Freedom and hope: Flying kites to celebrate Palestinian culture
mayBe community contributed to the Palestine Unlocked festival; a celebration of Palestinian culture. We ran a family kite making workshop at the Oxford Story Museum. Palestinian children hold the world record for the number of kites flown at the same time (12,350!); kites are symbols of freedom, hope, peace.
About 40 people came. We looked for Palestine on the map; we heard from Hazem about what kite flying means to children there; we made our own kites and decorated them with patterns from Palestinian embroidery motifs, and words like salaam, peace, justice. Younger children coloured their own kite pictures. After a few test runs in the courtyard we went down to Christchurch meadow and flew them! We also projected a video of the first kite flying record attempt in Gaza (Flying Paper - a video documentary film by Nitin Sawhney and Roger Hill), and ate baklava freshly prepared by a local Palestinian cafe.
It felt great to us to have contributed to such a positive festival. If you came, thank you, do drop us a line with your thoughts, we'd love to hear from you, and of course you'd be very welcome to join us at any of our gatherings.
Check out the photos below.
Camping at Bridge House
Weekend of 12 July, we went to Bridge House, Shillingford for our annual camping trip. It was great to join with the Northumbria Community's simple worship in their beautiful chapel. And a lovely, fun time had by all.
Community Meal
25 July Emma and John hosted a community meal where we pondered a chapter of Brian McLaren's We Make the Road By Walking.
