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Encouraged Conversations

These are real people, real lives, real thoughts and we treat them with respect.

Being Christian

Here is an encouraged conversation between a married couple about their Christian beliefs. Both either have or are aspiring to take holy orders. They base their conversation around questions posed by ardent atheists and they spend time thinking about the reasoning behind the questions.

Being Vegan

Here are three members of a family, a mother and two sons, talking about their shared vegan approach to living. The conversation is encouraged by questions from non-vegans and the family are frank and honest in the way they tackle the questions.

Being Muslim and a woman

This conversation is between four friends who are talking about their faith in Islam. They are looking at questions written by a group of high school students, most of whom are white and non-Muslim, and aged between 12 and 13 years old. The four friends are sitting in a quiet room in the mosque. They are all young women in their twenties or thirties and wear the hijab. They share their experiences and feelings of how being a Muslim impacts on their lives.

Photo of bombed out buildings overlaying rural landscape

Being a refugee (from Syria)

In this conversation, two best friends, both refugees from Syria, answer questions from undergraduate psychology students studying intergroup relations. An ESOL tutor is present to help with any language difficulties. There is a paraphrased transcript available.

Montage of sunflower for Ukraine and thistle for Scotland

Being a refugee (from Ukraine)

A couple from Ukraine who arrived in rural Scotland as refugees answer questions from undergraduate psychology students studying intergroup relations. An ESOL tutor is present to help with any language difficulties. There is a paraphrased transcript available.

Patterns incorporating the Star of David symbol

Being Jewish in 2024

The war in Gaza has polarised opinions about Muslims and Jews in many secular societies. There are however, ordinary people who are willing to improve their understanding of 'the other' and to remember that power-seeking and politics is not a moral code. Two young women who came to the UK as refugees from Syria are integrating into the local community in Scotland and bringing up their families as practising Muslims. They acknowledge that they have never met a Jewish person and put together some questions they wanted to ask of Jews. These questions were put to three people of different ages from the same Jewish community in the south of England. The resulting conversation tells us what it means to be a Jew in daily life and reveals the wide variations in how Judaism is practised.

Rural upland landscape

Being an upland hill farmer

Another contribution to ‪@EncouragedConversations‬ from three farmers who have long experience of farming in the uplands of the south of Scotland. They are discussing questions from residents of a small village in the rural region of the Scottish Borders.

Rural upland landscape

Being a farmer in the Heart of Scotland

This is the recorded conversation of three friends and neighbours who work on farms in a particular area in the heart of Scotland that is a mix of valleys and hills reaching over 2000 feet. The farms are mainly livestock farms but they are each different in their own way. In the conversation, the farmers are answering questions put to them by primary school children as part of a topic study from Farm to Fork. The children wanted to know some practical information as well as being curious about the farmers' feelings and opinions.

Image of solitary tree in a snow covered field

Being Old

In this conversation, three friends in their eighties are answering, (and sometimes not answering!), questions from a group of teenagers with an occasional prompt from a facilitator. They all live in the Scottish Borders. The questions are thoughtful and sometimes very direct but the friends tackle them head on and give us a frank, personal and sometimes unsettling insight into what it is like being old.

Photo of soldiers in truck

Being a soldier

High school students studying the topic of 'War' as part or their RMPS (Religious, Moral and Philosophical Studies) course put some searching questions to soldiers who have had the real life experience. The soldiers who have served together as regular army and reservists answer the questions with disarming honesty and clarity.

We hope you enjoyed listening in!
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