Our learning communities of interest

1^st. Peace Chaplaincy; Interfaith Mission and Eco spirituality Chaplaincy celebrated 40 years of service in 2022. The Ministry benefits co-operative communities, encouraging an increase in thoughtful, mindful and compassionate attitudes. In the diverse society in which we all live, understanding of citizenship and democracy is offered. We work with the spirit whatever the faith. We foster interfaith dialogue between people of different religious traditions and multifaith affinity. We focus on the beliefs and philosophies of Pagan, Heathen, Druid, 1st. Nations (US), African Animist, Celtic and Saxon Christian and Spiritualist paths. The Chaplaincy offers expertise in spiritual ecology and wider well being programmes, alongside traditional ministry, worship & mysticism. We have found ourselves more in demand than ever, as people report feeling anxious about the social and political turmoil, fighting and war around the world and lack of action on climate change, nature loss, human and animal suffering.

Top: 1) a peacock butterfly photographed by one of our volunteer species recorder in Leicestershire. 2) a dragonfly photographed by one of our volunteer species recorders in Nottinghamshire. 

The importance of community learning in our mission:

Nature is a great catalyst to learning; Dylan Thomas referred to the: "green fuse of everything."

We build community and family opportunities and participate in academic sharing. Our aim is to encourage and support life long learning and activities which offer enjoyment. We promote access to education and skills improvement in local communities, offering resources for learning. We develop public interest and responsibility and involve new people, raising awareness and understanding. We maximize social and economic benefits through capacity building, training, personal development and community learning courses. Basic skills learning is embedded in much of our work, including practical skills building, arts and craft activities and outdoor projects such as recording biodiversity and historical features, community mapping, photographing ancient trees, horticultural, animal welfare and healthy eating tasks. We support forest schools and elective home education groups. 

Learning topics are organised by term: Hilary or Lent - January to April, Trinity or Easter - April to July, High Summer is for special August summer school activities, Michaelmas is from September to December. Michaelmas always starts with a welcome event, in 2025 this was a talk on the chemicals behind autumn colour.

Below: a child picking French beans. We have fed into Government food security consultations via the RSA.

Above: children enjoying a creative painting activity.

Our Communities of Interest Learning Network, operational delivery:

A) building learning communities for disadvantaged people and those lacking confidence

 

B) sharing in academic communities of interest for specialist researchers and communicators who can enhance and create positive change in the wider communities. We regularly feed into Yale University Climate Communication research and other initiatives

 C) creating resources and activities that:

1) advance knowledge and skills to improve life quality, social and economic wellbeing, social and economic welfare and help people become more fulfilled, happy, active, able to gain employment or volunteer. 

2) promote opportunities, enterprise and positive business models. 

3) advance understanding of equality, equity, democracy and collective responsibility and foster skills which enable people to obtain their ethical aspirations and participate in making decisions that affect their communities, lives, development and access to basic requirements. 

4) promote access to culture, the arts and heritage that enriches people's lives and respects people, animals and the environment.

5) advance understanding that places have special meaning to communities and the that natural heritage (habitats, landscapes and wildlife) is irreplaceable and may need to be both accessible and protected for the enjoyment of all.

6) promote skills that reduce harm, neglect, cruelty, exploitation and suffering in human society; advance  animal welfare; promote understanding of climate change, environmental issues and empower people to live sustainably, conserve heritage plants, ecosystems, water, soil and clean air. 

7) we share global benefit and positive change through our International Co-operation Programme.

Below: coming together to learn.

Learning themes:

Education: we work with learning communities to provide educational activities, resources and information to advance understanding. Lifelong learning, family learning and academic research and the collection of knowledge are nurtured by our Learning Communities of Interest Networks. We share best practice of how to deliver learning effectively. We engage, motivate, enable, encourage and support thoughtful learning and debate; offering, honest, compassionate and enquiring testing and challenging of ideas within safe, peaceful, welcoming and lawful environments. 

Learners may develop confidence, skills, knowledge, individual capabilities, competences, employability and increased well-being. 

We aim to promote respect and compassion and active conservation of the environment, contributing to a positive and ethical society that shares knowledge, interest, friendship and enjoyment. 

We share within communities of interest specialist research and communicator groups; with the intention of enhancing and creating positive change in the wider community. 

Delivery methods include online educational information, media resources, forums, debate, learning activities and publications.

Our Isabella Ascough Ogle Archive, holds a vast collection of books, photographs, documents and audio tapes.

Above: Isabella Ascough Ogle founded the Spiritualist movement of Australia in 1933.

Our Juno Project logo is taken from a work held in our archive, an image of the goddess Juno. It is contained in a book by one of the earliest female historians, Margaret Cavendish, second wife of William Cavendish 1st. Duke of Newcastle upon Tyne and (amongst his other titles) Baron and Earl of Ogle - through his mothers line. Our archive includes fascinating historical book front plates plates. 

Below: a front plate from our collection, from the library of Admiral Sir Charles Ogle 2nd Baronet 1802. 

The audio archive includes many lectures by Gordon Higginson MSNU, Ron Baker MSNU, Ivor Williams and Ivy Dunn MSNU, amongst others and guest lecturers from various institutions including Durham University. They were produced with technical support from Percy Taylor, recording technology development expert at the BBC and Cambridge University, commissioned by Spiritual Northumbria and facilitated by Muriel Trosh Turner MSNU RAD and Jeanette Dunn MSNU at the A.J. Findlay College, where they both served as Principals. Lectures and demonstrations were recorded at this location between 1966-1982 and at other locations  between 1956-1967, where Spiritual Northumbria courses were organised by Muriel, including the National Lyceum Summer School Camps in Northumberland and Durham and at the beautiful listed building at Beach Rd., South Shields. In former times it had been home of the Naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton, founder of the Woodcraft League, influencer of Lord Baden Powel and a key campaigner for the establishment of American National Parks. Original environmental teaching material in Setons hand was written on the walls in the building and was at one time protected as part of the archive resource.

Above: a cheerful mosaic owl

"To the owl, the dark path is not unknown,"

Our Communities of Interest Learning Network, loves our learning motto, which we explain as "watch, research and strategize."  

Above: cliff erosion at Hunstanton, Norfolk. Spongey landscapes and costal defences in climate emergency has been a theme in our environmental protection work.

Environmental protection: we promote understanding of climate change and environmental issues and empower people to live sustainably, conserve heritage plants, wildlife, habitats, ecosystems, water, soil and clean air. Educational activities advance appreciation that places and landscape heritage have special meaning to communities. The learning programmes and eco-philosophy and eco spirituality research supports the protection of the environment, flora, fauna, biodiversity and natural history and increased climate change awareness.

Animal welfare: the chaplaincy promotes kindness and and thoughtful, mindful and compassionate attitudes, seeking to suppress cruelty to animals and wildlife and promoting the understanding that veganism and responsible and sustainable lifestyles can benefit animals, wildlife and habitats.

Community development: our learning programmes, covering sustainable development, are designed to empower and enable people to share best practice and help to create communities in which the basic means of life, growth and development are available for all. We encourage participants to champion creative social and environmental innovation and contribute to community and economic welfare benefits in society. We offer a sustainability check-list and deliver learning in organic plant-based food growing, seed saving, propagation, pollination, composting and soil management. We encourage the development and sharing of innovative low technology solutions by networking information. We create evidence based initiatives and keep up to date with the latest research from universities. The Nature-based Solutions Initiative at the University of Oxford, has offered strong evidence showing that soil health and biodiversity can improve, under holistic regenerative agricultural practices. Cambridge Zero, messaging via the BBC, explained the climate science that assists understanding of the increasing intensity and frequency of heatwaves.

Human rights and well-being: human rights and the advancement of health and well-being, with better understanding between persons of different races and religions, is central to our educational objectives. We aim to build community capacity and nurture ethical communities, by the promotion of civic responsibilities and by increasing understanding of citizenship, promoting inclusion and good relations, challenging bullying and advancing equality and equity. We strive to teach good models of democracy and collective responsibility. We endeavour to foster skills which enable people to obtain their ethical aspirations and participate in making decisions that affect their communities, their lives and abilities to to develop and access to basic requirements. We promote skills that reduce harm, neglect, cruelty, exploitation and suffering and give opportunities for increased welfare, well-being, quality of life, happiness and enjoyment. We seek to nurture good, respectful and tolerant community relations, so that people feel involved and equally valued and respected. We encourage access to cultural, natural heritage and arts experiences, including rural heritage and crafts, for the enjoyment of all. We network information on the proven beneficial effects on human well being, of mindful activities, visiting nature and healthy eating. 

Above: volunteers picture, the peace angel window, museum of Lincolnshire life.

Implementing strong standards and creating benefits: our responsive flexibility; clear, simple achievable and creative concepts, partnered with moral, ethical and meaningful action, create healthy outcomes, local enjoyment and feelings of worth. Benefits are built, as our Learning Communities of Interest Networks:

• engage, nurture, motivate, enable, encourage and support learning. 
• offer participation, learning resources, assemblies, deliberations, communication, forums and experience, with the potential to increase self determination. 
• increase thoughtful, mindful and compassionate attitudes; opportunity; multi level community connections and potential. 

These benefits are extended through co-operative delivery of the following work :

We assist in the understanding of democracy and foster skills for participation in decisions that affect communities and impact on our lives and economy. We encourage accessible local democracy, encouraging collective responsibility, to help assure that the basic means of life, growth and development are available for all.

We nurture community learning and skills development in order to enrich lives and help people into the labour market in exchange for fair pay, security and dignity.

We work within communities, discussing and exploring how their own resources and destinies can be ethically secured; fostering the understanding that life resources, such as water, needed by plants, animals and humans, should be affordable, accessible to all, uncontaminated and sustainably managed.

We deliver learning in organic plant based food growing, seed saving and propagation, pollination, composting and soil management. We encourage the development and sharing of innovative low technology solutions by networking information.

We work with communities to stimulate cultural enjoyment and enterprise

through participation in activities in heritage and history, the arts and crafts, such as the visual arts, ceramics, music, words and language, needle crafts, cooking, plant crafts and traditional wood skills.

We cooperate with indigenous communities in specified international locations, respecting their right to seek inclusion in international agreements among nations, thus giving them a voice; indigenous people must be on an equal footing with other people and nations.

We offer and publicise opportunities and support for all, helping people meet their needs and fulfil their ethical aspirations, showing that enterprise is rooted in and responsible to communities and future generations. We work cooperatively, especially with women headed households and children leaving care, to create positive community business models, favouring self management and worker ownership.

Below: we hope that the projects inspire future generations and create sustainability. Photograph by a supporter

We understand that places have special meaning to communities and that places have irreplaceable habitats, ecosystems and beauty, that should not be desecrated by exploitation.

We support access to cultural heritage that respects human, animal and environmental well-being, for the benefit of society.

We help communities protect and conserve the life-sustaining systems of the planet; extending understanding and helping to bring about positive behavioural change. 

Below: Patrick Harry raising awareness of deforestation and promoting plant based food growing

We nurture respect for :

human communities
the natural environment

wild plants and open-pollinated heirloom plants
habitats and ecosystems
ecological communities 
all animals
All are too precious to be made commodities, be harmed or exploited; all should be free from suffering, neglect and cruelty.