Children play major role at London event

‘Years of difficult and… contentious work.’ What came before ‘a willingness to commit’ to forming a single Area Meeting for Friends in London.

Children and young people played ‘a major role’ at a gathering of all seven London Area Meetings (AMs) earlier this month.

According to its epistle, the Children’s Meetings on 3 February focused on the topic of building a community. ‘As a start to both the children’s and main meetings, everyone was given a pen and a paper “brick”,’ wrote Issy Craig-Wood and Kit King, children and young peoples’ workers. ‘With these, people could write down their idea of what community means and place it onto a house, collectively creating a description of what a community is. We took these “bricks” back to the children’s meeting, so they could be glued onto the house, and decorated’ (see picture).

Friends from all of London’s seven AMs gathered at Friends House to talk about the work in progress towards creating a single AM (see News, 16 February). ‘This project, started in 2019, has entailed several years of difficult and occasionally contentious work, several consultations with the seven AMs… and a substantial change management consultancy project,’ Fred Ashmore, co-clerk of London Quakers told the Friend. ‘This effort culminated in a meeting in July 2023 at which the Pan London Governance (PLG) Steering Group invited the seven London AMs and London Quakers Property Trust (LQPT) to commit to a process of becoming part of a single London AM, supporting this invitation with a set of papers describing the proposed way forward. The 7 AMs’ Business Meetings at the end of 2023 led to minutes in which each of [them] expressed – in its own way – a willingness to commit, along with some continuing concerns and reservations. The final meeting of the PLG Steering Group in December 2023 accepted the proposal that there should be a development group to take the work forward, with two members appointed by each of the AMs, by London Quakers Property Trust and by London Quakers.’

The development group is ‘substantially in place’, drafting terms of reference and taking them back for approval to the AMs and LQPT.
The meeting on 3 February ‘could have been very serious, but actually felt quite joyful,’ Fred added.

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