On 1st 2nd of October London link group didn’t go to Salisbury!

With the lead organiser of the advertised Salisbury event put out of action by a London hire bike accident (he’s on the mend), at the last minute we called upon our Friends at BYM/Friends House and Muswell Hill Meeting to come to our aid and help us create a new event. And that they did!

24 young people and 5 staff volunteers gathered at Friends House, London. We used the main meeting room for name games and a bit of re-introductions for the weekend. After this David Irving showed us around the library and took two groups down into the archives to look at some of the huge collection of books, leaflets and other documents going back to the 1600s that have been lovingly preserved.

A highlight was seeing the original books of sufferings, which are the records of all the Quakers who ‘suffered’ for their Quaker beliefs, such as not paying their tithes to the Church and ending up being fined or imprisoned for it.
We also took a quick tour of the offices of BYM and heard a bit about all the different programmes and work from Sam Walton and Georgina Bailey …and from unsuspecting members of staff passing through!

We had a good lunch at the Quaker Cafe and then a treasure hunt game around Friends House, looking for answers to questions such as “Which other Quaker organisations have offices at Friends House” to “What time is the fire drill practice”. Once all the answers were found we headed up to Muswell Hill meeting.

From there we made the short walk across to Highgate Woods where we played Frisbee, messed about on the swings and generally let off a bit of steam. Back to the meeting house and it was time for dinner. After we cleared up, we split into two groups, one group played the cereal box game and another played my new favourite: newspaper hockey.

We had some hot chocolate before an epilogue and then bed.

On Sunday we had a great cooked breakfast which set us up well for either going into Quaker meeting or for a walk around Highgate woods. The sun came out and we were able to sit outside with our lunch and play a few more games before it was time to go home.

Thank you to Friends House and BYM staff and volunteers, Muswell Hill meeting, the London Link volunteers and all the young people for making it such a great weekend.

The short film produced at the Leaveners and London Link Animated Voices workshop was premièred at Britain Yearly Meeting at the end of May and… here it is:

direct link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFaet7Tq6Cs 

Great work! Check out the other short films made by young Quakers on the Leaveners’ youtube channel

On the 30th April London Link Group hosted the Leaveners to run a workshop called ‘Animated Voices’. 2 workshop facilitators from the Leaveners,  3 London Link Group volunteers and 9 Young people met early on the Saturday at Hampstead Meeting house.

The aim of the day was to try and create a short film using stop motion techniques. The first job was to decide on a story to tell. After much deliberation a concept was born. The story was then worked out further by making story boards.

After lunch and a quick walk on Hampstead heath, we split into two groups; each with different parts of the story to film. To create the characters we used craft materials and improvised with various things around us to build up the scenes. Each person in the group had different roles, for example, camera operator and director. Each frame was then set out and photographed. At various points during the process we checked on the animation by rendering the frames together into a video.

It was a challenging but rewarding process seeing our scenes come alive! We hope to have an edited version of the film out soon and ready for screening at BYM.

“And the Oscar goes to… “

We’d like to thank all at the Leaveners that made this workshop possible, all the young people for their creativity, London Link volunteers for hosting and Hampstead meeting for the use of their Meeting house.

Following on from the great success of our first visit two years ago to Littlehampton, this year on the 11-13th March 17 young people and 6 volunteers visited Littlehampton.

On the Friday evening we squeezed onto a packed commuter train from Victoria and made our way down south to Littlehampton, West Sussex. We were met in the Youth Hostel that we hired out by Keith accompanied by the welcome smell of baking potatoes, dinner was soon on the way.  After finding our rooms and settling in we had a intro session and played some name games. We then went out to have an epilogue by the sea in one of the sheltered wiggles in Littlehampton’s mega bench (which is apparently still part of the UK’s longest bench).

 

In the morning we had some breakfast and made some packed lunches. Sam then ran a workshop on the campaign called ‘Kites not drones‘ this is a campaign to raise awareness of the use of armed drones and the impact they have. We did a role play Q&A to  explore the different sides of the arguments, with special guests Barack Obama, Donald Trump, a Quaker peace activist and a drone operator. A lively debate ensued!

In solidarity with the many children who can no longer fly their kites safely we made many kites our selves with slogans and wishes written on them.

In the glorious sunshine we ate our lunch, flew our kites, ran around on West beach and some even braved a paddle in the sea. We came back to the Youth Hostel had some drinks and cups of tea and then got into groups to have a wander around town, including have a look in on the Life boat station which houses Blue Peter 1.

In the evening we played some games, the well loved classics; wink ministry, sardines, empire and mafia all run by the young people.  Dinner and then an epilogue again by sea.

On Sunday we joined Littlehampton Quakers for meeting and lunch. A last opportunity to sit in the sun, play games and pop down to the beach before we headed back to the station and back to London.

Thanks to volunteers Keith, Sam, Katy, Tavi, Olivia and Michael and all the young people for a fantastic weekend.

 

– Michael

To celebrate the start of the New Year, about 20 young people and 5 adults came together over great food, fun games and lots of catching up to do! We had a great time and it was great to reconnect with people we haven’t seen for a bit and to make new connections. What a better way to start the year!!

Thanks to the Young people committee and adult volunteers for organising a great party also thank you to Westminster meeting for hosting us again this year.