Bristol Celebrates

Last Sunday (21st Nov) at City Academy I went down to Bristol Celebrates festival. It was a great event to celebrate different religions and cultures. I volunteered as a steward for some of the time and I had a great day, it was really inspiring to meet so many different people who want to do positive things across cultural and religious boundaries.

Do you sleep in your hijab?

A group of young people from the Somali Development group had put on their own exhibition about wearing hijabs and I got to try out a hijab style. The girls said they get asked lots of questions by people about why they wear hijabs and decided to make this exhibition to answer these questions. One girl explained to me that she doesn’t always wear hijab, but she feels different when she does. We had a interesting chat about the idea of being modest and how women should be respected. (and in case you’re wondering… no they take them off at home and don’t sleep in them!)

Youth together from different faiths + cultures

Bristol Active Youth Service (BAYS) a youth service run by young people also came along to Bristol Celebrates and had their own display, it was pretty cool to hear about what they are doing. So far they have set up study clubs and youth activities and hope to get their own premises soon. What is amazing about this is it has been set-up by young people from Easton and Eastville for themselves and it has really inspired me about what we as young people can do!

Why I Respect : The finished film!

 

This has been a really special project for us and our thanks go to our fabulous peer educators Oneil and Shagia who’ve supported every session and were fantastic with all the young people. We’d also like to thank Charlie Mee and Andy Gove from Fairfield school for being so supportive and helping us make the project possible, we’d really like to work with the school again in the future.

Our thanks also go out to BBC Bristol and editor Richard Lanciault for providing such excellent technical support and enthusiasm. Last but by no means least we’d like to thank the Fairfield Students themselves for bringing such creativity, humour and flair to the project. We loved working with everyone and the commitment and entertainment they brought to the project was brilliant. They’re an awesome bunch and we hope to work with them again in the future.

"As a school, we couldn't have asked for more from the Bread Youth Project in terms of the professionalism, the enthusiasm and the imagination you demonstrated in the way you managed the whole project, and in the way you worked with our students. The sessions were thoughtfully and creatively put together, with care and attention to detail, and the diverse group of young people were engaged and motivated throughout the six weeks of the project. Add to this the inspiring choice of volunteer facilitators and organisations who Bread arranged for us to work with (including the chance to work with experienced film-makers and to edit at the BBC) and Fairfield would have absolutely no hesitation in working with Bread again, or in recommending other schools to do so."

Charlie Mee, Extended School Co-ordinator, Fairfield High School, Bristol