Arts Articles
Refugee
We cross deserts, we walk the line, cross oceans to find our way from where we were crushed and conquered,
Modernise or bust
The powers of the West, the greatest and the best, agreed to make a plan for no more war. After days and nights of labour, each resolved to love his neighbour by spending more on weapons than before.
Echo Chamber
Echo Chamber is a new artwork inspired by the stories of world war one conscientious objectors. At its core are their voices, speaking directly to us. Their stories may shock our modern ear (sharing prison with men about to be executed), are often sad (a family rift never healed), and...
Inside the Echo Chamber
The first gift you can offer, in an artwork or a conversation, is space. In a generous space we feel received but free to have our own reactions, to stay or to go. We have a choice. Choice is at the heart of Echo Chamber: the historic choice whether to...
Feeding the darkness
The challenge offered to us was that of creating and delivering a theatre piece that would address head on the issue of state-sponsored torture in relation to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 2. Journeymen Theatre exists to explore dramatically such Quaker concerns and we regard this work as...
The Lollards
A memorial stands on the hill overlooking the Buckinghamshire market town of Amersham. It marks the spot where, at two separate times in the early sixteenth century, seven men and women were burnt at the stake for heresy. The seven were Lollards and part of a growing group across Europe...
What are Quakers?
At heart we Quakers are mystics, Experiencing the Light, We trust in love and peace, And choose to heal, not fight.
Salter Lecture: Red Flag over Bermondsey
Ada Salter was a pioneer of ethical socialism and an important figure in the story of radical politics in early twentieth century Britain. While familiar to many Quakers, she is not widely recognised outside the Religious Society of Friends. Most people do not know that she was only the fifteenth...
Indra’s net
When Indra made the world, some Indian sages said, he shaped it as a net. At every intersection on the net the god fastened a pearl.
Photography and conflict
Last December an exhibition of work by the photographer Don McCullin was held at Hauser and Wirth in Bruton entitled ‘Conflict, people, landscape’. The show ran until the end of January 2016. I followed the exhibition online and was interested in the responses to it. I loved it: fifty-five powerful images...