S15 E12: The One About the Aulre and Areiac Conference

To finish off the school year in style, I am celebrating the recent Aulre and Areiac conference which took place in Exeter University on 26th and 27th June 2025.  We speak with Pat Hanan, Ruth Marx, and Katie Gooch about the history of the two organisations and the planning that went into the conference.  I then talk to delegates and speakers throughout the conference, and finally, Ruth, Katie, and Jan Maguire talk to us after the conference to celebrate the joys and successes of what was an incredible and rich two days.  We also start looking forward to next year's conference. If you have never attended an Aulre/Areiac conference, I hope this episode whets your appetite and encourages you to join us in Lincoln next year.

It's such a lovely episode to end the year on as it celebrates the RE community as well as the amazing research that is being undertaken to help us be even more brilliant in the classroom.

http://aulre.org/

https://www.areiac.org.uk/

Thank you for listening over 2024/5. Have a summer holiday full of relaxation, joy, laughter,  love and I'll be back in September.

Transcript

SPEAKER_09 0:05

Welcome to the Re Podcast, the first dedicated RE podcast for students and teachers. My name is Louisa Jane Smith, and this is the Re Podcast. The podcast for those of you who think Re is boring, which it is, and I'll prove it to you. Now I'm about to go to my very, very first Ariak and Olre conference. Tomorrow, I'm very excited. I've never been to one, and I thought it'd be really lovely to find out a little bit about who Ariak and Olray are, the work that they do, what this conference is all about, what it's trying to achieve. And so I'm here with some really key people within the organizations to have a chat with them. So I'm just going to get them to introduce themselves and talk about their role within Ariak and Olray, and then we'll talk about what the organizations are, and then we'll talk a little bit about the conference. So, Pat, do you want to just say who you are, what you do, and your kind of relationship with Ariak and Olray?

SPEAKER_16 0:59

Ah, yeah. Well, hello, I'm Pat Hannum. I now live in South Devon and I have an honorary research fellowship at the University of Exeter. Before I moved back here, I was working for Hampshire County Council as RE and History and Philosophy Inspector Advisor, and I was doing that job since 2009. I stepped back at the end of 2022. And in those days I was also part of ARIAC, and I was on the exec for a while. Right now I am chair of All Ray, which is the Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education. That's enough for right now, yeah?

SPEAKER_09 1:38

That's brilliant. Thank you, Pat.

SPEAKER_10 1:40

Ruth. So my name's Ruth Marks, and I am an RE teacher. Worked in London in Tower Hamlets for well, in London for 20 years, Tower Hamlets for 15 years. And I now live in France and work remotely doing lots of bits and pieces that I can do, supporting different schools and various people and organisations. And I am on ARIAC as the co-vice chair, currently the secretary as well, on the Ariak Executive. And Ariak is the Association of Religious Education Inspectors and Consultants. And we're a kind of family of lots of different people who work supporting RE across England and Wales and religion, values, and ethics in Wales. Yeah, so I've been on the exec for this year and involved with also organising the conference, the joint conference with Ariak and Oray together.

SPEAKER_05 2:22

Amazing. Katie. Hi, I'm Katie Gooch. In my day job, I'm the primary religion and worldviews lead for United Learning. I do various other freelancing work as well in the RE community. And before that, I was a primary RE lead in a school for about 12 years. So I was teaching across the school. So I've got a lot of primary hours of RE under my belt.

SPEAKER_09 2:48

Brilliant. So incredibly well experienced people in front of me that have dedicated a huge amount of their life to the RE community. What I'm just struck by, and I know that in education there are so many acronyms and so many organizations. And I think particularly in RE, because we don't have a national curriculum, what's happened is lots and lots of organizations have popped up to try and support teachers. And I think sometimes what can happen is that we can feel a little bit confused. So if we say that ORE really is about university, if we talk about ARIAC as being for inspectors and consultants, and then we've also got NATRAE, which is the National Association of Teachers of RE, which is our subject association for teachers. Is that kind of fair to say is to kind of distinguish between them?

SPEAKER_16 3:37

Can I chip in there? Because I completely agree with you. And before I went to work for Hampshire, I was a secondary RE teacher in Cumbria for a long time, leading a department in Ulverston. And I remember at that time when I came back into teaching after my kids, kind of thinking, why have we got all these different organisations? And it's different in history, where the historical association tends to bridge all of these different things. So there's a history to it, right? That's what we can say. But it's one of the reasons we're so excited to work across Alray and Ariak and make this joint conference happen because each association has kind of got into a cool groove of its own. And we've had to each of us make a little bit of a leeway, which we could talk more about than we will talk more about. But my um general view is better together.

SPEAKER_09 4:30

Hundred percent agree. Ruth, did you just want to kind of come in with something?

SPEAKER_10 4:33

I think Katie wanted to say.

SPEAKER_09 4:34

Oh, Katie, sorry. It's like that thing in a classroom where you hear a noise and you go towards the sound what you think it is and you get it wrong. Sorry, Katie.

SPEAKER_05 4:42

So Ariette is the Association of Religious Education inspectors, advisors and consultants. And what I think is really interesting in recent years is that the RE advisory community has really been changing, especially with the rise of maths and there being fewer advisors in local authorities. Our membership is changing. So we also need to be thinking about how we meet their needs for the future and how we can partner with other organizations to make sure we're we're encompassing the needs of our members.

SPEAKER_09 5:14

And also, you know, I'm an RE consultant. One thing is that we really want to try and be outward facing. So I think MATs don't want to be Insular, they don't want to be inward-facing. They want to support the community. And actually, through the work of ARIAC, we can do that. So there's a couple of things I want to pick up on. One is just it's always really nice to plot a bit of a history of these organizations. So when, how, why they started, who started them. So Pat, I don't know if you're maybe a good person to do that.

SPEAKER_16 5:42

Yeah, let me give you a little bit of background to ALRA. So ALRAE, the religious, started with the amalgamation of two different organizations. And I can give you a little bit of a spiel, if you like, from Denise Kush, who was chair of something called Natfe, the religious studies section of Natfe, which was the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education. And in the 1990s, that was the main professional association for people who were teaching and researching in religious studies, theology, andor religious education in what we might call the new universities, as they were emerging in the nineties, coming out of the old higher education sector and old teacher training colleges, as it were. And that association, Natfe, merged with another association called COLRE, which was the association for those people who've been researching on RE in the old universities, right? Like Oxford and Cayman. Yeah. So believe it or not, Natfe and COLRA came together as Ulray, bringing the old and the new together at that point. So that was kind of innovative in its own time in the nineties as we saw a change in the higher education landscape. So the important thing is though, it wasn't just people involved with RE, but it also brought together people who were lecturing in religious studies and theology. And it remains that. And in a this is another argument I would say for working together, because we're in a world where there is a massive amount of transformation in higher education, in subject-based higher education, as well as in initial teacher education, where more initial teacher education is going on in multi-academy trusts. So some of us are worried that teachers of RE aren't getting access to enough history of the subject, enough theory in relation to education studies, in relation to theology and religion, and the whole thing, it feels quite precarious at the moment. So all the more reason for us to work together, those of us that have expertise in research and what that kind of quality interrogation of the issues comes from studying at a kind of more complicated level, that we don't lose that in this moment where the education sector is being potentially kind of fractured and contracted. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 8:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 8:48

Ruth, that's what I really loved about well Ariak and doing the Cullum Leadership Scholarship Programme, but also coming to Aura Ariak last year. I love this emphasis on disciplinary knowledge that we have and really going back to the disciplines and bringing it in. And I'm really happy that that is a focus. And I think people are talking a lot about that. But where do we go to get that disciplinary knowledge? Like we don't just like pick it off off a shelf, or we can't just, you know, a pre-prepared PowerPoint. It's something you do to sort of spend some time delving into and how do we get access to that? How can we support teachers with that? Which is what I love about the conference, because we're sort of how can the teachers, you know, what's happening in the classroom inform the research? How can the research inform what the teachers are doing? And it's kind of trying to bridge that gap, which is what is so fascinating about it. There is that contraction and there is debate and there is disagreement, you know, as well. But we're learning to sort of disagree agreeably and be more of a kind of a family rather than everyone has to sort of have the same view and the same point about things.

SPEAKER_09 9:42

And that's really powerful because that's going to make our lessons much richer and it's going to make the pupil's experience of RE much more powerful. And I think because of that kind of worldviews approach and that multidisciplinary way of doing RE, we are looking at applying scholarly work into our classrooms, not only in how we're teaching, but also the rich resources that we're drawing on to teach things. And then actually, that in terms of that religious literacy of students and of teachers being able to talk much more authentically and nuanced and applying that kind of critical thinking, it's really powerful. And I think a little bit of work's got to be done to make that research in higher education accessible to the teachers on the ground. I think there's still a bit of work, you know, and I'm personally, you know, experiencing that issue. But I think it's so powerful of what is possible.

SPEAKER_11 10:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 10:33

So you mentioned there, Ruth then this conference, and you're sort of hinting there at its purpose. But let's just talk about the history of this conference, who started it, why it started, how it started, and what its hope is.

SPEAKER_10 10:44

The Ariya Colray conference together has been a dream, I think, of Pat or of the exec previously. I don't know if you want to say about why that was such a dream.

SPEAKER_16 10:52

Yes, I mean, for I would say more than a decade, maybe 15 years, there's been an intention to try and bring the two conferences together. So you could think, well, why would it be possibly so difficult to do that thing? And that's partly because of the tradition of what happens at an academic conference. At an academic conference there's a an idea of uh giving of parallel papers. So people present an academic paper which is well researched and that will be chaired, and in an academic conference there are often many opportunities to do that. So there's a kind of a level playing field in that case. Whereas Ariak, and I'll just speak from my own experience really of going to many Ariak conferences over the years, tends to be people sitting in chairs being talked at by other people or a very informal workshop style. So it was trying to bring those two things together that has till now been something of a struggle. And last year's conference we made a good attempt at it. And I think what's been beautiful is that the people involved have been willing to have a go at doing it and put our hands up and say, Well, is it academic enough for the academics? Because we've got people coming from Europe who are lecturing in European universities, you know, people in Alray have connections uh with theoretical work going on across the world in religious education. Uh theoretical and practical research, that will be quantitative research as well as qualitative or theoretical research. And I think those of us that engage with both worlds are kind of a rare variety, and I count myself as one of those, but there are other people like that. And I suppose what we're wanting to do in this time is to open the door to that. So keeping our feet rooted in the classroom and the advisory work whilst maintaining our uh our heads and our hearts also in intellectual rigour. Right now I can't think it's more important to do that. And just to say, okay, yes, uh we got research in relation to the religion, but we also need to make sure that religious education uh research is rooted uh educationally that we don't make assumptions at this time of climate and ecological crisis and polarization about what education is. We really have a responsibility to the next generation as educators, I think, to think that through really carefully, hard thinking. What is education? What do we need it to do right now? And I put to you that mere knowledge transfer is insufficient. Treating knowledge as a commodity to move from brain to brain is not good enough. And there are many of us that kind of think that that is an insufficient explanation of what education is. And therefore, if we go along that we uh limit what RE can do. But that's part of a bigger discussion, but uh put my clients in the right.

SPEAKER_10 14:07

Well, that's what I'm really excited about with the conference, is that we're posing the questions, so we're kind of trying to run it. I had some ideas of how we're gonna run it a little bit differently, maybe to last year and other conferences, so we're starting it by posing, we're having some provocations in the morning, raising questions and having a sort of inquiry discussion together, rather than here's what we think, we're sort of posing some of the issues, some of the problems, some of the discussions, and then there's gonna be a lot of space over the conference for all these different voices to be heard and discussed, and then we're going to come back and sort of come up with some ideas or drawing things together at the end. And I like how eclectic, how many different things we have running, different voices, and then Pat and Jan are done an amazing job of kind of grouping them into the rooms that people are in. So if there's particular areas that you're interested in, then you can go and have a listen to it. But yeah, for me it's that bringing the two sides together, making that academic side accessible in the classroom, but also, you know, making the classroom looking towards the academic side.

SPEAKER_09 15:01

And there's a couple of things I want to pick up, so I want to just explain who Jan is and I want to talk a little bit more about the structure of the conference. But just Pat, what I hear from what you're saying is that actually you want that dialogue between the academic world and the world of education all the way down to early years, so that it's a collaborative move forward into the future that we're working together to be a bit more dynamic rather than the academics sitting in their buildings and writing stuff and we're here doing that job. If there's collaboration and communication between those two groups, then the research that you're doing becomes much more relevant to what's happening within the education world, rather than it just imparting knowledge downwards.

SPEAKER_10 15:43

Part of it is about making those connections. And I know you might have spoken before, Lisa, about how we can connect with higher education, or I know it's been something that we've spoken about at Ariak and Aulra. And so when I saw last time an example where Justine and Susan presented, and Susan was very grounded in being at the University of Newman and she was a very academic side, and Justine works as an advisor and had like they'd work together on some research around the New Testament and Jesus in the New Testament and that New Testament world. And I for me, it was the perfect example of on the ground, Justine was doing research with young students in the schools where she's advising, using the research from Susan, and it was feeding back to Susan, the two of them together. I just felt that was for me was a brilliant example of what we can do with this conference of the two sides kind of working together.

SPEAKER_09 16:28

So let's talk about the conference then. Let's give people a picture of what happens there, what it's like, what you can do. Before we do that, just mention who Jan is, because you mentioned Jan earlier, and I think it's probably just worth explaining who she is.

SPEAKER_10 16:39

So Jan is one of the co-chairs of ARIAC.

SPEAKER_09 16:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 16:42

And she's been helping to organise the conference. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 16:45

Brilliant. Pat, I know you have to run, and I just want to thank you for your time. It's been really fascinating, and I think it's so lovely to connect to the history of this because sometimes we're in our little present bubble, and actually there's a huge amount of work gone on by a huge number of people in the past that have made this possible. So thank you so much. See you tomorrow. Bye. Can I just ask one question before we move on? Just an endowed lecture. I actually don't know what that is.

SPEAKER_10 17:11

I think it means they host it on behalf. You can sort of opt to host it there and they will pay for it. We've got a drinks reception, they help do the publicising, organizing it. So it's like you want to put on a lecture was a way of us being able to put on this extra event, a free event for everyone, at no cost to any other delegates coming or anyone wants to come. So I think that's what it means by endowed, and it must be a fund that's there. Katie, you correct me if I'm wrong.

SPEAKER_05 17:35

I don't know the ins and outs of this particular endowment, but the way that endowments are there, there seem to be a lot of endowments in the RE community. I think there's those people that sort of have left money in trust for a particular purpose, and quite often religious education in history has been one of those things. So Cullen St. Gabriel's, for example, is an endowed trust as I understand it. So there's the funding there which can be used for this particular purpose for this religious education lecture. So we're really lucky that that's been funded and it just happened to be available to us this year. So it was lovely.

SPEAKER_09 18:07

That's fantastic. Is there anything else you want to say about the sort of structure, format, content of the conference before we move on?

SPEAKER_05 18:14

One thing I would say is sort of building on what Pat was talking about earlier, is that what I really like about the way that we designed the sessions is that we've got some sessions which are theory-informing practice. So we've got those academics coming to share their work that they would like that to then filter down into classroom practice. But then also we've got those sessions where we've got practice-informing theory. So there is work that's been developed in classrooms and in curriculum work that then is feeding back into that research loop, hopefully, so that we're all sort of learning from each other and showing how we might exemplify that kind of work. It is really important that we have that kind of symbiotic relationship, I think. So that's one of the ways we've tried to facilitate that, still keeping that structure of an academic conference.

SPEAKER_09 19:03

And so who's the audience then? Who are you creating this conference for? Who do you want to arrive?

SPEAKER_11 19:10

Hmm.

SPEAKER_10 19:17

So many people that might come and contribute, but also come and learn from it. You know, like you said, we've got people who are coming who might not even be teaching as such, but are working in research around religion, around education, around philosophy, but then also the people who are teaching or supporting teachers, you know, working within mats, working within groups of schools, boroughs, you know, sacred, and those kind of things. So it's anyone who's got that particular interest in where are we going in RE and wanting to, you know, hear from the different sides of the different directions it might be going in and what the different views are that people have on it, rather than us presenting our solution, do you know what I mean? Or our aim. It's much more about exploring these different views that people have and trying to see what would be the correct way forward, taking that in account. So we have different symposiums happening to like explore the big areas. So for example, we've got Deborah Weston who's going to come and talk to us about the curriculum assessment review and have an opportunity for us together to have, rather than it be like, oh, let's hear about you know what's happening and get the low down, it's more about well, what do we think together about this and what would be our hope for the curriculum assessment review as different people there in the space.

SPEAKER_09 20:31

Amazing. One thing I do want to ask is kind of is there a particular thing that you're most looking forward to? So there's obviously a huge amount going on and it's quite varied in the way it's going to be presented and the experience of the delegates and things like that. But if there's one thing, Katie, we'll start with you, that you're most looking forward to. I know it's going to a conference and not speaking in terms of for once, because you're in such high demand. But um, is there one thing that you're particularly looking forward to?

SPEAKER_05 20:58

Obviously, there's the general thing about going to an in-real life conference where you actually get to have conversations with those people that you interact with online all the time, in various small ways, but to actually have those conversations and possibly to hear from an academic researcher that I may have read their work, and then maybe to have that chance over a cup of coffee in the break to actually talk to them about how I might have used that research or how I might use that research in the future. And you don't often get a chance to do that because you have to be quite brave to email an academic and say, I've done this piece of work, or based on my reading, or I'd like to speak to you about something. It feels quite scary as a teacher or somebody who might be drawing on research to actually make those connections, but you can do that in a real life conference.

SPEAKER_09 21:45

That's really interesting, actually.

SPEAKER_10 21:46

Yeah. Ruth. Yeah, for me, I obviously do the vast majority of my work remotely. You know, I do thrive off those remote meetings because that's my contact with the RE world. So I would never knock those, but for me, it's that chance to be together physically in the same place. Space. And for me, it's hearing things I might not have even heard about. Like there's obviously people who I'm excited to see their name then. I'm really looking forward to going to their sessions. But last year, there was so many more things that I discovered that I hadn't even known. I just was in that room and I heard about this piece of research and then it fed into what I've done this year in a way I hadn't expected. So for me, it's everything that Katie said, but also those unexpected little kernels and bits and pieces that might come. And then for me, also I enjoy seeing others make those interactions and connections to each other. So we're going to have a stool area as well. We didn't sort of mention this, a kind of where you can go around and meet different people who've got the stools up they want to talk to you about something. And we're going to have one for Ariak. And on our Ariak stool, we're going to have a board where it could be researcher needed, classroom needed, where literally researchers can put down that they're looking for a particular school or want to look in a particular area. And you know, those supporting teachers can say what they're looking for, and hopefully we can help that cross-pollination a bit more. So I'm kind of really excited to see what comes with that too.

SPEAKER_09 22:56

And actually, I'm looking at two ladies now that I've known for a while now and never met in real life. And so that's gonna be really delightful. And actually, it's interesting. So my research for the Cumber Gabriel Scottish Leadership program is on barriers to research, and actually, in my research, what I've discovered is that number one, a lot of people don't have time to research, and number two, the way that they like researching is by being in a good place with physically other people and talking to each other. And so I think what this conference does is it creates the space to engage with research, but also it creates a context in which people feel comfortable learning. And I think this is a much more accessible context than reading, you know, an abstract or reading, a long piece of research that isn't. So I think this is you know digestible and it's got that personal element as well. One thing I will say, if you're not going in, you've got a bit of FOMO now because you didn't get in. Apologies. What I will say is that Alex Brown, who's speaking at the conference, was my guest on the podcast. So you can engage with her. She's an incredible RV teacher and researcher and poet and all sorts of incredible things. So that will give you a little taste of the kind of quality of person that you that you've got at these conferences. So listen to that episode if you haven't. Guys, is there anything else you want to say about the conference that you haven't had the chance to say?

SPEAKER_05 24:14

One thing I would say is I am not an academic. This isn't just a conference for academics. There is a space in the RE world for people that want to draw on academic research. I've sometimes thought about doing a master's, but uh, I'm not quite there yet and certainly don't have the time at the moment. But I do apply research every day in my job. And it's really, really important that we make that engagement with what is going on in the academic community. Likewise, it's important for academics to make that engagement with us who are having that impact in classrooms. I may not necessarily be a classroom teacher anymore, but the resources I work on filter into the classroom, and it is really important that we keep that high quality up. And there's no point in academics doing this research and it never getting anywhere. This interaction is really, really important.

SPEAKER_09 25:05

And actually, you know, anyone who knows me or listens to the podcast regularly will know that I really, really, really struggle quite significantly with research, and so actually it's gonna be interesting going to this and seeing what my experience is like. And actually, I think what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna talk to people at the conference, I'm gonna record stuff personally you know about my experience. And so actually, if there are people that are listening that think, well, actually, I'm not an academic person, or this would be overwhelming for me. What I'm hoping is that if you come on this journey with me through my experience, I think if I can find something helpful at this conference, anybody can, because this is not my place of comfort, you know. I really struggle, and it's an emotional mental struggle. So I think keep open-minded, which is sort of you know our job.

SPEAKER_10 25:53

I was first asked before we had this joint conference. Ariak had weekend conferences separate to this, you know, in the past. And my first one that I went to, I felt like that kind of imposter syndrome. Like, what am I doing here? I'm not I'm not an inspector yet, I'm not a consultant or anything or an advisor. I'm just really passionate about RE and wanting to be an RE leader in some way. But I found it was just like a really warm welcoming family, that's all I can describe it as. And when I did my Farmington fellowship, which was 10 years ago, I was asked by someone to speak at a more local Ariat conference, because sometimes it's kind of local day conferences. And so I'd been to that and had just such a warm welcome to talk about my Farmington by all these people who've never met me, who didn't know anything about me, who are really interested in my work and just wanted to talk and wanted to learn. And that's what I found at all these conferences, is everybody's there because they want to learn from each other from the different experiences, the different research, the different things that people are doing, and that's what I've really enjoyed, and I hope you find that experience too.

SPEAKER_09 26:48

I hope so, I really hope so. So, what we'll do next is I'll give you some live updates from the conference, I'll give some sound bites from people that have have come to the conference, and you'll get a real sense of what it's like, and then hopefully you can go next year. But ladies, thank you so much for your time today, it's been so helpful, and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Well, I'm here at the University of Exeter for the Ariak Ore Conference, and it just kicks off in about 20 minutes. So I've just been looking at the itinerary about what I'm gonna do and some really good sessions. I'm gonna go to a series of sessions on hermeneutics, because we all love hermeneutics, and then I'm gonna go to a symposium on personal knowledge, which I'm really looking forward to. So I'm gonna talk to a couple of delegates, see what they're looking forward to, and report back. I'm here with Azan Akbar and Angela Hill, and they're gonna talk to me about what sessions they're looking forward to in the next two days.

SPEAKER_01 27:39

Yeah, I think I'm really looking forward to the migration radicalisation session. Justine Bohr's delivering some work on migration. I think it'd be really interesting to think about migration and RE and what RE teachers can do to kind of address some of those issues. And I also really like the conference theme to boldly go, so hopefully it will inspire me to boldly go forward in teaching.

SPEAKER_09 27:58

I love this whole um Ariak sci-fi because they did a Bat to the Future as well, so they're doing those sci-fi links.

SPEAKER_08 28:03

Angela, what about you? I'm really interested in the cross-subject and philosophy and RE session this afternoon, so I think I'm gonna go to that one. I haven't 100% made up my mind yet because I'm a bit overwhelmed with the choice actually. But there's so much choice. So much choice. Yeah, so I'm also here to talk to people about RE today and Natural as well, and just to network and to see people that I haven't seen for ages and meet new people too. So it's a real buzz here, and it's good fun so far.

SPEAKER_18 28:30

Brilliant! Thank you so much. So, my name is Sarah Barrow, and I'm here with my colleagues Hannah and Laura from Jigsaw Education Group. We are presenting on day one, we're doing an at the chalk face session on our action research using our Send Network, and then tomorrow Laura and I are doing a parallel session where we're talking about supporting pupils with Send in the mainstream classroom. So on my list of things to go to today when we're not presenting, hermeneutics in session one, teacher education session two, and then the symposium on teaching RE creatively in session four.

SPEAKER_04 29:03

Amazing, thank you so much, Sarah. Hi Louisa, I'm Janie Ace and I'm here with a number of different hats, but one of the presentations I'm making is through by my superior, Philosophy of Children hat National Charity for BPC, and I'm talking about a project that I managed on bringing cross-collaboration between science and RE teachers in the secondary schools. So I'm going to be talking about that, the effectiveness of that project, but also sharing resources as well and talking about the evaluation of that project. So it's kind of it crosses both ARIAC and RA because it's sort of a research project, but it's full of practical resources to share.

SPEAKER_07 29:45

Amazing. Thank you so much. So hello, my name is Roswana Rahman. I'm an RE teacher, but I'm also an RE advisor, and I'm here really to see people from the RE community to enhance what I understand about what's going on in the RE world at the moment and also see some old prints and make some new ones. Yeah, like the subjects on offer at the moment are so varied and interesting. I really can't figure out where I'm going to go next, but I think I might go to RE and Flourishing Teacher Education because I think they're going to be the most useful for the year ahead that I've got coming.

SPEAKER_00 30:23

Hi, I'm Tara Numapsha, I'm the Ari advisor from Newham. I'm here today to attend this conference and looking forward to meet other people in here, some experts that I could listen to and learn from. I'm looking forward to going to some of the sessions today, like the Worldview One or Arian flourishing, and then I'll be joining in some sessions tomorrow as well.

SPEAKER_17 30:44

Hi, I'm Lizzie Yeomans. I'm presenting for the first time today. My subject is how a process of subjectification can challenge the paradigm of the expert teacher in primary RE. So I work in initial teacher education, specialise in RE. I really feel it's important during initial teacher education for our student teachers to consider their positionality, that they're not just normal, that they have a worldview and how important it is to recognise that and bring any prejudice and bias to the surface. In doing that, they're more likely to teach from a dialogic approach. So I used a frair and liberatory pedagogy and I did a research project with five students where we critiqued an image in the REC handbook and we created a new image based on a dialogic approach to move away from a colonial approach to teaching RE, which we also thought was monologic, which means the teacher holds the power and the children are empty vessels. We wanted to challenge that, and in that process found that the ITT ECF positioned teachers as experts, which we disagreed with in the context of RE. And we felt that that needed to be challenged and overcome. Amazing, thank you.

SPEAKER_12 32:01

Hello, my name is Imran Mogra, and my session this afternoon is going to be on a supplementary school that is providing learning for children who have got special education needs and disability in the Muslim community. So I want to highlight the positives and the change and the achievements of this particular institute, which has been the first one of its kind, specifically dedicated to meeting the needs of disabled and special education as children. So I'm very excited about it because this is groundbreaking. And later on, I'm going to attend a session regarding the idea that Christianity is not a worldview. That is bringing a new dimension to how we have understood our worldviews so far in the RV world. After that, I will attend a session which I'm co-involved with my colleague on looking at how secular spaces create spaces or suppress spaces for teachers and universities, students at universities, and how they interact with that space. And how that space allows them or suppresses their views and ideas, whether they are political ideas, religious ideas, or other kinds of ideas. And the final session that I'm hoping to attend is going to be on pedagogies or something like that, I think.

SPEAKER_06 33:17

Thank you so much, Imra. My name's Sarah Dennis. I'm a primary school teacher from Lichfield and Staffordshire, and I'm presenting about disciplinary RE, teaching one sacred text using all three disciplines with 11-year-olds. I know. I know, right? It's amazing. And I am really looking forward to RE and Flourishing, looks very interesting. And tomorrow I'm going to the one that's really about progressing RE in primary, which I'm really excited about. I think we're about to start.

SPEAKER_09 33:50

Oh, say by the way.

SPEAKER_13 34:06

And we are all in the business of introducing new things to our learners, and you've got to listen to them. So how are you understanding this? And of course, when we're listening to them, we will, in our own turn, interpret in our own idiosyncratic way what they're telling us about what they understand. So this is a huge problem. So I describe exegesis and her music as scant refuge when we're talking about we have disciplines in theology, in religious studies, and of course in philosophy, which we'll come to in a minute. Oh yes, we have disciplines that we can help clarify the meaning of these words, phrases, these laws, these narratives. Or we have exegesis. What does the text actually say? Really problematic if you have replaced original texts with paraphrases, as we routinely do in our retellings of parables, of creation stories, and we abandon the original text. Because of course we're dealing in translations all the time. So good luck with exegesis if you're dealing in translation, which is a paraphrase. Hermeneutics is an incredible challenge on top of that. If you are deprived of clear exegesis, you can't even agree on what the texts actually say. Because you're dealing with perhaps different translations. Okay? Every translation is an interpretation.

SPEAKER_15 35:39

Hi, I'm Sally Elton Charcraft, Professor of Social Justice in Education at the University of Cumbria up north. And I ran a symposium, the last symposium, where I invited all my chapter authors of my book, Teaching Religious Education and Worldviews Education creatively. And all my chapter authors, well not all of them, some of them came and spoke about their chapter and talked about how the theory and practice were both creative and based on research that they'd undertaken. So I felt very humbled by the expertise and dedication of all those that I've heard so far. So I went to a hermeneutics session. Ruth Flanagan talked in that one. I also went to the personal knowledge session run by Emma and gained an awful lot from that about the RE hubs, which I think is fantastic. I also attended Deborah Weston's English curriculum review, which I think really made us all think about how we really need to be a lot more active and a lot more vociferous, but also speak not necessarily with one voice, but try to agree so that we can really influence policy. So I've been inspired by the enthusiasm of the people that I've met, and I've really enjoyed the conference. So thanks very much indeed.

SPEAKER_02 37:09

My mind is really full, and my mind is filled like a crucible or even a cauldron to use the terminology that would fit me. And I'm hoping that eventually, or maybe by the time I get home or next week, some ideas will pop out of my mind, and then I'll be able to take them to my practice and share them with the people that I work with. Then teach lead maybe as well, just gonna feed back to them.

SPEAKER_09 37:30

Yeah. So can you think of a specific session that you've been to that kind of stands out for one particular point?

SPEAKER_02 37:35

Oh that's such a tricky question. A specific session. The last one I was at, which was very interesting, with Lars from Norway. He referred to learning from and learning about. He then has created this toolkit using the ideas of reflection in four different ways. And it's like almost the joining pin, the pivot between learning from and learning about, and the three strands from HMI Richard Quay, and how those three things could articulate. It kind of articulates the join between them. It's very interesting.

SPEAKER_01 38:07

Hi, I'm Azan and I'm an RE teacher and the second year of the Column St. Gabriel's leadership programme. Yeah, had a really exciting just at the end of the conference now and it's been brilliant. Uh got to do my talk today on critical thinking and felt like it was well received. But there's just so much across the conference I've enjoyed. I watched the AI session with Paul Hopkins today at lunch, and that was really illuminating thinking about like how RE might be at the forefront of embracing AI rather than fearing it, and that was really exciting to me. So yeah, it's been a brilliant conference.

SPEAKER_14 38:40

Hi, I'm Alice Thomas. I'm the head of RE at the PSA G Buddy Coast School. One thing I will take away from the conference from Ariadne and Alrey is a fantastic RE community that it's to be a part of, but also to be at the future and changing RA for the future of our younger children and citizens of the future.

SPEAKER_09 38:59

Okay, so we're now back from the Al Ray Ariadne conference, and Ruth and Katie have returned, and they're going to talk to us about sort of how they felt it went and just a bit of part of the afterthoughts. And I'm welcoming for the first time a brand new guest to the podcast, which is Jan McGuire. So welcome, Jan. Do you just want to explain who you are and what you do?

SPEAKER_03 39:17

Oh, hi everyone. Well, yes, I am the co-chair of Ariad, and that's the Association of RE inspectors, consultants, and advisors. And we look after the leaders, I suppose, of religious education around England and Wales. So that's really my main job.

SPEAKER_09 39:36

Thank you, Jan. And actually it was our second time of meeting, wasn't it? At the Ariadne Conference, because we met at the um meeting back in whenever that was May, I think. Just talk to us about your kind of experience at the conference, what your highlights were, what went well.

SPEAKER_03 39:51

The conference for me was just the culmination of a year's work, actually. And I was really pleased to see everyone together, old friends and new friends. And the theme this year was to boldly go. And I think it was a really, really well-chosen theme. And we started with a provocation from Alex Brown and Kate Christopher, which I thought just set the whole pace of the two days. And Alex asked us to think about everything through what we could see, our eyes, what we could hear, our ears, um, what we could feel, our heart. And she really made us check what we were contributing, I think, all the way through the conference. It was very, very bold to start, and I really was so thankful for Alex for starting us that way because I think it made us realise that there were going to be times when we might be challenged, and that was a good thing, and that sometimes we might have to sit with our discomfort or anxiety or uncertainty, and that was a good thing because what we're wanting to do through the conference, of course, was to try to work out well, where are we going to go next with religious education? How are we going to make it the best possible religious education that it can be? How are we going to support the leaders of religious education? How are we going to support the teachers of religious education? What do we want the children to be learning in religious education? What do we want the policymakers to be doing to change religious education? And so I thought it was just the perfect way to start.

SPEAKER_09 41:29

Yeah. It's interesting. A sort of phrase that's almost come out of the conference, isn't it? Is that actually we want revolution or evolution, which is kind of the opposite of what the TFE is saying, that say we want evolution, not revolution. And I think you know, what definitely came out of the conference was that like energy of like, no, we need things to just change. You know, it was really invigorating. I mean, it was kind of right that I heard say it, but I don't know if she'd heard it from somewhere else, whether this is a general feeling. But I mean, I don't you're kind of all nodding, so I'm assuming you kind of feel like actually that's what you got out of it as well.

SPEAKER_03 42:06

Yes, I I think in the whole of the education sphere that tends to be the message, it's not just within religious education. However, I think because our community is such a close-knit family, of course, we talk about this all the time, how we're really desperately wanting there to be quite radical change. And I think Deborah Weston had a fabulous session at the conference where she came in to speak about their curriculum and assessment review and the kind of things that we were asking for, what the reality might be. Well, we don't know yet, of course, those gates haven't been opened, we haven't walked through them. But I think it was a really good place to start thinking about how, as a community, we might respond to the decisions that the government are going to make on our behalf. But also, I think there was a bit of a drive during the conference of people saying that we might be waiting a very long time for those decisions, and we mustn't stop creating the best possible religious education that we can create for the children while we're waiting, because you know that could be a disaster, couldn't it? You know, we've got to actually get on with that now. And I think that's one of the things that came through in the conference. I thought Louisa, I don't know if you felt the same, but a lot of the contributors were talking about fabulous new ideas, quite radical ideas at the times, and different ways of thinking, just to test us and to push us and to challenge us, to make us, I suppose, work in a better way, to create more interesting lessons. I mean, I've got loads of things in my head, you know, that were said, and I suppose one of them that I took away with was something that Kate Christopher said actually. She was asking us about how we were feeling about things to do with the ecology and you know the state of the world, and she Said to us, Why have earth-friendly worldviews not protected or stopped us? In other words, in religious education, we teach about creation, stewardship, all the different things that different religions and worldviews say about how we can protect the world and work together in a harmonious way. And her question to us was, Well, it hasn't worked, has it? What are we going to do? And so that was really interesting. I I came away thinking about that ever such a lot. And I I think that's an area that I definitely need to do some work in. But it was just one of those conferences I think that was really saying that, Louisa, that we do want revolution, not just evolution. I think there's a will for it.

SPEAKER_09 44:44

Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. Ruth, anything you want to sort of come in in terms of how you felt the the conference went, your highlights?

SPEAKER_10 44:52

Um well my highlights were lots of the sessions that I managed to pop in, because we were sort of organizing it. It was a bit like, you know, when you have a house party and you just check in everyone's okay all the time. You don't really get to you don't get to see the one that has that long conversation on the sofa with somebody. So um the highlight for me was the snippets I managed to grab from hearing people speak, and I loved hearing Marina speak about Eastern prophets within her orthodox tradition who are sort of perhaps on the fringe or not so well known about. And then the way she tied this into how we can tackle radicalization online, it's just the way that she kind of juxtaposed like the loud voices we have online from the Andrew Tates of the world with these kind of quiet, powerful, inspirational stories of people from her tradition. I don't know, that that really stayed with me. It was like the melding of like what we're faced with at the moment, and then some things we can draw on that can really help counterbalance some of those narratives, but still be about power and money. So things like that really stuck with me. But for me, it was not just being in the sessions, but then talking to people about it afterwards. So I work remotely, so for me it was just such a treat to be physically with people to speak to them. So I would grab someone after something and walk down the road with them and say, What did you think of that? And what was your idea and how how did you process that? And it was just that person might give me a completely different understanding of the same talk, and that's something I really, really enjoyed that kind of cross-pollination of ideas. And for me, I really enjoy doing Ariakana All Ray Together because I feel we've got slightly different approaches but the same kind of goal. And so I loved that, yeah, sharing ideas across the two organizations.

SPEAKER_18 46:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 46:27

And I want to come back to that idea in a second because I think that's a really good question. I want to talk about just the success of having a joint conference. Katie, let me just bring you in sort of how you felt the conference went generally, and then your highlights.

SPEAKER_05 46:39

Well, firstly, I'd say it was a really beautiful setting and we had lovely weather, which always helps. Exeter University is a lovely place, very hilly, but a beautiful place for a conference. We're really grateful to them for hosting us. One of the things I I really enjoy, we managed it last year, but also this year about the Ariakana Auray Conference, is the variety of people that you come across while you're there. We often work in sort of our very specific silos, whether it be at a university or within a trust or in our own schools. And there's so many different projects going on that you just wouldn't know about unless you went to something like a conference like this. You can't possibly have a handle on everything. And there were big things that we talked about, but also I really loved hearing just for 20 minutes, from example, uh Dr. Trevor Patworth's work at St. Mary's Twickenham, where it's a Catholic school which is not really within my usual experience. But he was working on a project with secondary pupils looking at parables, and they were sort of creating their own original poetry in a very sort of loose and free kind of way. And it was really fascinating. One of the things that he just kept saying was that he said to them, I don't care, do what you like. And I loved the fact that this project was going on. I never would have heard about it if I hadn't gone to that conference. So it just really invigorated me thinking about all these wonderful things that are going on in institutions all over the country.

SPEAKER_09 48:04

It's interesting, Casey. I did the same thing because I think it was very rich. And it can be a little bit overwhelming. So I was like, in each person that I heard speak, I'm gonna take one idea, one thing, and actually make that small change. Because I think otherwise I would have felt overwhelmed and not made any. So for me, it was the Heartstone project. I just thought, well, actually, that was really lovely, and I want to look into that a little bit more. Reading the Heartstone Odyssey, I thought that was really lovely. That was Henny Smith or and then the other thing was someone I can't remember who it was, made a link between the trolley problem and self-driving cars. And they were saying, actually, we're now that theory is now a reality. So I love that. I love that like things come full circle. I thought that was absolutely fantastic. In terms of the sort of success, I mean, Katie, you've sort of hinted it there, and Ruth, you have as well. The success of having these two organizations coming together, you've talked about the sort of diversity of ideas from different spheres coming together. And you mentioned the word cross-pollination, but I think it kind of works in this context as well. Jan, anything you feel particularly meant that this was a massive success to join the two together?

SPEAKER_03 49:17

I think that because of Ariak's role as like the mediator between the academic world and the teaching community, for us, this is almost like a perfect solution because we're getting some CPD for ourselves, and I think that upskills us in order for us then to go back into our communities to help advise and also to teach at teacher training and so on, all the things that we do as advisors. So I think that from that point of view is just excellent. I mean, one of the best CPD elements I thought was when we had Anna Stronn, who came to do the special lecture that was in the evening, and she had been doing some amazing research. She'd been collecting data from all sorts of primary schools and gathering in the student voice to find out what they thought about religious education. And her conclusions were that basically there's total inconsistency. Some of the pupils absolutely hated it and thought it was boring. And then you've got some other children within fantastic schools where the RE was valued and everybody were, you know, shouting out how brilliant religious education was. And the children, of course, loved it. And it's that inconsistency that she was talking about that just made me think about the challenges that we do have going ahead, even with the curriculum assessment review. Whatever happens, we've still got a lot of changes to make as a community. I think the thing that I often find going to the conference, the majority of people attending the conference are people that we meet through things like the podcasts, online. They are already very, very engaged with the religious education community. And I suppose what I'm taking away from this is that it's so important we work together with Auray. It's important we work with all of our partners, and we've got to work on things like how we now work with those people who are not engaging with us. How do we do it? You might help Louisa because you might come up with some brilliant ideas using your podcasts. But yes, I think I really do take that away with me. The other thing we did at the conference is we had a matching board. So what we tried to do is we tried to find out well what things are teachers and advisors doing that they would like to work with academics on to produce a brilliant piece of research or piece of applied work that they could use in their classroom. And we were matching up all sorts of projects. So I'm hoping that that's a bit of a shout-out, really, on your podcast to everyone out there. If there's anything you really would love to research in, then Auray is very good at that, and Ariak is very good at matching you together. So that's one thing I think worked very well at the conference.

SPEAKER_09 52:10

That's really interesting. And I think actually, you know, I spoke at the conference and I was talking about barriers to research. I think often it is time, you know, that actually teachers on the ground don't often have enough time. But I think it's that confidence as well. And I think if we are building connections between all of the worlds within RE, if we're building relationships, it empowers people. If you know there's someone that's going to help you engage in some research and give you their expertise, then actually that really empowers people. Before we move up, just Katie or Ruth, is there anything you want to say about the success of the joint conference?

SPEAKER_05 52:45

One of the things I always feel whenever we get together for conferences is that that value of being in the same room as people and having the luxury of being there for actually two nights in the end, because we arrived on the Wednesday and we're lucky enough to go on the tour of the local faith buildings and meeting some of Ed Pawson's team of faith advisors, I think it is, they work on it on a group together, don't they? And having the time to really talk to people about what is going on in our own settings in the national RE community and where we want to go next, that is so, so important. And doing that in an academic environment as well as a social environment was just wonderful.

SPEAKER_09 53:33

And actually, a few people have mentioned, I do just want to bring this in that actually the context of it being in Exeter meant that there was kind of extracurricular activities that really enhanced the experience. So, as you say, Katie, on that Wednesday night, the day before the conference started, was going to the synagogue and going to Exeter Cathedral, and that was just a real richness. And then I think on the second day, looking at the interfaith centre that's part of Exeter University as well. And so actually those extracurricular activities were just incredible.

SPEAKER_10 54:08

Ruth. Well, that's what I was going to mention was going to the multi-faith centre, seeing how that was practically put together, why it was built, why it was funded, it was asked for by the students, the history of it, how it'd been set up, how the space had been arranged. It was just felt like a really magical part of the conference to go there together as Ariak as well. It's obviously a joint conference, but we do have that time where it was just Ariak together, and we said, okay, let's go down there together. And um, someone who spoke from with us on the Wednesday, she's a Buddhist chaplain who works at the Multiface Centre, was very generous with her time and spoke to us for it about an hour we were down there, wasn't it? And then um we could spend time there and sort of really see in action lots of the things we've been talking about.

SPEAKER_03 54:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 54:48

And then um, someone, I think it was Sarah Dennis, who's a primary school teacher, was like, This is perfect. Can I take some photos? Because my students are going to be making some multi-faith centres and they can use this as a design, and it just felt that practical element which I really value in area. Yeah.

SPEAKER_19 55:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 55:04

Brilliant.

SPEAKER_19 55:05

So the building was officially opened in March this year. It's really brand spanking new. It costs 5.5 million and has been well nearly a decade in the planning. Sarah Turval, we have to thank for that. She's an ex-alumni of the university who's very rich, and she asked the students, not the governance, what the students wanted. What was the thing that was missing from Exeter University? And the students said, a face space. Because obviously we have lots of international students, we have lots of Muslim students, the original Muslim parents, which were dingy, had no windows, kind of were subterranean in the old library, and they were facility, but they weren't anything like what we've got now. I mean for me, the most important thing about this building is the fact that it's a faith space. The Quakers meet here on a Friday. We have all kinds of groups making use of the multi-faith room, which you'll see in a minute, and this social space, and of course the Muslim prayer rooms, which are over here. We also have I'm a Buddhist, we have Buddhist chanting. We found that people did want to have the resource open and sort of functioning as a spiritual space. So we do have Buddhist chanting here every Friday. It will be today at noon if you're on a lunchtime. So I just feel really lucky that we've got this space, having seen what we had before. So the university's been very open. It wants all people of all faiths and no faith as well. That's important. This is a resort that's open to everybody. We have pagan chaplains, we've got all kinds, you know, obviously Muslim, Jewish, Quakers. The Quakers are here on a Friday, and I always think it's great that we have chanting, which is really noisy and joyful, and then literally 15 minutes later, we're at the room and the Quakers are in, and they're all sitting there beautifully, quietly, and doing their silent prayer. So that's very lovely. So the building has been really built from the word go with sort of mindfulness and just trying to make it the most positive building it can be. But the most powerful thing it is, is a place for students to come that isn't sort of academic education lectures or party party. It's a really lovely place for people to come. And quite often I come in, I've you know walked in there and someone's meditating.

SPEAKER_09 57:34

Let's then think about the future then. Like we've had this incredible conference, it was so beautiful, it was such a lovely buzz. Like you'll see in the sort of little um interviews I've got with people that were there, just the kind of hub that was in the background of people just talking, connecting, and relating. There was a really positive atmosphere there. It was brilliantly organized, it was so much fun. You know, there were downtimes where we had the gala dinner and it was just glorious. Let's think about sort of what's happening next. What have we learned from this conference that we're gonna kind of feed forward into the next one? Any kind of ideas of how you want to improve it or things you're thinking about?

SPEAKER_10 58:11

Well, we have in the pipeline a future conference in June next year, so June 2026. Theme to be decided. Where do you go after boldly going somewhere? I don't know, to infinity and beyond, maybe. In Lincoln. So watch out for more details for that. Coming soon, we'll start to get a call out for papers and a theme together and everything like that. So, yeah, we would like to carry on with the collaboration. And we met with our AGM recently, Ariak, to check with members whether they were happy to go ahead with that's what we are. So that's what we're going to be doing after we've checked that the accommodation's got lifted up to the rooms.

SPEAKER_09 58:42

But maybe Yeah, but it's the people that weren't there. We had to walk up a very big hill from the station up to our accommodation. Then we got to accommodation and there was like more stairs up to the bedrooms, and it was really hot, and we're like, okay, but actually it's great because we've got really fit and you know it's nice to have that fresh air. But yeah, I think that's one thing we need to be aware of. Some of the people that don't find that as easy, just making sure it's accessible to all. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_10 59:06

But that's why we're keen to sort of get planning it sooner. Last year we were planning this for a while, and it took us because it was the first time we've done anything as big as this, really, the way that we had. So we're hoping to get planning sooner and get more information out quicker to people so that can be a bit more streamlined. For me, that's the improvement, just the organization side, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 59:23

And so actually, in terms of my listeners, the message we want to give to them is number one, just keep an eye out for it and see if you can get some time off potentially. Because it's usually during the week. But second of all, just kind of engage with this wider sort of research. And actually, you don't know whether this time next year you could present on a paper that you've done and things like that. So actually just be kind of curious and open-minded. Jan, anything you kind of want to see moving forward if we're thinking about the future of these conferences?

SPEAKER_03 59:53

I suppose I'm always looking to be inclusive of as many of the different roles within religious education that we can possibly be supportive of in ARIAC. I think you know, Ariak is a really diverse group. We've got different advisors from all sorts of backgrounds. So we've got people that advise in religious schools, we've got dioceses, we have local authorities, we have advisors that are independent, self-employed, we have advisors which work for publishing companies, for maths, for writing groups, and so on. It goes on and on. And I think that going forward, I'd just like to make sure that we're meeting the needs of everybody, that we have everybody sort of uh feeling that we can uh support them and that we are helping them on their journey to become a better religious education leader. So, you know, just stay in contact with us, you know, make sure that we know what you need and what you want to help you on that journey. If you don't speak to us, we don't know.

SPEAKER_09 1:00:56

Katie, anything from you about sort of the future?

SPEAKER_05 1:01:00

I would certainly urge people to engage, even if you can't come to the conference, to engage both with Ariac and Alray, take a look at what we're offering throughout the year. So Aure have already got their webinars being advertised and they will accept non-members to their webinars as well. So have a look at the schedule of webinars that they've got going across the year. Also, take a look at what we will be having coming out through Ariac in the coming year as well. If you went to the conference and went to a session you thought was particularly amazing and you'd like an extended webinar session run by Ariac that more people might be able to go to, let us know. Give us those recommendations. Or if you weren't at the conference and you had FOMO, but you've seen what the schedule was and you think actually that I'd really like to hear about that from an Ariac member, then also let us know and we will do our best to make sure that we can make that accessible to those people that sadly couldn't be with us on the days.

SPEAKER_10 1:01:55

On that note, actually, something we are looking for doing for future conferences is to have a hybrid model where possible of some or many of the workshops as we can, because obviously it is hard for people to always get off or to get out to things. So in recognition of that, we couldn't manage it this time, but it's something we'd like to try and do for next time.

SPEAKER_09 1:02:13

Yeah, absolutely. You know, and I think it's there's something very special about being face-to-face and being physically in the room. You know, and I think I find online conferences much more difficult to engage with, but there are those just practical elements where people want to engage in cards. I think that's a really lovely idea.

SPEAKER_10 1:02:30

The teacher taught radio conference that they did, I managed to log on. Um for me that was amazing. I mean, I obviously I've chosen to not live in the country, but and then I could listen to the amazing by Dawn, amazing, and many other people as well, while I was digging my potatoes in the ground, and I just thought it's amazing that I can still be connected and part of this. So I definitely want that to be something that we try and do going forward, you know. Yeah. Those that can't um cut there's there are different reasons why people can't get time off or they've got health issues, or in terms of us being an inclusive family as we are in Ariak, that's something I'd really like us to do.

SPEAKER_09 1:03:05

So just as we close, what I think I'd really like is just if there's any like funny behind-the-scenes stories that you're able to share with us.

SPEAKER_10 1:03:16

It's not funny behind the scenes, but for me and you were there, Louisa, as I was leaving, I was like chatting away to was it you, or was it Craig Christopher? Or I was just chatting away to somebody in Starbucks on the train like when and so I thought I'll get the next train. I had a phone call after I'd had like university nostalgia the whole time there. I'd been like looking at pictures of when I was at university talking about this, and I'd been thinking so much about my uni days, and then I got a phone call from my stepdaughter whose graduation I'd just been at, and she rang me when I was there at the train station to say she got a first in her degree, and I just like screamed and burst out crying, and then there were all these Ariak Orro people that would use for me, and it was like the perfect type. She was like, I was in this perfect time, that's amazing. Like speaking to someone who was like, That was the university she'd worked at, and she was like, Oh, I've been at those cra and it just felt like a real full circle like family moment. So for me, that was a real highlight. I kind of just got to go off on such a high with that news from her, like the next generation. I was really, really happy. So yeah, that was a that's not it's not a funny story, but it was um but it's a poetic story, isn't it?

SPEAKER_09 1:04:12

It just felt very beautiful that that's you know, you are celebrating research and celebrating the future of of RE, and actually then, you know, there's this real academic success of somebody. So that's lovely. Katie, anything from you?

SPEAKER_05 1:04:25

I'm not sure it's funny, but um it was so lovely to sit down and be able to chat with you and with Katie Freeman and with so many people that I've worked with over the years, but haven't actually really had a chance to really sit down and have a really good chat with for a long time, if ever, and discovering little things about ourselves like that.

SPEAKER_10 1:04:43

Yeah, but you and me and Louisa are all three sisters from families of three sisters, but that we are a different order. Stupid facts, but yeah, I know. But then when I showed you the picture, Louisa was like, Oh, that one's the oldest in that family, in my family, got it completely the wrong sound. My sister's very flattered when I tell her.

SPEAKER_09 1:05:02

I got it totally wrong, which is really offensive of her sisters. So, Katie, Ruth, and I all have two sisters, so we're all one of three sisters, but we're all in different orders. So one of us is the oldest sister, one of us is the middle sister, and one of us is the younger sister. So, listeners, write in, see if you can get. Jan, what's your hunch?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:21

My hunch? I missed some of your opener because I disappeared, and I thought you asked about uh funny things, but I think the funny thing for me was actually seeing people for the first time, real time, and realizing that they were very tall. Not very tall. Just realizing they got legs because you just have no idea, have you, when you're sort of speaking to them on the screen. And it was just lovely to see them as real people, yeah, rather than you know, little images. And I think that's the thing that I take away.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:58

I would add well. Another funny thing. We have to give a special shout out to Paul Hopkins, our wonderful member of Ariac, who does so much for us as membership secretary and with our website. And he did a brilliant session talking about AI and thinking about using tech in RE and the ethics of that. And at the end of the conference, he left his laptop behind and had to come back for it. Oh, glorious, well done.

SPEAKER_11 1:06:30

Yes, he did.

SPEAKER_10 1:06:31

Well done for his VR headsets were brilliant. Did anyone else have a go on them? That was another highlight for me. Just little things like that, discovering with the exhibitors or the different bits and pieces. I loved that. What was that? Yes. He's got VR headsets, so you can put them in, and you go in the eye of Sophia and you're looking around and you can see everything. And then your eyes land on a certain spot, you know. It's so futuristic, like on a certain spot, and then it shows you little bits about it. So you could use them in the classroom for students to do a literal like 360 immersive tour of a place of worship, you know. That was brilliant.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:05

Yeah. I was going to say that the great thing about that, Ruth, is that he managed to make it for so little money. So the little piece, the little bit that goes around the head was only£20. And then he'd use a really cheap, I think he just called it a phone. It's not a smartphone as such, I think because that was only about£80. So the whole thing was£100, whereas most of them are, you know, hundreds of pounds. So it was really clever to see how he'd done that and he was able to model it with us. So that's great as well, isn't it? As well as you know, we had the exhibitions, we had different people from the exam boards, we had different writers coming in from Jigsaw and Constant Gables and Ari Today and United Learning and Jules Vasey from Books at Press. So what was so lovely is you had all of these different people talking about the way they can support us as well, giving freebies away too, which is always nice, isn't it? So yeah, I enjoyed that there. I know I'm not gonna need to buy another thing. Because all these hubs, of course, came as well, didn't they? Because they were in the hall. I don't think I've missed anyone out. But it was really, really excellent just to have so many people coming in that we know about, don't we? But actually meeting everyone, it's really lovely.

SPEAKER_09 1:08:13

Yeah. So I think you've got that lovely RE community anyway, and then you've got these connections between these people that are working in different spheres that often don't get to meet and don't get to collaborate and share ideas and cross-pollinate. I think that's going to be our word for the thing. So, ladies, is there just anything else you want to say just as we close?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:30

Just come and join us, come and speak with us, come and engage with us, come and be part of the family so that you feel that you're being mentored through on your journey. Because that's how we all start, isn't it? You know, we find people that will nurture us and help us grow and to become the great Ari leaders that we need in our classrooms.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:52

And I would say Ariak really feels like home. So yeah, do come and join the family.

SPEAKER_09 1:08:57

Yeah. I'll put links to both Ariak website and the RA website so people can have a look at that. What a lovely way to end. Thank you, ladies, for the debrief. Thank you for I cannot tell you how hard these people worked and how brilliant they were on the day, and they were like swans that were like working very hard behind the scenes, but actually looked as though Ruth was like, what? You know, but just looked as though they were just taking it in their stride and they were very gracious and very present in what was going on as well. So thank you very much, ladies, for creating such a beautiful conference. It was a pleasure, thank you. Thank you. Are you ready to navigate the future of education, to confront the challenges and develop the opportunities shaping young minds today? This July, the Sea of Faith Network invites you to a pivotal conference, Education for This Life. We're diving deep into the powerful intersection of education and religion, exploring how artificial intelligence is transforming everything we know. What are the threats we must face? What are the incredible possibilities we can harness? And how do we ensure that every precious moment of curriculum time contributes to the education of young people in our rapidly changing world? Prepare to be inspired by leading voices in the field. I am thrilled as the host of the RE podcast to be presenting alongside the brilliant minds of Professors Rupert Weggeriff and Beth Singler, renowned specialists in religion, education, and AI. And the wonderful professors Michael Rice and Denise Cush, leaders in the development of big ideas theory and practice in science and RE. Don't miss this crucial event. Join us on Thursday, the 24th of July, and Friday, the 25th of July, 2025, at the Corum Conference Centre in London. Come for one day or immerse yourself in both. Secure your place and discover full details online at seaoffaithnetwork.uk forward slash conference. That's sovn.uk forward slash conference.