Welcome to Darnall Forum's Community Website: December 2016

Saturday, 24 December 2016

Thank You Ikea!

The Ikea team who donated and installed our new furniture

The Ikea team from the new store which will be opening soon in Sheffield gave a Christmas present to Darnall Forum and the local residents who use our centre for courses in ESOL, IT, confidence building, sewing, crochet and other subjects. They installed new furniture which has made our learning spaces much more user friendly. We can now accommodate more learners at a time. Thank you to the team for their gift and all their hard work.

Tuesday, 13 December 2016

What People Said About Our Celebrate England Events!

First the good news! You can read a report about the 'Celebrate England' Lantern Parade here.

However, in the same week that Dame Louise Casey warned about 'worrying levels of segregation' between some Muslims and other members of society and recommended that schoolchildren should be taught British values, some local Muslim parents complained that their children had been sent home from school with leaflets about our 'Celebrate England' Christmas Community Fair.

The event, held at the Church of Christ in Darnall, was designed to help people from different communities meet one another and better understand some of our traditional English customs and values. The Christmas Fair had a Christmas theme, and included an information point about the Christian celebration of Christmas featuring the Church's nativity scene. However, it also featured many secular aspects of Christmas that are typically English including a visit from Father Christmas.

There was no attempt to assimilate people into a uniform 'English' way of celebrating Christmas, much less to persuade them to convert from Islam to Christianity. The Fair was simply designed to help people integrate better with their neighbours and understand some of the things which have made England what it is like today.

Those who came, Christian, Muslim and non-believers alike, all enjoyed themselves and got to know one another better. We hope that local schools will heed Dame Janet Casey's advice and not buckle to pressure to keep people isolated from and ignorant about key aspects of Britishness or Englishness. (In this case it is 'Englishness' that was being celebrated, because Scottish people traditionally had a very different attitude to Christmas and did not celebrate it in the same way.)

Saturday, 3 December 2016

Our Community Christmas Fair helped local people from all backgrounds and communities to Celebrate England

Montage of photos from our community Christmas Fair

The Christmas nativity scene and more photos of our Christmas Fair

Our Community Christmas Fair was a great success. Over 100 local adults and children came along. They enjoyed meeting Father Christmas and taking part in a range of Christmas workshops with a Christmas theme. There was a good mixture of people taking part, Pakistani, Arab, Romanian, Portuguese, English, and Bangladeshi! It was a very diverse event celebrated by everyone regardless of religion, culture or origin. People of faith and no faith all had an enjoyable day and learned about Christmas traditions and the origins of the Christmas festival, represented by the Christmas tree and the Christmas nativity scene with the baby Jesus and the Holy Family in the stable at Bethlehem, where they were visited by Wisemen bringing gifts to celebrate his birth.

Friday, 2 December 2016

Community Christmas Fair

Join us for our Community Christmas Fair on Saturday 3 December at the Church of Christ from 12 till 4 pm.

Meet your neighbours and discover some of the traditions which make Christmas special. Find out about the origins of Christmas. Meet Father Christmas and receive a free present.

Discover things to celebrate about England with our Celebrate England Community Christmas events!

Supported by Sheffield City Council and the Big Lottery.

Help conserve our waterways in Darnall and Tinsley

Waterways poster inviting volunteers to help with a clean up project

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How to join in

1) Follow us on Twitter @darnallforum
2) To post a comment, click on the link beneath the post or previous comment to which you want to respond and write your message in the box.
3) Complete the word recognition box, which is designed to stop spam.
4) Then, if you have one, you can enter your Google username and password.
5) Alternatively, you can click 'other' and enter your real name, or a nickname which you would like us to display, or you can click 'anonymous'.
6) Then click 'Publish'. Your message will be sent to us for checking.
7) We will know who you are but, if you have used a nickname or chosen to be anonymous, no one else will know.

How our community team can help

Chris, Nazia and Zahira are the friendly voices on the end of the phone line when you call us and the people who deal with your visits, letters and emails.

They work closely with community groups and individuals who want to make a difference to Darnall. Chris is our Lead Key Support Worker, helping people who are over 18 and currently out of work, to find jobs, education or training through Sheffield CIty Council's Pathway to Success programme.

Zahira is currently covering Nazia's learning Champion role and is the person to contact regarding our education programme.

We also have a team of adult community learning tutors who work closely with us. They help us run courses in IT, ESOL, employment skills, driving theory and other subjects.

If you want help with something which isn't listed here, and you live in Attercliffe, Darnall or Acres Hill, why not give us a ring anyway and we'll try to signpost you to the right place.

More about us

Darnall Forum’s day to day business is managed by a Board of local volunteers. Its vision statement is:

To create a listening space for the community, and
To work in partnership with other agencies and organisations to improve local services and help regenerate Darnall.

The Forum has four part-time staff who with local people to implement a Community Action Plan that was drawn-up after extensive consultation with all sections of the local community. The members of the Forum Board are drawn from the different faith and ethnic groups represented in the area and are elected by the members of the Forum at its AGM.

Darnall Forum is currently funded by Sheffield City Council, the European Social Fund and a small number of charitable trusts.

Darnall Forum also trades under the names D F Enterprise and Darnall Forum Trading, which reopened the community post office in 2010 and ran it for nearly eight years.

The Main Aims of Darnall Forum are:

To create a forum where people can meet to raise issues of local concern, where the agenda is set by local people and where leadership and direction remain with local people.

To work together as women, men, young people, elders, black, white, disabled or able-bodies, of different faiths or none, recognising, respecting and valuing our differences.

To form links with key agencies and local enterprises in order to work in partnership with them, discuss their role in the area and – where necessary – challenge them.

To gather resources to support and deliver initiatives begun and supported by local people.

To ensure that there is a clear and agreed process by which the Forum makes and acts upon its decisions, and to ensure that the Forum Board is accountable to the membership.

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