Help, its Inter Faith week, what can I do! Let me tell you a story
10 November, 2025, Anne Moseley
As a classroom teacher, every year I would get excited about “Interfaith Week”. I would want to do something fun to celebrate diversity and inclusion. However what often happened, was that my best intentions were overtaken by other priorities, and I ended up feeling guilty because I had run out of time. I want to encourage you this year too do something, even a small activity can make a big difference. My hope is that this blog will help to take away some of the guilt and provide some small easily accessible ideas to begin to use with your pupils to help them engage and learn more from each other
Story
My work as a researcher has highlighted the potential for using stories to help pupils to understand the values of others who hold different worldviews. Stories from sacred texts carry significant meaning across time and place and can offer a safe space to talk about matters of faith and belief. The meaning is nuanced and requires the reader to go exploring for what is hidden in the text. You do not need to be a theologian to be able to share a story and explain why it is important to you. It is something everyone can do, be they pupils, staff, or members of local faith communities.
I would like to suggest that it is these very connections that could be a rich source of knowledge to tap into during interfaith week.
Could you find some time in the classroom to explore stories that carry meaning for your own pupils?
Could you ask members of staff, volunteers or parents to come in and share stories that are important to them as representatives of different faith community?
Sharing stories in their own right is helpful and interesting, but I would argue that the most interesting conversations can be developed when we bring stories together from different perspectives and begin to look for the similarities and differences in how they are perceived. This year Interfaith Week highlights the theme of “Community: Together We Serve”.
Could you invite three people from different faith perspectives to share a story that illustrates something of what it looks like to serve?
Are there trusted members of the school community who might be willing to talk about their beliefs through story telling?
Dialogue
It is important to recognise that for these interfaith encounters to be positive, setting a space for dialogue is important. There is a famous American psychologist called Gordon Allport (Allport, 1954) who has suggests that prejudice can be reduced through positive contact. He argues that for this to be effective it needs to be conducted within a safe environment. His contact theory, also known as the intergroup contact hypothesis, suggests that encounters are most effective when all members of the group have equal status, shared objectives, active collaboration and these encounters should be supported by recognised authority structures. When these conditions are in place, he suggests encounters can lead to more positive attitudes and better intergroup relations.
The Story Tent
At the heart of my interfaith work has been the concept of a Story Tent. My research and subsequent classroom-based practice have highlighted the potential of creating spaces, to share our stories and build friendships across divides. My logo illustrates a tent shape with a space for dialogue underneath. It could also represent a bridge that connects different starting points. In this space I encourage pupils to consider themselves as both a guest and a host. The space is shared, and all participants have equal status.
You may find that there is somewhere in the school that you dedicate to creating such an interfaith story telling space. I have used a gazebo to create a temporary space, but you may have a book corner or space in the library which could be set aside for interfaith week.
Guidelines for dialogue
Using guidelines for dialogue in this space enables open respectful conversations to emerge but it is important to remember that this space needs to have some authority figure around to oversee the activities. I have attached below some guidelines for dialogue which I have used in primary schools, a PDF is available on my website. There are also guidelines which can be used in secondary school which have been developed by “The Feast”, an interfaith networking organisation, more details available on their website listed below.
Download guidelines for dialogue here.
The Faith and Belief forum have recently produced a report May 2025 – highlighting the positive impact and importance of this Interfaith Week initiative which was started in 2009. But Interfaith Week does not need to be the end of an interest in this aspect of important work. Rather it can be the start of developing an interest in the lived experiences of people of different faiths and worldviews.
My challenge to you today is to go away and plan to do at least one story related activity during Interfaith Week (or afterwards) and see where it leads. Begin to explore a dialogical space where it is safe for pupils to talk about their perceptions. This type of learning can help reframe attitudes and help pupils to not only discover more about what others believe but also refine their own beliefs, values and sense of identity.
Bibliography:
Allport, G.W. (1954) The nature of prejudice. Cambridge, Mass: Addison-Wesley.
Interfaith week consultation report, 2005, Faith &Belief Forum,
https://faithbeliefforum.org/report/report-inter-faith-week-consultation/
[accessed 18th October 2025]
Resources:
Faith and Belief Forum
https://www.ifw4schools.co.uk/ [accessed – 12th Oct 2025]
Interfaith week resources
https://www.interfaithweek.org/resources [accessed – 12th Oct 2025]
Story Tent resources
https://www.storytent.concordant.online/ [accessed – 12th October 2025]
Story Tent @ Coventry Cathedral video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WolsaClLHPg [accessed 12th October 2025]
The feast guidelines for dialogue:
https://thefeast.org.uk/resources [accessed 12th October 2025]