On Thursday 23rd June 2022 Coventry Cathedral Schools team worked together with the Story Tent project and members from local faith representatives to deliver a storytelling event, promoting interfaith engagement. 

 

The Aim: The aim of the day was to help pupils to learn the skills of inquiry and engagement through listening to, and engaging with people from different faith traditions and worldviews through stories from their sacred texts.

The Objectives: We wanted to promote skills and attitudes that would help pupils to engage confidently with people from other faith traditions and worldviews. We wanted to provide opportunities for pupils to reflect creatively on what they have heard so that they could apply it to their own understanding of the world.

The Space: The Cathedral was set up in a horseshoe shape and pupils sat with their school community. There were 8 tent spaces set up along the sides of the cathedral where the stories were shared. The storytellers remained in the tents throughout the morning and the pupils rotated around three of the spaces to explore different insights from different religious traditions and worldviews.

The Timings: The morning was spent with focused teaching times aimed at developing attitudes of respect, openness and curiosity. (The teaching outlines can be found at the links below.) The afternoon provided a time for creative reflection and informal conversation to help pupils process what they had learnt through the interfaith encounter.

Teaching Resources available for use in classroom settings:

Developing attitudes of Respect

Developing attitudes of Openness

Developing attitudes of Curiosity

Advice for Faith Guides

Guidelines for Dialogue