Edinburgh Friends mark Quaker Week
Edinburgh Quakers share virtual tour of Meeting house to mark Edinburgh & East Lothian Doors Open Days 2020 and Quaker Week
Edinburgh Quakers created a virtual tour of its Meeting house to share for Edinburgh & East Lothian Doors Open Days 2020 and Quaker Week.
Lynne Barty, from the Meeting, told the Friend that volunteers from the Meeting created the script and production notes after meeting with The Cockburn Association which hosts Doors Open Day each year. ‘It was agreed that young F/friends should be involved as much as possible, including the teenage film-maker… The aims were to share the flavour of the Meeting house operating under normal conditions, to give a bit about the building’s history and some information about Quaker beliefs and values.’
The video for the days on 26 and 27 September starts with an introduction from a member of the Children’s Meeting and features a Young Friend, the managers and elders.
‘The first ever recorded Quaker Meeting in Edinburgh was 1665 – we’ve been around for a very long time,’ says one Young Friend, who describes how the building was built as the United Original Secession Church in 1865 and sold to the Boys Brigade in 1956. It has been in Quaker hands since 1987.
Another young Quaker talks about Young Friends’ activism in the climate strike movements, for which they helped organise an event ‘that saw 20,000 people march through Edinburgh’.
David Sterratt, a member of the clerking team, told the Friend that the video has been shared on YouTube, on The Cockburn Association (Edinburgh Civic Trust)’s website and on Central Edinburgh Quakers’ website. ‘We’ve had 320 views… We would have expected up to 200 visitors (from memory) on a normal Doors Open Day.’
Sue Proudlove, co-manager of the Meeting house, added: ‘I think the number of views of the video is significant, and shows that it definitely reached out beyond the Quaker community locally.’
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