(Still) Calling From the Edge & Telling Encounters

Since 2012, an annual conference has held space for disabled people- to gather, to resource each other and the church. It’s a partnership between St Martin-in-the-Fields & Inclusive Church, working #withnotfor disabled people. If you want to sign up to receive information about Disability Conferences each year, fill in this sign up form. You can also follow the Disability Conference on Twitter: @livingedgeconf

(Still) Calling From the Edge 2021

This year’s conference is entitled ‘(Still) Calling From the Edge’ and takes place online on the 16th October 2021. Booking and more information is on the Eventbrite page. In addition to the main conference in October, there are two pre-conference online events. The first is ‘Out of the Depths’ and is a music-based workshop. The second is ‘Called to the Feast’ and is an art-based workshop.

Telling Encounters 2020

Telling Encounters: Stories of Disability, Faith, Church and God was our 9th annual conference on disability & church in partnership between St Martin in the Fields & Inclusive Church. Recordings of sessions from the conference can be viewed here.

Devised during the pandemic, we were entirely online for the first time and hosted by HeartEdge. It was a steep learning curve to work out how to transition the conference to an online format with talks, workshops, small groups, liturgy, marketplace, chaplaincy and coffee hangout. Thanks to the disabled-led planning team and conference staff for making this work. 

Sadly due to technical issues BSL & captions were not captured on all the recordings. Huge thanks to Rachel Noel, our tech lead, for the enormous undertaking of streaming, recording and rendering the films to be the best they can be. 

Krysia Waldock's blog conference report https://www.inclusive-church.org/2021/03/12/telling-encounters-stories-of-disability-faith-church-and-god/ .

Fiona MacMillan wrote about the conference planning in Finding Abundance (ed Samuel Wells, Canterbury 2021).

An archive of materials from earlier conferences can be found at https://www.inclusive-church.org/disability-conferences/.

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Victoria Williams - Holy Spirit.

Thinking Differently About God: Neurodiversity, Faith and Church 2

Day 2 of the 'Thinking Differently About God: Neurodiversity, Faith and Church' weekend at St Martin-in-the-Fields in partnership with Inclusive Church began with a Eucharist. This service continued the reflections begun on Day 1 with input from conference participants, including Krysia Waldock and Ann Memmott, plus a liturgy, parts of which were written by the Disability Advisory Group at St Martin's.

I said that we are able to think differently about God because the Trinity is diverse, as is the world that God created, and because the Bible contains a huge variety of different images of and names for God. These create the space in which those who are neurodiverse share their perceptions of God to the benefit of us all. Krysia Waldock's introduction to neurodiversity and the experience of neurodiverse people in church can be read here, while Ann Memmott's excellent address can be heard here.

Our afternoon programme used insights from the creative Arts to explore the weekend's themes. Phillip Hickman said that as a “Visual Theologian”, his aim is to minster to the effectiveness of the Christian Contemplative practice of photography and thus come to understand a deeper realisation of the divine nature of God. His work as a photographer helps him question his own identity and its implication to the wider world.

We also watched Me, My Mouth and I, a film which follows Jess Thom as she stages a neuro-diverse version of Samuel Beckett’s short play Not I. Jess is co-founder of Touretteshero and may or may not lead a secret double life as a superhero. Artist, playworker, and expert fundraiser, Jess currently helps coordinate a large play project in South London. Jess has had tics since she was a child but wasn’t diagnosed with Tourettes until she was in her twenties. With some encouragement from her friends, Jess decided to turn her tics into a source of imaginative creativity and the Touretteshero project was born.

Fiona MacMillan then discussed the themes of the film with Jess exploring what the arts have to teach the church regarding diversity, acceptance and belonging. In particular, Touretteshero are pioneering work creating relaxed spaces where all can belong. Relaxed performances offer a warm welcome to people who find it difficult to follow the usual conventions of theatre behaviour.

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The Cranberries - Linger.