Thursday, September 04, 2008

Showcasing the city centre's faith communities

This afternoon we had another meeting of the Countdown 2009 Faith Focus Group, at which I was able to report on the positive outcome of Tuesday's meeting about Soup Runs, and run past the group the first step in creating a City Centre Faith Trail resource for local visitors and tourists.

Cathays Park, the Centre and the Bay have between them two dozen active places of worship - English, Welsh, Greek and Afro-Caribbean Churches, a Cathedral, four Mosques, a Mandal and a Gurdwara, the kind of diversity that needs to be celebrated vigorously in a modern city, rather than treated as a kind of secret treasure.

The Countdown public relation process has given us December as a publicity showcase under the title 'Celebrating the Season of Goodwill'. We shall actually start by gathering material from the Diwali and Eid ul Fitr celebrations at the end of October, and incorpoate those together with stuff from previous Christmases. All our December programmes will get publicised together, and we're thinking exhibition, webspace, open air nativity outside StJohn's, and as many positive publicity slots as we can obtain from local media.

If we're successful it'll some kind of 'first', and be a rehearsal for doing more next year when the new shopping centre opens for business.

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