STOCKPORT PRIDE ON 1ST JUNE 2025

Thank you all very much for your help with the Pride stall and the parade (plus transporting chairs etc)

It was a busy day, especially when it rained, so it got a bit crowded round the stall. But some good conversations and interest. Our opportunity for outreach, and to hear what people think of Quakers

Sorry not to video Bou twirling around  in her beautiful dress with the Quakers for Equality banner. I'm sure she was "captured" by the onlookers

Attaching some photos, I'll put some on Stockport for Peace Facebook page.

Thanks again everyone

Phoebe

Elaine Fisher came along later.

Stockport Pride 2025

STOCKPORT PRIDE EVENT

Sunday, 1. June 2025 - 11:30 to 17:30
Stockport

We have a stall in the Stockport market (shared with Stockport for Peace). Some Friends will join in the parade before hand, others will be on the stall after meeting for worship. All welcome

Area Meeting at Wilmslow 10.30.

Saturday, 25. January 2025 - 10:30 to 12:30
Stockport

Area Meeting at Wilmslow 10.30. Wilmslow will provided lunch followed at 1.30 by Report on the Quaker Prison Chaplains Conference.

New racial justice workshop: Available now!

The ECAM Racial Justice Group are happy to announce a new workshop. This will be facilitated by Till Geiger. If you are interested, please contact either Véronique Pin-Fat or Ann Lewis. Also attached is the complete programme of workshops for 2024, including 'Unlearning racism' and 'White allyship'. We are supported by ECAM and can attend your Local Meeting at no cost to you. Please feel free to get in touch if you have any queries.

 

 

Quakers, Britain’s imperial past and reparations session

This workshop explores why Quakers are currently exploring our involvement in the transatlantic slave trade and its legacy. This exploration aims to provide the basis for an informed discussion of the issue of reparations before Britain Yearly Meeting. 

 

I.Openings 

II.Commitment to become an anti-racist church and a sustainable church.

  • Locate in the testimonies particularly peace and justice
  • Locate in campaign to abolish the slave trade and eventually slavery

 

III.Reflection Prompt 

  • Should we assume individual/corporate responsibility for transatlantic slave trade and our extraction of resources/human capital/wealth? 
  • Was George Fox a Racist?
  • Was Woodbrooke built with money derived from the exploitation of worker on cocoa plantations? 

IV.Historical exploration 

  • Connection between capitalism and imperialism/Atlantic slave trade
  • Quakers as part of the Atlantic slave trade (eg small arms manufacture, slave trade and plantations)
  • Quakers as colonists - treatment of First Nations in the USA
  • Wealth accumulation and industrial revolution in Britain

 

V.Implications for Quakers today 

  • Continued exploitation of the global south
  • Structural racism
  • Our complicity and inability to escape capitalism 

 

VI.Worship sharing: How might we think about reparation now?  

Quakers in Buxton come together in a Peace-Circle

Wars, hunger, terror …. But what can I do?

An article by Heike Huschauer with poster by Ben Evens.

 

Every Saturday

from 11 am to 12 noon at the 

Turner Memorial below the Slopes in Buxton

Stand in a circle of stillness with others who long for peace

‘Quakers in Buxton’ are a worship group of F/friends coming from Bakewell, Disley, and Macclesfield Meetings.

During the last months we have felt increasingly distressed, hopeless, and helpless in the light of wars, terror, and famine in so many countries around the globe.

What can we do; here, where we live our daily lives?

How can we “…undo some of the hurt in this world and take positive action for a better future” as written in one of the oldest leaflets of the Northern Friends Peace Board?

As we all experienced in the 1980s, holding a Vigil for Peace with like-minded F/friends can be empowering and hope-giving.

Buxton F/friends discussed thoroughly how a vigil could be held in these times and how others or passers-by might be invited to join.  Should we use posters, leaflets, press releases – where, when, how?

Our decisions:

Ø  A vigil open for everyone. Therefore no Quaker or other banners, only one big neutral placard (see above).

Ø  Aim is to create a space for reflection, showing solidarity, finding a moment of hope, giving witness, sharing the sorrows of the world.

Ø  A circle looking inwards leaving gaps for easy joining. Some chairs.

Ø  Beforehand invitations (A5 poster – same as the big placard) for faith and environmental groups, in cafés, in the library and some public spaces.

Ø  Press release afterwards.

Ø  Doing it every Saturday, same place, same time until it becomes a tradition in Buxton. Saturdays 11am-12pm, the Turner Memorial (bottom of The Slopes), Buxton.

 

The first peace circle was held on Saturday 30th March 2024. Twenty six people of all walks of life joined and stood for 5 minutes or more, many for up to an hour.  There were people from churches, a festival volunteer, a couple of tourists, some Saturday morning shoppers, someone from a Tai Chi-course – some known to us and some we had never seen before. And, one dog.  Many pledged to come again.

Many experienced this first Saturday morning vigil as something precious and powerful. It had the spirituality of a Quaker Meeting.

We will be there again and again – every Saturday – bearing witness that peace is a real alternative.

Please, come and join us. 

Saturdays 11am-12pm, the Turner Memorial (bottom of The Slopes), Buxton.

Buxton Peace Circle, 30th March, 2024.

Photograph by Véronique Pin-Fat.

Peace vigils in Buxton

Quaker Friends in Buxton have organised a series of peace vigils in Buxton at  Turner's Memorial in the Crescent. The first 3 vigils will be on:
 
Saturdays 11am-12pm - 30th March, 6th April and 13th April.
 
 
We will stand (or sit) in an inward facing circle with spaces for others to join us. Ben Evens has made a fabulous poster that reads: "Stand with us in Stillness for Peace".
 
Please come and join us if you are free. Bring a chair if you need one (!)

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