Steering group fifth meeting

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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

Welsh ecumenism and Inter-faith

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.