospect of some additional mileage for the Institute in this kind of research, the possibility of them looking for additional funding - something also mentioned by Roy - emerged in conversation.

First Steering Group meeting

2007-05-30T23:00:00.000-07:00

First proper meeting of project Steering Group tonight.

We adopted our terms of reference and a broad action plan.

Roy reported on his negotiations with the University Sociology Department's Regeneration Institute research team. This was the body commissioned to undertake a piece of social and economic research about aspects of life Cardiff in its centenary year as a city, published it as a souvenir contribution to the celebrations. Surprisingly or not, there was no chapter in the book on the contribution of religious communities to the life of the city. It was not part of the briefing the team received.

It seems there is a post-graduate researcher who would be interested in taking on our project, under the supervision of one of the senior staff. It remains to interview them both, and draw up a contract.

The next task is to produce a web-page containing a general description of our project and all involved in it, plus relevant contact details.

Meeting minutes here

Gweini on the case

2007-05-25T18:40:00.000-07:00

Met with John Martin Evans today, working for the Evangelical Alliance's council for voluntary service in Wales (aka Gweini). He is researching the social contribution of Christian voluntary organisations across the Principality, under the heading 'Counting our Communities'.

His brief is similar to ours in that it seeks to assess the contribution of religious bodies (in the economic sense) to civil society, but it's much broader in covering all of Wales. He is about to put out a questionnaire to a thousand religious organisations in Wales (Christian and other faith). He's been preparing for a year, and also has FCCBF funding.

There may be ways in which we can collaborate at a later stage, as we are covering one of the denser areas of religious enterprise, roughly a quarter of the contact list for the whole of Wales.

It's interesting the impulse to ask questions about religious bodies and society is stimulating such a response amongst evangelical communities and the historic mainstream churches at the same time. It's a little disconcerting that CDF made no effort to guide these initiatives towards each other and challenge their advocates to work together.

But it's interesting to see how reluctant civil society is to challenge religious bodies to work at reconciling and harmonising their contribution the society. Meanwhile individual secularising campaigners to make their attempts to discredit religious communities and exclude their participation in public life. It's left to religious bodies to assert their own value to society, if not defend themselves from disinformation and downright abuse.

Website created

2007-05-23T23:29:00.000-07:00

Designed and posted a first basic web-page to advertise the nature of the project, and display some information about it, to which casual enquirers can be referred. <http://www.sarcic.org.uk> is the registered address.

It's an acronym for "Social Appraisal of Religious Communities in Cardiff", which attempts to summarise the task in hand. No doubt we'll think of different straplines and a different catch phrase with which the promote the product, as we go along.

Inspection Time

2007-05-14T14:50:00.000-07:00

Roy and I met today with Irene Everson, a FCCBF consultant from a Welshpool based organisation called 'Resources for Change', tasked with evaluating funded projects from an organisational point of view to see if there are any areas in which FCCBF can help grant recipients pursue their objectives.

For various administrative reasons, FCCBF has not yet released any of the promised grant money to us. No doubt our delays in getting organised at the outset have not helped at all, but as we've got to the point where we're going to need money to pay our way, with PTP. and the Regeneration Institute making agreements to work on the project, not having cash in the bank to cover any emerging needs, is a bit nerve wracking. So it was good to have someone official to beef about this to in person.

Irene seemed to be fairly satisfied with our proposed method of operation, and our plans, so hopefully her report will be reassuring to CDF, and set us in motion soon.

Project Steering Group born

2007-05-09T23:00:00.000-07:00

Roy Thomas is a commercial lawyer who works for the Cardiff based Public Trust Parternership. He is also a member of St John's church congregation, and we share a great interest in the value of Christian presence and activity in the world of business and government. Unlike yours truly, Roy has done a course at the famous St George's College in Windsor, and knows all about courageous leadership. Last year he led the Welsh National Botanic Garden project out of danger of death from its debts, as interim CEO.

He accompanied me tonight to the meeting of Cardiff City Centre Churches Together council to explain his ideas which, having heard them, I am happy will provide us with a way forward

Roy proposed that the research be handed over entirely to a professionally competent organisation within a University, which would be offered a fixed fee to produce a report according to the briefing established by a project steering group. His role will be to manage the research team and eventually to publicise its findings and organise the conference.

This was well received, and appointments to the project steering group were made, including Mr Malcolm Thomas, secretary of Ebeneser, Mr Chris Daley of St David's Metropolitan Cathedral Council, Prof. Paul Ballard, Cardiff University's professor emeritus of Pastoral Theology, Revd. Monica Mills, Chaplain of Cardiff Bay active in the work of Cardiff Inter-Faith, Roy and myself.

New light in the tunnel

2007-05-07T09:04:00.000-07:00

My possible volunteer to handle the employment of a reseach worker has expressed misgivings about what is proposed, thinking that the costs of advertising and setting up are going to be far in excess of what was originally proposed in our grant application budget, with no guarantee of sucess given the short time-scale - we need someone to start by end of June if we are to stick to a timetable that concludes the research by the end of the year. Not good news.

However, a conversation about the management with another member of the congregation yesterday morning took me by surprise. Without realising, I have someone whose day-job is managing projects, consultations and development processes. So I sent him all the documents I'd prepared and had a positive reply before retiring to bed. I must now wait to hear more fully what is on offer.

Welsh ecumenism and Inter-faith

2007-04-26T12:11:00.000-07:00

Meeting this morning with Gareth Foster, the Diocesan Social Responsibility Officer, to brief him on the project and explore possibilities of using his administrative capacity to employ our research worker. He is willing to offer us this support, as a solution to our lack of capacity.

He introduced me to Brigid Bowen who has been employed for the past year by CYTUN, the national ecumenical body for Wales, to work on inter-faith networking across the Principality with funding from FCCBF under last year's Round One programme. She has developed an Inter-Faith Wales website and has been involved in organising interfaith events related to the Senedd.

Both were interested in the prospects of seeing a research worker in place, working on inter-faith affairs. However, that's not quite what we are about. We want to enquire of every kind of faith community group about their relationship to civil society. How they do and don't succeed in contributing to it. Talking better to each other about this should be a fruit of the process we've started, but really, the research outcomes should really stimulate a dialogue between our secularised public administrative culture and religious communities that they are meant to serve.

A way forward?

2007-03-26T09:56:00.000-07:00

Confirmation today that using DBSR to administer our funding is not acceptable to CDF. The time spent arranging this is wasted, except that the complexity of involving another organisation in the process has been highlighted, so this may be just as well.

Where do we go from here? Well, I have discovered someone in our congregation with many years of H.R. experience who would be willing to manage the employment of our researcher, and that will include the recruitment process. I have formulated a fullsome project briefing and a job specification, and even produced application forms based upon an old CofE job application form I found in my archives.

Dead end

2007-03-20T21:00:00.000-07:00

The response to my enquiry was more questions about the relationship between the Parish and the Diocesan Board of Social Responsibility.

The view from CDF is that the Parish is the recipient, and cannot simply make use of the services of another diocesan agency to administer the funds on our behalf, unless there is a prior 'service level agreement' in place.

Even though the DBSR is a perfectly respectable body holding and managing funds and grants made for its own projects, we will have to find another way of doing this.

Project ownership

2007-03-14T22:30:00.000-07:00

Tonight's meeting of City Centre Churches Together council welcomed the award of the CDF FCCBF grant. and was happy that St John's should be its appointed recipient. The proposal that it should be managed by the Diocesan Board of Social responsibility was entirely acceptable. This meant that the proposed way of handling CDF requirements is acceptable to both local stakeholders involved in the application.

Wrote off to the grants administrator Martine Davies, to relay our decisions, and ask if they was an acceptable way to proceed.

Promise of funding

2007-03-09T13:00:00.000-08:00

A letter arrived at St John's Church today advising me of the awarding of a Grant applied for in great haste last November, from the Community Development Foundation's Faith Capacity Community Building Fund. CDF - FCCBF

We have the promise of £30,000 to spend on our project between 31st March 2007 and 31st March 2008. It's enough money to employ a research worker, mount a conference and produce a decent publication. But it all requires a lot of management.

The project grant application was made in the name of St John's City Parish with the full support of the City Centre Churches Together. However, the grant is to St John's as the lead partner in this venutre.

Immediately, there's paperwork to be read, signatures to be acquired, in order to manage the money, a lot to be organised in a relatively short space of time, to ensure we put in place the appropriate employment mechanisms, and the means to handle the finances.

As St John's doesn't have any administrative staff, this could prove something of a problem. There's now some talking to be done with the Diocesan Board of Social Responsibility, and with the Churches Together council, which meets, fortunately, next week.

Deadline Day

2006-11-02T09:06:00.000-08:00

During the past year, yours truly has been in private conversation with certain senior local government officers about the problematic standing of religious communities in the advisory and consultative processes undertaken by local government. Individuals known to local government officers through political or social activities may be asked to participate in events as if they were representatives, but there are no representative structures that really work.

There is an inter-faith council which doesn't cover all the emergent new religious communities that are a feature of city life, simply the well-established and better known ones. There is no longer a council of Christian Churches that actually covers the whole of the City and Borough, nor a comprehensive Christian or inter-faith leaders' meeting that can be approached for advice.

It's a product of decline in established religious life, coupled with a culture amongst civil servants, that will not go out of its way to recognise the particular needs and contributions of religious voluntary bodies to civil life, in a misplaced effort to be 'neutral' on matters of religion, which actually excludes some from rightful participation, because they don't get their voice heard, and disengage, as a result.

The outcome of this was that during the latter half of October, I worked with a staff member of the city's policy unit on an application for funding to investigate this 'democratic deficit' in Cardiff. This was directed to the Faith Communities Capacity Building Fund unit of the Community Development Foundation. By virtue of intense last minute activity, the application went in today.

In essence, the aim is to research religious communities of every kind in the city and county of Cardiff, and their relationships with civil society. This will look particularly at the contribution they make to society and the kind of relationships they have with local and national government officers, elected representatives, even people in non-governmental agencies. When the research is published in early 2008, all participants in the survey will be invited to a city-wide conference to consider the implications of its findings, and what this implies for relationships between religious communities and the state, locally and nationally.

We now have to wait three months for an outcome.