On the record, part two: Paul Parker, interviewed by Joseph Jones
‘I don’t think my job’s about being comfortable.’
At the end of the last conversation we were talking about how gathered your Meetings with BYM trustees were, and how to get Friends to trust decisions that were made there. The Friend attends Meeting for Sufferings to help with communications. What if we attended trustee Meetings, too?
BYM trustees have been talking about how to communicate better. One of the things they’ve started doing is writing a note with their papers, which gives a bit more of a flavour and background to the decision rather than just a minute. I do think in the twenty-first century communication has moved on beyond writing minutes and reporting them back to Area Meetings. Most Friends aren’t at Area Meeting to hear the Sufferings report anyway. Even if they are, the person reporting inevitably sees it through a particular lens because of their own interests. So it’s a very imperfect channel of communication. We write minutes because in the seventeenth century there wasn’t access to other communication channels; there also were lower levels of literacy, so we reported verbally. We’ve got to be much more creative about how we use email, social media and video to really bring to life the story of what goes on in different places in the Society. That could happen at the local level with Area Meetings but also things like trustees and Sufferings. There are lots of Friends on the bench who have no idea what happens at Meeting for Sufferings and what I’m wary of is creating a group of people who feel entitled to more information than everybody else. We should be making sure that anybody who wants to can hear about the work that goes on nationally in their name. It belongs to all Quakers not just the ones who get approached for appointment to Meeting for Sufferings. Meetings for Sufferings is not a very representative group actually. The people who come are called representatives but they’re nominated from quite a small pool of people: those who’ve got time to attend five weekend Meetings a year; who can travel to London; who are able to spend a whole day taking part in the Meeting. It’s been interesting that in the last eighteen months since Sufferings has shifted online, the kind of people who’ve been able to serve on it has changed a bit. You need there to be groups of people who take responsibility for legal stuff and compliance – we need trustees or something very like it – but I’m wondering whether there are ways to really open up some of the other processes so they’re much more transparent, and potentially much more participative than they are at the moment. There are some really interesting opportunities just now to make that shift.
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