Lancaster Peace Pole ‘opens new avenues’
Quakers in Lancaster have found the process of installing a Peace Pole has helped them to build bridges with the local Muslim community and nearby schools
The ‘Peace Pole’ unveiled by Lancaster Friends this autumn has ‘opened new avenues’ within the community, according to local Quakers. Ann Morgan, clerk of Lancaster Meeting, told the Friend that the 2.5-metre oak pole installed on 23 October has built bridges with the local Muslim community and nearby schools.
‘It’s been a very interesting exercise and has created a closer relationship with the Muslim community because the area where the pole is situated has a high population of Muslim residents,’ she said..
She added: ‘It is also close to Dallas Road Primary School and Lancaster Girls’ Grammar School, which have also been involved. We had to conduct house-to-house surveys, as well as doing assemblies in the primary school about peace, which the children really engaged with. It took us about eighteen months to go through all the hoops, because it’s in a public space and we had to have planning permission.’
Two hundred people came to an inauguration ceremony on 30 October, featuring peace songs and silence. Some seventy schoolchildren attended, as well as thirty refugees and asylum seekers.
The pole is inscribed with the words ‘May Peace Prevail on Earth’ in English and three other languages. Ann Morgan explained: ‘Gujarati because that is the predominant language of the local residents; Arabic, because a signifiant number of asylum seekers and refugees in the area speak Arabic; and Japanese, as that is where the “Peace Pole” movement began.’
According to the clerk, during the house survey ‘people really engaged with the message of peace. One particular family translated our leaflet into Gujarati so we could go around to the other families who didn’t speak English and show them our plans’.
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